Home to the Heartland

The trappings were poignantly familiar--the flag-draped gun carriage inching down Constitution Avenue, the throngs filing past a casket in the Capitol Rotunda, the millions pausing before their television sets to watch a hero laid to rest. To a nation that has lately witnessed all too many such occasions, the funeral of Dwight Eisenhower had a significant difference. It was not an occasion for grief over a life tragically foreshortened by an assassin's bullet but an opportunity to pay homage to one who had served his country and had died in peace, his work completed.

There was more dignity than drama in Ike's final journey--and that is precisely how he wanted it. He had approved the arrangements as long ago as 1966, and they were carried out with military precision. At the beginning of the week, his casket was removed from Washington's National Cathedral. One witness of the transfer was Omar Bradley, 76, the last of the five-star generals, who saluted his wartime colleague with a sadly trembling hand. After the casket was taken to a spot near the Washington Monument, it was placed atop the horse-drawn gun carriage for the 1 1/2-mile ride to the Capitol. Raven, a spirited black gelding, walked behind, bearing an empty saddle with boots reversed in their stirrups, an ancient salute to a fallen warrior. Some 50,000 people braved chill winds and a drizzle to watch from the sidewalks as the procession passed slowly before them.

A Life Fulfilled. Inside the Rotunda, President Richard Nixon reflected on the satisfaction of a life fulfilled. "He restored calm to a divided nation," said the President. "He gave Americans a new measure of self-respect. He invested his office with dignity and respect and trust. He made Americans proud of their President, proud of their country, proud of themselves." Said Nixon: "He came from the heart of America. And he gave expression to the heart of America, and he touched the hearts of the world."

Within two hours after Ike died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a black-bordered letter went to some 130 embassies and missions in Washington with the announcement: "The Secretary of State presents his compliments to their excellencies and messieurs the chiefs of mission and has the sad duty to inform them . . ." Each government was then confronted with the question: Whom should it send?

Comrades-in-Arms. Many responded by sending their first citizens to Washington, a tribute not only to the 34th President of the U.S. but also to the commander of the Western forces that defeated Hitler and liberated Europe in World War II. Eighteen heads of state or chiefs of government were on hand, as well as a score of foreign ministers. Among the major Western allies only Britain, a country with special ties to Eisenhower, did not send a delegation of the highest echelon. Lord Mountbatten, leader of the British contingent, was outranked by most other delegates, but had a special place at the rites as an old comrade-in-arms of Ike's. Perhaps the warmest expression of affection came from France's Charles de Gaulle, another wartime colleague and friend, whose eyes filled with tears when he spoke of Ike on his arrival at Dulles International Airport.

De Gaulle, 78, paused before the casket in the Rotunda to offer a somber salute. After an estimated 60,000 people had filed through the Rotunda, the casket was returned to the cathedral for the funeral. Outside, the Marine Band struck up Hail to the Chief%#151;notes that were heard repeatedly during the five days--and eight pallbearers carried the casket down the aisle to the catafalque, draped in purple velvet. The Rev. Edward L. R. Elson, the Presbyterian minister who baptized Eisenhower in 1953 (Ike's parents were members of a Mennonite sect) and who was one of three ministers officiating, offered thanks "for his high vision of the better world toward which all men of goodwill strive."

Mamie Eisenhower never liked flying, and in a day when most people take planes, the Eisenhowers often traveled by train. It was by train that the general returned for the last time to his boyhood home of Abilene. A ten-car train was assembled, and the coffin was put aboard baggage car No. 314. The "Old Santa Fe," the private car that carried Eisenhower to Abilene in 1952 for his first campaign speech, was put on for Mrs. Eisenhower and members of the family. At first, the route was kept secret, perhaps out of fear that spectators might be hurt (two onlookers were killed waiting for Robert Kennedy's funeral train last year).

The secret could not be kept for long, however, and scarcely had the train left Washington's Union Station when towns along the way began making plans for tribute. Nothing that took place during the five days of mourning was so eloquent in expressing the country's feeling of nostalgia and affection as the simple, spontaneous turnouts along the tracks. In Charleston, W. Va., nearly 600 people, including children in pajamas and blankets, watched the train go by. In Washington, Ind., a small (pop. 11,000) farming town in the southwestern part of the state, 10,000 people gathered from as far away as 50 miles to greet the train as it stopped to change crews. Some put their hands to their hearts, but most just watched silently when the baggage car, bearing a length of crape and an American flag, came into view.

Meaningful Restraint. "I have wandered far," Ike said after V-E Day in 1945, "but never have I forgotten Abilene." Nor had the town of Abilene forgotten its most illustrious son. For the burial, official decoration was modest, consisting of small flags hung on lampposts. Most stores put up signs saying "Closed in respect to Dwight Eisenhower." Such restraint, as TIME'S Chicago Bureau Chief Champ Clark noted, "does not mean that they were not proud of him or that they did not admire him tremendously. They did, both as the famous home-town boy and as a reflection of their own down-to-earth values. When Ike died, they reacted in their own way."

In good measure, the ceremonies were as much the Army's as Abilene's, and they flashed with brass and braid. About 2,000 troops descended on the town of 7,300, a majority of them to furnish the stringent security that has become routine in recent years.

At midmorning on a sparkling April day, the burial procession, including cars carrying President Nixon and former President Johnson, set out from the station. It passed along Buckeye Avenue and stopped at the Eisenhower Center, a complex of buildings that includes the Eisenhower Library and the museum, the home where Ike grew up, and the Place of Meditation, a nondenominational chapel where he chose to be buried. After the rites, the flag that had covered the casket was care fully folded and handed to the general's wife of 52 years with the traditional military words: "This flag is presented to you on behalf of a grateful nation as a token of appreciation for the honorable and faithful service rendered by your loved one."

Right from Wrong. Looking understandably strained after her ten-month vigil at the Army Medical Center and the seemingly endless ordeal of the funeral, Mrs. Eisenhower, 72, nevertheless managed to retain her composure. She gave way to tears only occasionally. About two hours after the interment, when the last of the official visitors had departed, she returned unobtrusively to the small chapel. There she placed yellow gladioli on her husband's crypt and yellow chrysanthemums on the nearby tomb of her first born son, Doud Dwight, who died at the age of three in 1920.

General Eisenhower himself had written the words that will be placed on tablets above his grave: "Give us," he said in a prayer preceding his first inaugural address in 1953, "the power to discern clearly right from wrong, and allow all our words and actions to be governed thereby, and by the laws of this land. Especially we pray that our concern shall be for all the people regardless of station, race or calling. May cooperation be permitted, and be the mutual aim of those who, under the concepts of our Constitution, hold to differing political faiths, so that all may work for the good of our beloved country and Thy glory." Dwight Eisenhower sought throughout his presidency to live by those words. In death, he endures as one who personified his country's virtues and who upheld these virtues to the end.

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