Ike's Hobbies: How Eisenhower Handled the Strain of Command

Three generations of Eisenhowers, Ike, John and David, putting at Camp David, August 1, 1954. Courtesy of the Dwight David Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Leading at the top of the military and the government brings extreme pressure. Dwight D. Eisenhower accepted that the weight of the job would never go away, and found ways to ease it: hobbies that let him relax and, if only briefly, clear his head of domestic and foreign policy.

Golf

Ike took up golf to relax while a student at the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, where the course was new and cheap; he finished first in his class. He played avidly through his army career, especially in his four years in the Philippines under General MacArthur, 1935–1939, though the war years cut his game short.

As president he played many of the country's top courses:

• Burning Tree Club, Bethesda, Maryland, the nearest to the White House, which he visited often;
• Cherry Hills Country Club, on visits to the Doud home in Denver; he had played there on the day of his first heart attack, in 1955;
• Augusta National in Georgia, a favourite, where the Eisenhowers had a cottage and Ike played nearly 200 times.

The PGA built him a chipping and putting green at the White House and at his Gettysburg farm. In retirement he had more time to improve: the Gettysburg Country Club was close to the farm, and in winter he stayed at a villa on the Eldorado Country Club in Indian Wells, California, playing there and at other Coachella Valley courses.

Bridge

Ike played bridge all his life, competitively and intensely, to win; Mamie, who played to socialise, did not like partnering him. In World War II his naval aide, Commander Harry Butcher, was his bridge partner, and Butcher's skill at the game was one reason Ike chose him. In the White House his secretary, Ann Whitman, could gather skilled friends for an evening of cards at short notice; at the Gettysburg farm they played in his den.

Painting

Ike began painting in 1948, as president of Columbia University. He painted mostly landscapes and portraits, several hundred in all, most of them given to friends. In the White House, a few minutes at the easel were a refuge from the daily strain.

Fishing, hunting and shooting

A young Dwight Eisenhower and his friends camping near the Smoky Hill River in Abilene, Kansas, about 1907. Courtesy of the Dwight David Eisenhower Presidential Library.

As a boy Ike camped, fished and hunted along the Smoky Hill River in Kansas, and these stayed lifelong pleasures. As president he fished for trout in the clear streams at Camp David, shot skeet, and at day's end grilled steaks or his catch for his guests; biographer William Hitchcock described Camp David's pastimes as a middle-class paradise on a presidential scale.

The farm

Many saw Ike as a gentleman or hobby farmer: he did not live off the Gettysburg farm, and could enjoy farm life without its worries. His passion was his Black Angus show cattle, which had the best facilities to win blue ribbons at state and county fairs. His herdsman, Bob Hartley, recalled the president calling him soon after a State of the Union address just to ask after the cows.

All things Western

Cowboy Montie Montana lassoes Ike during the inaugural parade, January 20, 1953. Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Ike probably caught his love of the West as a boy in Abilene, which not long before his birth had a name as a wild, rough Western town. He enjoyed Western TV shows such as Bonanza and Gunsmoke, eagerly watched the newest Western films at Camp David, and filled his shelves at the farm with Western novels. In the war they were his sleeping pills; one member of his staff had the job of finding novels he had not yet read.

Why it worked

Denying stress is never healthy. Eisenhower accepted that the person making the final decisions will always carry it, and chose to manage it, with pleasures that balanced the pressure and made his days more productive.

Sources

• National Park Service, Eisenhower National Historic Site, "Ike's Hobbies." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ikes-hobbies.htm
• Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President, pp. 314–315; William Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower, p. 117.
• Corrected: "Gun Smoke" to Gunsmoke.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.