2023 Parked at Home | #3: Eisenhower National Historic Site
On Thursday, March 16 at 7:00 p.m., I attended the third installment of the 2023 Parked at Home series hosted via Zoom by Blackstone River Valley National Historic Park (BRVNHP). Park rangers Mark Mello of BRVNHP and Joshua Bell at Eisenhower National Historic Site discussed the role of the Blackstone River Valley in military productions from the Civil War to the present, along with the career of five-star general and 34th United States President Dwight “Ike” David Eisenhower.
Mello began the presentation with an overview of the United States presidents, forty-five men serving forty-six terms in office with the obligatory reminder that Grover Cleveland served as 22nd and 24th. He reminded the audience that twenty-one NPS sites preserve birthplaces, homes, and other important monuments to the presidents. The Blackstone River Valley has strong connections to 27th president William Howard Taft, whose family lived in the area and whose ancestor, Lydia Chapin Taft, has been reported as the first woman to legally vote in a colonial American election. Eisenhower visited Worcester, MA at the northernmost point of the Blackstone River Valley at least once in 1952 during an election campaign. During his speech, he asked veterans of World War II, “Who do you suppose hates war more than you?”, referring to his own desire for global peace.
Bell explained that Eisenhower had not originally intended to run for president. He had recently retired from the military and purchased a 189-acre farm in Gettysburg, PA, also home to the famous Gettysburg Battlefield. His career is particularly unexpected when considering his upbringing. Eisenhower was born in Texas and raised in Kansas by River Brethren family, an Anabaptist Christian denomination, similar to Mennonites or progressive Amish. He and his brothers loved history, reenacting Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders from the Spanish-American War. Eisenhower’s parents were pacifist and not pleased when their son went to West Point.
After graduating, he went to Camp Colt for tank training held on the Gettysburg Battlefield, something NPS emphatically does not allow today. Next, Eisenhower joined a convoy to the west coast, a trip that took sixty days and likely encouraged him to start the Interstate Highway System when he was president. He did not see combat in World War I and assumed his military career would soon be over. Nevertheless, he joined the American Battle Monument Commission, writing guidebooks to battles on the Western Front in France and learning to win wars, along with how to manager big personalities. Eisenhower became chief of staff for General Douglas MacArthur, and while the two men greatly respected each other, with MacArthur describing Eisenhower as “the best clerk I ever had”, Eisenhower described MacArthur as giving him “a second degree in theatrics”.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was dragged into World War 2 despite protests from detractors like isolationists and the America First Movement. In 1943, Eisenhower worked with General George C. Marshall, drafting plans to attack the Philippines, which was then a Japanese colony. Eisenhower led troops during a mock battle in Louisiana and performed so successfully that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt hand-picked him to become the supreme commander of the United State Army. Even with this new power, Eisenhower remained in touch with the troops. He talked to paratroopers before D-Day, knowing many of them would not survive combat. When soldiers discovered and liberated the concentration camps of the Holocaust, Eisenhower went with other generals, George Patton and Omar Bradley, to see the tragedy, forcing locals to tour the camp and bury the dead so future generations would not deny the event.
After the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an act that killed thousands of Japanese civilians, the war was over. In total, between 70 and 100 million people died during the war. Cemeteries for American soldiers, each with matching white crosses, can still be found around the world in places such as Manilla, Philippines; Normandy, France; and Tunis, Tunisia.
Mello described the work of civilians laboring in factories during World War II and previous wars. This work began in the 1860s, during the American Civil War and the Industrial Revolution. At this time, factories converted to military equipment manufactures at the beginning of the war, then reverted back to the original product at the end. Several factories in the Blackstone River Valley followed this trend. Founded in 1824, Mansfield & Lamb in Forestdale, RI was a tool manufacturer that created United States Cavalry sabers during the war. Providence Tool Company received a contract to produce 70,000 units of the Springfield rifled muskets, which were established by Springfield Armory and used by Union troops. Corliss Steam Engine Company of Providence, RI created a customized gear to turn the turret in the USS Monitor, an ironclad warship used by the United States Navy. Woonsocket Rubber Company produced waterproof “gummy blankets” worn by Union soldiers.
Later, during World War 2, women took the place of men in factories and adapted new production styles and materials. Women at the United States Rubber Company, which had purchased Woonsocket Rubber Company, manufactured inflatable tanks, jeeps, and other vehicles for the Ghost Army. This elaborate deception during D-Day that led German troops to Calais, France rather than Normandy Beach where the paratroopers landed. Ashton Mill in Lincoln, RI, which stands across the canal from the Captain Wilbur Kelly House Transportation Museum, produced the fiberglass used to build airplanes and naval vessels. The Owens Corning Company, which owned the mill at the time, won the “Army-Navy ‘E’ Award” for excellent production. Whitin Machine Works in Whitinsville, MA subcontracted its foundry to produce Liberty Ship engines, while Draper Corporation in Hopedale, MA switched from producing textile looms to producing 75mm Howitzers for the United States Army.
Bell returned to the virtual floor to continue Eisenhower’s story. At the end of World War 2, in 1946, Eisenhower became Chief of Staff of the Army and worked in the Pentagon. In the same year, many European nations release their international colonies, and the United States drops an H-Bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, a weapon up to a thousand times deadlier than the original pair of bombs dropped on Japan. President Harry S. Truman used the bomb as a warning to the Soviet Union (USSR), a former ally of the United States during the war. By 1950, USSR leader Joseph Stalin backed North Korean leader Kim It-Song in an attack of South Korea, starting the Korean War. Meanwhile, Eisenhower settled into semi-retirement by becoming president of Columbia University and renovating his house at Gettysburg. This did not last, as Truman asked him to become commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which required relocation to France for two years. During that time, the Korean War hit a stalemate at the 38th parallel, also called latitude thirty-eight degrees north, and Eisenhower felt called to become President of the United States.
Eisenhower easily won the election, although he had never voted and joined the Republican party only to strategically block the campaign of Robert Taft, son of William Taft. Throughout his campaign and time in office, Eisenhower emphasized “waging peace” by calling for global disarmament, ending the Korean War, and slashing the Defense Department budget from $525 billion to $400 billion. Politicians and government organizations who supported the military industrial complex, such as Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the CIA, spoke against the cuts in military spending, even generating false data to prove their points. When the USSR launched Sputnik in 1958, the Senate lost its mind and increased military spending despite Eisenhower’s caution that “less spending on defense does not mean a weaker defense” and his success in cooling tensions between the USA and USSR.
Mello wrapped up the presentation by describing continued military production in the modern Blackstone River Valley, although the United States is not currently in the middle of a war declared by Congress. Northwest Woolen Mill in Woonsocket, RI makes berets, while HOPE Global produces bootlaces and parachute cords.
A Q&A session revealed more interesting information about Eisenhower. Bell described Eisenhower’s role in the Cuban Missile Crisis as an advisor to President Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Once again semi-retired, Eisenhower brought USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev to the farm in Gettysburg to talk peace and show off his cows. At this time in his life, Eisenhower experience poor health, as he had smoked four packs of cigarettes a day during the war and kept a stressful lifestyle. He suffered his first heart attack in 1955 and underwent abdominal surgery to relieve Crohn’s disease in 1956. Other facts from his presidency are that he one of the “Fathers of NASA”, signing the legislation for its funding, and he sent the World War 2 veterans of the 101st Airborne or “Screaming Eagles” to Little Rock, AR when the state governor refused to desegregate Little Rock Central High School. Near the end of his life, Eisenhower learned to paint and was a natural artist due to his meticulous and observant nature. He gave paintings away to family and friends, then repainted what he did not like.
Finally, Mello and Bell gave a booklist for anyone interested in learning more about the material in the talk:
- In the Quiet Valley, by Whitin Machine Works about and its activation for the war.
- Ike’s Bluff, by Evan Thomas, about bringing peace to Korea and dealing with global powers.
- The Age of Eisenhower, by William I. Hitchcock.
- Works by biographer Stephen Ambrose.
As always during Parked at Home, the presenters gave information with enthusiasm, with beautiful slides to match. The level of detail and care given to the presentation made the talk accessible to those who knew nothing about the topics while providing great references and resources to experts. I even found an opportunity to write a book, as no one has written about wartime manufacturing in the Blackstone River Valley for about seventy years…
Watch the full talk here: