As Michael says the public myth is of how Ike and his family were a well integrated typical example of small town Kansas, football and all that. Recent research really shows they were probably often seen as outsiders and religious kooks.
Both his parents came late to the, by then, well established small town of Abilene. Ike's mom came there from Virginia to go to the college of a Mennonite sect. His dad moved from Pennsylvania. At a time when religion was such a defining factor in small time life they converted to Jehovah's Witnesses. Ike's mom was so fervent she became the preacher for the local little sect that met weekly in the family home.
At the time the Watchtower movement was even further outside the mainstream than today - and by a lot (upon his death the founder's doctrines were replaced by a new set written by the next leader). The end of the world had a firm deadline: 1914 (the year Eisenhower went to West Point) and the followers were fervently preparing for the imminent Armageddon. There were complicated predictions and religious truths that had been worked out from the dimensions and "secret tunnels" of the Giza pyramid in Egypt and a giant ten foot by six foot illustration of the pyramid and its secret truths was plastered in the family living room.
In that more conformist era, this was not Ozie and Harriet. As Ike's political prospects rose he, his brothers, and handlers, intervened directly with biographers and journalists to hide the offbeat background. The qualified pacifism of his parents' religion must have been an additional awkwardness during the '40s and '50s. Only recent research has made this dimension more public. (See for example "Why Eisenhower hid his Jehovah Witness Background by Prof. Bergman http://www.premier1.net/~raines/eisenhower.html )
Paul
Michael Pollak, quoting me, writes:
>Paul writes:
>
>>I have never heard of Edmund Eisenhower
>
>That was me who wrote that, Michael P, not Michael H. And I'm sorry, I
>meant Edgar. And you're of course right that Milton was in Agriculture
>and PR, not education.
>
>Just for the rest of the footnotes, Ida his mother was originally a
>Mennonite from Pennsylvania. She met and married his father, David
>Eisenhower, in Kansas, when both lived at a River Brethren settlement.
>David Sr's retail store collapsed during a bad depression, and he went to
>Texas for work, during which Ike was born, after which they moved back to
>Kansas. But the family was as "originally" from Kansas as anyone can
>claim to be, Ike spent his entire childhood in Abilene, Kansas from the
>age of 1 on and was always identified with it. And in terms of his
>relation to small town life, football and his father, I think his
>childhood was as perfect an illustration of their small town ideals and
>worldview as you can get.