Homecoming

Cold wind and drumming rain beat the golden leaves off oak trees, and the great cliffs of the Hudson were draped in fog, but inside the dining room of West Point's Thayer Hotel the President of the U.S. talked long and gaily between bites of roast beef. His wife, happy too, leaned over and planted a light kiss on Dwight Eisenhower's right cheek for no special reason at all. Ike, like thousands of other old grads this week, was making that American pilgrimage, a homecoming to his alma mater. The occasion: an informal reunion of the class of 1915.*

His first afternoon at the Point, with his grey hat pulled low against a chill drizzle, Ike plodded up and down the sidelines of Michie Stadium, watching the Army plebe football team play Colgate freshmen. "I don't like that. I don't like that at all. Let's put the cork in the bottle," he exclaimed as a Colgate back cracked through for yardage. The President, who once coached the plebe team, grinned broadly when Army hung onto a 12-7 lead until the final whistle. Next morning he fidgeted nervously outside the hotel waiting for a tardy officer, so eager was he to do a tour of the Point. He sat listening intently through a class lecture on military history (subject: Was Lee justified in his campaign at Antietam?), took the review of the parading corps of cadets in their tar-bucket hats and grey uniforms.

That afternoon Ike and Mamie filed into Michie Stadium, loudly sang the Army fight song and settled back to watch the cadet varsity kick off to Colgate. The game was six minutes old when the United Press slipped Ike a piece of copy on the ouster of his old wartime colleague Marshal Zhukov from the Presidium and the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Ike sent thanks to the reporter, settled back to watch Army win. Reporters had not seen Ike so cheerful and relaxed in a long time. An old Army wife explained it easily: "He's back with his own people."

* The "class the stars fell on," it produced 58 general officers from 164 graduates, including Omar Bradley (kept away from homecoming by a case of flu), James Van Fleet and George Stratemeyer.

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