Dwight Eisenhower – Historical Lense

They started to inoculate the first group of people with the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine on December 14th, and the Moderna vaccine is on its way. We really are standing right at the end of the tunnel–and it’s taken all of TEN MONTHS to do it! I’m old enough to remember the Polio epidemic of the 1950s and the breakthrough vaccine. How very different it is today, both in the development of the vaccine and its distribution.

People have known about polio for years, but it became increasingly rampant in the beginning of the 20th century. Everyone was shocked when Franklin Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio in 1921. You’ll rarely see pictures of him standing–most of the time he’s sitting at a desk or in a car. On those rare photos where he is standing, he’s actually wearing very heavy metal braces and holding someone’s arm.

Franklin Roosevelt holding his dog Fala, with a young girl handing him a dime

In 1938 Roosevelt established the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to raise money for research and assistance for children with polio. It was the entertainer, Eddie Cantor, who came up with the name The March of Dimes. Cantor suggested that people send dimes to the President for his birthday on January 30. FDR liked the idea, but was extremely surprised that $85,000 in dimes (nickels and quarters too) arrived at the White House for his birthday. Between 1938 and 1955, when Dr. Jonas Salk announced that his vaccine worked, the March of Dimes received $233 million dollars to find a cure.

The number of polio cases grew rapidly in the 20th century, and it almost always affected children. In 1952, 57,000 children were infected, 21,000 were paralyzed, and 3,145 died from it. It was always worse in the spring and summer, and jittery parents refused to allow their kids to play in pools, or going to theaters. They were terrified that their children might spend the rest of the lives in “iron lungs” which were the only way some of them could breath. I lived about a mile away from a hospital called the Children’s Country Home (now the Children’s Specialized Hospital) in Mountainside, where children received important physical therapy. There were also too many children who needed the assistance of an iron lung.

One of the best day for millions of parents was April 12, 1955, when President Dwight Eisenhower and Jonas Salk stood in the White House Rose Garden and announced the vaccine. A father and grandfather himself, Ike told Salk, “I have no words to thank you. I am very, very happy.” High praise from the General who had commanded the European Theater during World War II.

Speaking to Edward R. Murrow, Salk told him that the doctors and researchers had done their jobs. Now the government had to figure out how to get it to those who needed it. Many people thought that the government had been quietly stockpiling a huge number of doses of the vaccine to immediately give to all children. Not so. On April 13, Oveta Culp Hobby, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services) told Congress that states and individuals should be in charge, not the federal government. The President was not happy. Having spent his life in the Army, he understood the importance of logistics. He told her to put together a sensible plan ASAP, because summer was coming and polio was always worse in the summer. When she didn’t move fast enough, he called a Cabinet meeting and again told her to get it done. She finally developed a plan to assist impoverished children, but insisted that the government should not be involved. By July 1955, 4 million children had been vaccinated, and Hoppy had resigned.

Eisenhower was not satisfied. He was getting information that parents were so concerned that black markets for the polio vaccine had been popping up in some areas. In 1955, the shot cost $2.00 on the open market, yet they were going for up to $20.00 in the black market. (Remember, the median income in 1955 was $3,400.) The President signed the Polio Vaccine Assistant Act of 1955 under which $30 million dollars would fund the vaccine. By the following summer, 30 million children (including myself) had been vaccinated.

Fast forward 65 years. The world is dealing with a pandemic not seen for 100 years. How to develop a vaccine? Once you have a vaccine, how do you distribute it? Should it be done the was it was during the Polio epidemic? Under that scenario it would have taken four to five years to develop a vaccine, and only then would anyone think about how it should be distributed. Yet today, the first of at least four vaccines has rolled out in barely 10 months. People have complained that we had a slow start. Well, we also had a slow start at the beginning of World War II. Yet once they got things up and running they were finishing roughly three Liberty ships every two days, and built 300,000 planes between 1941 and 1945. How did they do it? A public-private partnership and American logistics. Sound familiar?? For one minute, just one, let’s act like adults and agree that Operation Warp Speed did the job–and did it faster and better than anyone expected. Whether you like or hate the current President, be honest and give the devil his due. He got something done that no one believed would be possible. It wouldn’t hurt to say thank you for that.

I love to see my family any time. Except in the afternoon of the second Saturday in December. The Army-Navy Game. I watch one, and only one sports event every year, and that’s the one. My father was a member of the class of 1944 (which graduated in June 1943) of the Naval Academy. I’ve watched the game since I was four, and have been able to attend it several times. Until I went to school, I thought the last words of our national anthem were “Beat Army!” As a military historian I’ve spent a lot of time with members of both services. (One of my closest friends graduated from West Point–I don’t hold that against him.) The game is so much more that a football game. It’s a brotherhood of very young people who have kept this country safe through some of the best and the darkest of times.

The Army-Navy game started in 1890 when Army Cadet Dennis Mahan Michie accepted a challenge from members of the Naval Academy. They played the first game on The Plain at West Point on November 29th that year. (The stadium at West Point is known as Michie Stadium). They alternated the game at Annapolis and West Point until 1893. That year, the Navy doctor told Midshipman Reeve that if he took another hit to his head it would cause brain damage, and quite possibly death. Reeve wasn’t about to stop playing, so he found a local shoemaker and had him put together a leather helmet–the first American football helmet. (Reeves survived and eventually became Admiral Joseph M. Reeves.)

A few days after the 1893 game, an Admiral and General met at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, D.C. Their discussion of the game turned into an argument, the argument turned to punches, and the punches only stopped when friends pried the two men apart after hearing the two of them loudly demanding a duel. A few days later this was brought up in a cabinet meeting and President Grover Cleveland told the Secretary of the Navy Hilary A. Herbert and Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont to stop the games. That lasted until 1897 when Assistant Secretary of the Navy Teddy Roosevelt wrote to both President William McKinley and Secretary of War Russell Alger suggesting that within proper parameters it would be good for the young man to resume the game. McKinley and Alger agreed.

Cadets in the stands, Midshipmen March On, c. 1924

The game returned in 1899, but now was played in Philadelphia, which is roughly equidistant from both Annapolis and West Point. In 1901, now President Theodore Roosevelt attended the game, being sure to cross the field at half-time. Over the years many other presidents have attended the game, and all have crossed at half-time, but only one actually played in it. In 1912, then Cadet Dwight D. Eisenhower, played in the Army-Navy Game. (Ike graduated in 1915.) The game was not played in 1917 or 1918 because of World War I, but started up again in 1919. In 1926 they played at Soldier’s Field in Chicago which was dedicated to the men who had fought in World War I. More than 100,000 people attended and it ended in a 21-21 tie.

Midshipmen in the stands, Corps of Cadets March On

Since 1930 the game has been broadcast on the radio. Rather than stopping the game during World War II, it was played at Navy’s old Thompson Field in 1942 and at Army’s Michie Stadium in 1943. Only the players, coaches, trainers and staff members attended. However, when the Army team walked onto the field in November 1942, they found that their side had been fill with Midshipman. They had learned all of the Cadets’ cheers and fight songs, and some of the men who were there have told me that the roars for the Cadets were noticeably louder than for their own classmates. The same thing happened in reverse the following year when the Midshipmen went to West Point. They might have been Cadets or Midshipmen, but more than that they were, and are, brothers-in-arms.

At the end of the war, not only were they back playing the Army-Navy Game in Philly, but 1945 was the first time the game was seen on TV. And 1963 was the first time there was an instant replay. Unfortunately it was also just weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There were serious discussions that it should be suspended, but Mrs. Kennedy specifically asked that the game go one. Her husband had attended in 1961 and 1962, and had intended to be there. It was played in his memory.

So here we are in the middle of a pandemic. Back in late August some friends asked me if I thought they would play. Well, they’ve played in terrible weather, during a World War, at the tail end of the Spanish Flu epidemic . . . I thought they’d figure out a way to do it, and they have. Fingers crossed everyone will be well on Saturday, and even if it’s only the players and coaches, the 120th game will be played. It’s more than a game.

To my friends from West Point, I wish you good luck. For myself I can only say, BEAT ARMY!

Historical Lense

Tag: Dwight Eisenhower

You Have To Give The Devil His Due 😈

Army-Navy Game 2020