A Man I Needed to Meet at Camp Randall, by David J. Marcou

by David J. Marcou in History, October 28, 2009

When I worked as a student-manager for the UW-Madison Football Team ca. 1969-70, I met a man after practice one day who has continued to play a role in my informal education. Though his name was Eisenhower, I did not immediately associate him with the President by that name, but maybe I should have. He’s continued to assist me with my work, though he died in 1985.

I thought him a nice man, but didn’t think much more of meeting him for the next 30 years or so. Around 2000, I thought more about this Milton, and wrote a story about my meeting him (we’d actually spoken that day for at least half-and-hour), sending it to ‘American Heritage’, because that magazine had a guest column space then, that had to do with bumping up against history. That column-article by me was apparently not published there.

However, Milton Eisenhower’s WWII government service came into play recently (in summer 2009), when I was working on a long article about the great photographer Dorothea Lange, which has since been published, titled: ‘Photographic Equality: Dorothea Lange, Her Migrant Mother, and the Nisei Internees’. Apparently, Mr. Eisenhower was her boss for a short time during the spring of 1942, when he directed the War Relocation Authority, and Ms. Lange photographed Nisei internees.

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Milton Eisenhower was reluctant to head that office, because he was in charge of putting Japanese-Americans into concentration camps, when he’d been led to believe earlier that they would be sent to more freely settle homestead farms in the interior. But interior-states’ governors objected to the latter plan, and Milton directed the penning up of the Nisei instead. Although he tried to make the internments as liberal as possible, he felt frustrated, and resigned after only a few months’ in charge, stating his regrets (really, apologies to the Nisei), in a letter to a former boss, before he resigned.

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To make a long story short, during the Red purge of the 1950s, Milton Eisenhower was accused of being a communist, which might have embarrassed most other presidents he might have been the brother to, but not Ike; President Eisenhower knew his brother well. Milton continued his work, and today a large center at each of the universities he was president of, is named in his honor.

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In fact, in retrospect, it was an honor for me to have met Milton Eisenhower, who died in 1985. His grand-niece, Mary J. Eisenhower, Dwight’s granddaughter, would write the Introduction to an anthology I directed/edited in 2006, ‘Spirit of the World.’ I am grateful to all the Eisenhowers for what they’ve done for this nation and world, and for me and my family, too. I’m also grateful for the formal and informal educations my son and I have been receiving over the years, because life educates us all, in many ways.

David J. Marcou is a father, writer, photographer, and editor in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He’s graduated from three Midwestern universities, UW-Madison, UI-Iowa City, and UM-Columbia. His son, Matthew, attended UM-Minneapolis for three years, and is now serving in the US Army. Their works are in leading libraries and museums around the world, including the Smithsonian’s.