Many of the visitors making their way to Walter Reed were ministers, including Evangelist Billy Graham, who prayed with Dwight D. Eisenhower. Going Home To Glory describes the moment: “Eisenhower had greeted Graham with a question about heaven and a talk they had had 14 years earlier at Gettysburg. Emotionally, Graham repeated for Eisenhower what he had said to him before, reminded Eisenhower of God’s promise of salvation, and the ways this promise is revealed in scripture.”
On March 28, 1969, and as the men of the family, including grandson David “formed a line abreast at the foot of Granddad’s bed and came to rigid attention,” the great American died at 12:35 p.m. Asking David about this moment, as well as the very title of his book (a title that is “code” to people of faith, who talk about dying and going to Heaven as “going home to glory”), David Eisenhower told me: “Well, you picked up exactly what the title is about. The real trip, he goes to Gettysburg. He goes to Abilene, but the real trip home is the way he deals with the mystery that confronts all of us in life, and that is, “What is to come?” “Why am I here?”
That old saying about old soldiers never dying, but simply fading away, doesn’t seem to capture the essence of what David Eisenhower has written in his memoir about his famous grandfather. What seems to fit much better is something written by the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians: “…from glory to glory.” (II Corinthians 3:18)
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