Can you imagine a current-day Republican expressing sentiments like these?

[friendly_iconoclast]

Found this on the Conelrad blog (an excellent compendium of Cold War information).
Some background: After leaving office, Dwight Eisenhower moved to Indian Wells, California and joined
the Eldorado Country Club. He got a letter from a future neighbor, and after reading said letter Eisenhower wrote a friend for advice.

I found what he said in that letter to be completely antithetical to what the GOP has stood for recently:

http://conelrad.blogspot.com/2013/02/caddyshack-eisenhowers-fallout-shelter_19.html

CADDYSHACK: EISENHOWER’S FALLOUT SHELTER DILEMMA

It was in late September of 1961 that President Eisenhower received the aforementioned letter from his future neighbor, Mary Florsheim Jones, proposing her idea of a community shelter for the new residents of Eldorado. Mrs. Jones was the wife of celebrity Allan Jones (father of Love Boat crooner, Jack Jones) and an heiress to the Chicago footwear fortune. Mr. Jones, a singer and actor, had performed as part of Eisenhower’s inaugural festivities which might be why the former president was giving the letter his attention.[4]

My dear General Eisenhower:

I am taking the liberty of writing to you to ask you to help my husband and I to start a group of fellow Americans joining together to build a Bomb Shelter at Eldorado Country Club. I know you are building there this summer and so are we. Our home is on the second green and we had originally thought we would build a shelter for ourselves. This seems selfish and I thought perhaps we could ban [sic] together and ask for a piece of land and make this a community project that might also set a good example.

A letter from you endorsing this idea if you think it a good plan is all we would need to start the idea into a reality.

My husband asked me to remember him to you; he sang at both your inaugurations.

Thank you for your consideration of our idea.

Very Sincerely yours,

Mrs. Allan Jones.

September 19, 1961

President Eisenhower’s letter to Gosden is fascinating because it reveals his own conflicted attitudes about survival as well as his concern for the service workers at the country club – many of whom may have been black Democrats. The note begins with some friendly pleasantries before moving on to the former president’s community shelter quandary:

... I enclose a letter from Mrs. Allan Jones, who proposes that all of us at Eldorado join together to build a bomb shelter, apparently on the theory that this would be a good example for others as well as a possible refuge for those of us who might be living there during a catastrophe. So far as I am personally concerned, I am not sure whether I would really want to be living in this country of ours should [we] ever be subjected to a nuclear bath. But even if I were persuaded that the building of a shelter would be good, I would most certainly insist that it would have to be ample to take care of all of the caddies, the workmen on the golf course, together with everybody that works in the clubhouse, including waitresses, maids, janitors and all the rest. Certainly, I do not want to offend the lady, but I wonder whether you could give me your opinion of how to answer her.

Eisenhower to Freeman Gosden RE: Country Club Fallout Shelter by Bill Geerhart

[JVS]

1. "all ban together" OMG an error in a letter to the president and made public for the world to see.

I can only imagine the shame!

[MotherPetrie]

2. No