34. Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower was born October 14, 1890, in a rented house next to the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad in Denison, Texas. Denison was a railroad town that sprang up in the 1870s, and Eisenhower’s father had taken work there cleaning steam engines for a few years. When Eisenhower was less than two years old, the family moved to Abilene, Kansas, where his father worked for a creamery. The future president lived in Abilene and attended the local schools until he enrolled at West Point. Eisenhower and his five brothers grew up in tight financial circumstances, and he worked a variety of odd jobs as a child. At fifteen, he narrowly avoided the amputation of an infected leg. The frame house in which Eisenhower was born is commemorated as the Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site in Denison.
--Andrew B. Leiter
Overcast days can affect the light in different ways. Sometimes the clouds turn the sky into a huge soft box, softening the shadows and making the highlights glow. Then there are days like the one I had to photograph the Eisenhower site: when the clouds produce a drab light that renders everything flat and muddy. I had a difficult time finding pictures around the house and surrounding grounds. It was only when I entered the house when the drab light came to life through the windows.
--Matthew Albritton