Colorado Springs is the most populous city in El Paso County, Colorado, and its county seat with a population of 478,961, a 15% increase since 2010, the 40th-most-populous city in the USA, about 70 miles south of Denver. Colorado Springs is the largest city north of Mexico above 6,000 feet, with the greatest total area of any municipality in Colorado, 195 square miles. The current city area was designated part of the 1854 Kansas Territory that served as the capital of the Colorado Territory from November 5, 1861, until August 14, 1862, when the capital was moved to Golden, before finally moving to Denver in 1867. In the 1870s, Colorado Springs was locally referred to as “Little London” because of the many immigrants from London. The city’s military presence began during World War II, when the USA Army Air Forces leased land adjacent to the municipal airfield, naming it Peterson Field in December, 1942. In November, 1950, Ent Air Force Base was selected as the Cold War headquarters for the Air Defense Command, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). In 1977 most of the former Ent AFB became a USA Olympic training center and USA Olympic Committee headquarters. Colorado Springs, dubbed “Olympic City USA,” is home to the USA Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the Anti-Doping Agency. The Libertarian Party was founded within this city in the 1970s. However, Colorado Springs is one of the most active lightning strike areas in the USA. The latest census indicates that Colorado Springs has about 62% white, 5% black, and 18% Hispanic. Colorado Springs’s economy is driven primarily by the military, the high-tech industry, and tourism, in that order. The military and defense contractors supply more than 40% of the Pikes Peak region’s economy. The USA Air Force Academy was established after World War II, on land donated by the City of Colorado Springs. In 2017, Colorado had the third-most craft breweries at 348. St. Mary’s Cathedral is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs. At one time, Colorado Springs was the national headquarters for 81 different religious organizations, earning the city the tongue-in-cheek nickname “the Evangelical Vatican.” Have you ever been to Colorado Springs, Colorado?
The Art C. Klein Construction Company in Colorado Springs
That evening in June, 1986, we spent with Margaret’s cousin and his family, Art Klein, who was not just a first cousin to Margaret, but her neighbor back in Dell Rapids, South Dakota, as they grew up together. They had a lot to share about the good old days back in SD. His wife was also from Dell Rapids, and they had all gone to the same grade school and high school. Art Klein ran a very successful construction business in Colorado Springs. He was a season ticket holder to the Denver Broncos and had gone on an African Safari. I looked up his website and I found this article about the celebration of their fifty-year-old construction company in 2022.
“This year, Art C. Klein Construction celebrates 50 years in the construction industry; building schools, car dealerships, houses of worship, municipal buildings, and fostering solid relationships up and down the Front Range. From family members involved in the day-to-day operations of the business, including son Kevin Klein who serves as President, to the managers and employees of Art C. Klein Construction’s divisions including Peak Concrete, A Cut Above The Rest, Mountain High Painting, Sun Mountain Design Group; to the partners and vendors that work alongside ACK Construction in both the residential and commercial projects, this family-owned business has left its mark. When it came time for the 50th anniversary celebration, Joan Klein said “I told everyone, my only stipulation is it had to be on August 25th. That was the day we gave notice to our other jobs and made the decision to do this fifty years ago.” The celebration, held at Prime 25 on August 25, 2022, hosted 160 guests including the Klein’s children and grandchildren, three of Art’s 13 siblings and their spouses, and the many friends, partners, and vendors in the construction industry. “Art and I (Joan) are from a farming community. We work hard and we value people. We have always focused on quality. Quality, People, Projects, Relationships. This is what is important. This was a wonderful milestone and a great night to enjoy the people who have been a part of our success.”
In 2025, this company had revenues close to $100 million and just under 100 employees, a very successful business with an A+ rating from the BBB, and a National Finalist for the 2025 Freedom Award. Last year, 2025, Art Klein was back in Dell Rapids, at St. Mary’s for the reunion of the John Klein family, with Margaret and a couple hundred of her other relatives of her grandfather. Do you have a relative who runs a multi-million-dollar business?
Traveling the Royal Gorge Scenic Railroad
That Thursday afternoon on June 12, 1986, we took a ride on the Royal Gorge Scenic Railroad. As they say on their website today,
“The Royal Gorge Route Railroad is not just a train ride, it is your ticket to the most jaw-dropping canyon in North America, with towering granite walls rising over 1,000 feet above you, the wild Arkansas River roaring beside you, and views so close you can almost touch them. No car, bus, or hike gets you this deep into Colorado’s grandest canyon, only the train does. Breathe it all in. This is the real deal, pure Colorado adventure.”
Personally, I do not remember it that well, after the morning ride to Pikes Peak, but I do remember taking the train ride. This Royal Gorge Route Railroad is a heritage railroad based in Cañon City, Colorado, about 45 miles south of Colorado Springs. A 1950s-era train makes daily 2-hour excursion runs from the Santa Fe Depot through the Royal Gorge along a famous section of the former Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. In the late 1870s, miners descended on the upper Arkansas River valley of Colorado in search of carbonate ores rich in lead and silver. Various railroads fought over the right to this route. West of Cañon City, the Arkansas River cuts through the Royal Gorge, so that a high plateau of igneous rocks formed a spectacular steep-walled gorge that is over 1,000 feet deep and 6 miles long. At its narrowest point, sheer walls on both sides plunge into the river, creating a nearly impassable barrier. Passenger train service began in 1880 and continued through 1967. Rio Grande continued freight service through the gorge until 1989, when the company merged with the Southern Pacific Railroad, as the Southern Pacific took control of the gorge line. A highlight of this gorge route was the 1879 hanging bridge located along the north side where the gorge narrows to 30 feet, and the sheer rock walls plunge into the river. Thus, the Royal Gorge Route Railroad operates trains year-round from Cañon City, Colorado, to the western terminus in Parkdale, Colorado, as they go under this Royal Gorge suspension bridge. I know that it was a nice train ride and I have two brochures about it. It is still running today. Have you ever heard of the Royal Gorge Railroad?
Going up Pikes Peak
It took another six hours to travel across the desert like prairie of western Kansas and eastern Colorado, about 430 miles west on I -70, to Colorado Springs, and a Holiday Inn there. The next morning, June 12, 1986, we set out for Pikes Peak, about 12 miles west of Colorado Springs, about an hour away. Although there was the Manitou and Pike’s Peak Railway, the world’s highest cog railroad, we decided to drive up there. We road to the summit via the Pikes Peak Highway, a 19-mile road that starts a few miles up Ute Pass at Cascade, with a series of switchbacks. There was a toll fee, but I do not remember how much it was. I have fourteen postcards of this trail road up to the top of the peak. It was a wonderful clear day so that Margaret took over twelve pictures, many with snow in them in the middle of June. She had a great picture of me and Joy standing in front of the sign for the summit of Pike’s Peak, the highest summit of the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in North America. This prominent 14,110-foot peak in Pike National Forest, was named in honor of the American explorer Zebulon Pike (1779-1813), even though he was unable to reach the summit. This summit is higher than any point in the USA east of its longitude. The American explorer Zebulon Pike named the top of the mountain the “Highest Peak” in 1806. The name was simplified to “Pikes Peak” by the United States Board on Geographic Names in 1890. Pikes Peak is now one of Colorado’s 54 mountains that are more than 14,000 feet above sea level. Designated a National Historic Landmark, it is composed of a characteristic pink granite called Pikes Peak granite, due to a large amount of potassium. The first ascent of the peak came 14 years after Pike’s discovery, in the summer of 1820. In July 1893, Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929) wrote the song “America the Beautiful,” after having admired the view from the top of Pikes Peak. A plaque commemorating the words to that song was placed at the summit. The Devils Playground was a minor subpeak of Pikes Peak located on the northwest side of the mountain near the Pikes Peak Highway. The Devils Playground was named for the way lightning sometimes dances around the prominence during lightning storms. This Highway is also famous worldwide for the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, a motor race held since 1916. Since the end of 1922, over a hundred years ago, the AdAmAn Club, a mountaineering group, climb the Barr Trail on the east face of Pikes Peak each year on December 30th, stay overnight at Barr Camp, and continue to the top on December 31. Then, at midnight on New Year’s Eve, the AdAmAn members and their guests ignite a fireworks display from the summit. Since 1969, the summit of Pikes Peak has been the site of the USA Army Pikes Peak Research Laboratory, a medical research laboratory for the assessment of the impact of high altitude on human physiological and medical parameters of military interest. This was a nice morning car adventure ride on a beautiful day. I was happy that we were not climbing it on foot. The drive up and down was spectacular, but the road was a dirt road and not paved. In fact, on the way down, the police inspected our car to see that our brakes were working. I got a little afraid when that happened. Have you ever been to the top of Pike’s Peak?
The state of Kansas
Growing up, I did not know much about Kansas, except that Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz was from Kansas. I also knew that Wilt Chamberlain, a Philadelphia guy, played basketball for the U of Kansas Jayhawks from 1956-1958. Kansas is a landlocked state in the Midwestern region of the USA, bordering Nebraska to the north, Missouri to the east, Oklahoma to the south, and Colorado to the west. Kansas was named after the Kansas River, which in turn was named after the Kansas indigenous people. Topeka with 125,475 people is the capital of Kansas, while Wichita the largest city has only 397,532 people. The first settlement of non-indigenous people in Kansas occurred in 1827 at Fort Leavenworth. When it was officially opened to settlement by the USA government in 1854 with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, conflict between abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri broke out over the question of whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. On January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a Free State, the 34th state to join the USA. Thus, neighboring states of Kansas and Missouri have had a long and tumultuous history. The Kansas state anthem is the American classic Home on the Range, written by Kansan Brewster Higley (1823-1911). Passage of the Homestead Act in 1862 brought a further influx of settlers, and the booming cattle trade of the 1870s attracted some of the Wild West’s most iconic figures to western Kansas. “Gunsmoke,” a radio series (1952-1961) and the longest running TV series of the same name (1955-1975), took place in Dodge City, Kansas. Today, nearly 90% of Kansas’s land is devoted to agriculture. Kansas is the geographic center of the contiguous USA. In 1803, most of modern Kansas was acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Southwest Kansas, however, was still a part of Spain, Mexico, and then the Republic of Texas until the conclusion of the Mexican–American War in 1848. The Kansas Territory stretched all the way to the Continental Divide and included the sites of present-day Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. The first non-military settlement of Euro-Americans in Kansas Territory consisted of abolitionists from Massachusetts and other Free-Staters who founded the town of Lawrence and attempted to stop the spread of slavery from neighboring Missouri. Thus, the University of Kansas (1866) is in Lawrence, that today provides fare-free public transit to the city of Lawrence through a partnership with KU. In response to demands of Methodists and other evangelical Protestants, in 1881 Kansas became the first USA state to adopt a constitutional amendment prohibiting all alcoholic beverages, which was repealed in 1948. Kansas suffered severe environmental damage in the 1930s due to the combined effects of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The outbreak of World War II spurred rapid growth in aircraft manufacturing near Wichita that later developed into the aerospace industry. Kansas is also home to three major military installations. Kansas is among the top producer states of wind energy in the USA. Known as rural flight, the last few decades have been marked by a migratory pattern out of the countryside into the cities. In Kansas alone, there are more than 6,000 ghost towns and dwindling communities. Since the 1930s, Kansas has remained one of the most socially conservative states in the nation, being 75% Christian, with Roman Catholics less than 20%. Topeka is cited as the home of Pentecostalism in 1901. Have you ever been to Kansas?
General Eisenhower and D-Day
In December 1943, President Roosevelt decided that Dwight Eisenhower, would be the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. He was charged with planning and carrying out the Allied assault on the coast of Normandy in June 1944 under the code name Operation Overlord, the liberation of Western Europe and the invasion of Germany. The D-Day Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, were costly, but successful. Two months later, the invasion of Southern France took place. Many thought that victory in Europe would come by summer’s end, but the Germans did not capitulate for almost a year. From then until the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945, Eisenhower commanded all Allied forces north of the Alps. This prompted him to make a point of visiting every division involved in the invasion. Eisenhower’s sense of responsibility was underscored by his draft of a statement to be issued if the invasion failed, since he was the only person to blame for failure. Once the coastal assault had succeeded, Eisenhower insisted on retaining personal control over the land battle strategy and was immersed in the command and supply of multiple assaults through France on Germany. Eisenhower worked tirelessly to address the demands of the rival commanders to optimize Allied forces, often by giving them tactical latitude. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a substantial military deception to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings. The Allies originally planned to launch the invasion on May 1, 1944. Shoulder patches were designed for units of a fictitious First USA Army Group under George Patton. They wanted to give the Germans the impression that most of the Allied troops were stationed in England until July 6, for an attack at Calais. The real invasion began shortly after midnight on the morning of June 6, 1944, with extensive aerial and naval bombardment as well as an airborne assault. The Normandy coast was divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. The men landed under heavy fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches. The shore was mined and covered with obstacles such as wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed wire, making the work of the beach-clearing teams difficult and dangerous. The Allies were able to establish beachheads at each of the five landing sites on the first day. German casualties on D-Day have been estimated at 4,000 to 9,000 men. Allied casualties were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead. Many of the German radar stations on the French coast were destroyed in preparation for the landings. On the night before the invasion, a small group of Special Air Service operators deployed dummy paratroopers over Le Havre. The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, with nearly 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day, with 875,000 men disembarking by the end of June. The Allies achieved and maintained air supremacy, which meant that the Germans were unable to make observations of the preparations underway in Britain and were unable to interfere via bomber attacks. The official British history gives an estimated figure of 156,115 men landed on D-Day. Nearly twenty movies have been made about D-Day, including the latest in 1998, Saving Private Ryan. What do you know about D-Day?
President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969)
Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower was the 34th president of the USA, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army. Eisenhower planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of World War II, Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943, and the invasion of Normandy in 1944, D-Day. Eisenhower graduated from West Point in 1915 and later married Mamie Doud, with whom he had two sons. During World War I, he was denied a request to serve in Europe and instead commanded a unit that trained tank crews. Between the wars he served in staff positions in the USA and the Philippines, reaching the rank of brigadier general shortly before the entry of the USA into World War II in 1941. After further promotions, Eisenhower oversaw the Allied invasions of North Africa and Sicily before supervising the invasions of France and Germany in D-Day. After the war ended in Europe, he served as military governor of the American-occupied zone of Germany, Army Chief of Staff, President of Columbia University, and as the first supreme commander of NATO. In 1952, Eisenhower entered the presidential race as a Republican to block the isolationist foreign policies of Senator Robert A. Taft, who opposed NATO. Eisenhower won that year’s election and the 1956 election in landslides, both times defeating Adlai Stevenson II, using black and white TV ads that sang “I like Ike.” Eisenhower’s main goals in office were to contain the spread of communism and reduce federal deficits. His administration provided aid to help the French fight Vietnamese Communists in the First Indochina War. After the French left, he gave strong financial support to the new state of South Vietnam. He supported regime-changing military coups in Iran and Guatemala orchestrated by his own administration. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, he condemned the Israeli, British, and French invasion of Egypt, and he forced them to withdraw. He also condemned the Soviet invasion during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, but took no action. He deployed 15,000 soldiers during the 1958 Lebanon crisis. Eisenhower approved the Bay of Pigs Invasion, which was left to John F. Kennedy to carry out. On the domestic front, Eisenhower governed as a moderate conservative who continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security. He opposed Joseph McCarthy and contributed to the end of McCarthyism. He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent Army troops to enforce federal court orders which integrated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. His administration undertook the development and construction of the Interstate Highway System, which remains the largest construction of roadways in American history. In 1957, following the Soviet launch of Sputnik, Eisenhower led the American response which included the creation of NASA and the establishment of a stronger, science-based education via the National Defense Education Act. His two terms saw unprecedented economic prosperity except for a minor recession in 1958. In his farewell address, he expressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending, particularly deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers, which he dubbed “the military–industrial complex.” Historical evaluations of his presidency place him among the upper tier of USA presidents. What do you remember about Ike?
The President Dwight Eisenhower Library
Abilene became home to Dwight D. Eisenhower when his family moved to Abilene from Denison, Texas in 1892. Eisenhower attended elementary school through high school in Abilene, graduating in 1909, before his appointment to West Point in 1911. Thus, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum is the burial site of President Eisenhower, his wife, Mamie, and their first-born son Doud Dwight. Abilene has a Museum and the Boyhood Home of Dwight David Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States from 1953–1961, during my teenage years. The Eisenhower Presidential complex is the only one whose creation preceded the close of his presidency. While this is obviously the case with his boyhood home, construction of the library itself began in 1958. The museum portion began before he even took office, coinciding with the then-General’s announcement of his presidential candidacy in June 1952. As World War II came to an end, local admirers of the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe, such as Charles L. Brainard, decided to honor Eisenhower with a museum. In 1945, a non-profit foundation in his name was created to purchase his boyhood home and build the museum on the same property to house artifacts from veterans, and the various honors of Eisenhower himself. At that time, the General’s mother Ida was still alive and refused to sell the property. When she died in 1946, another purchase attempt was made. They ultimately donated the house to the Foundation, so that the entire site, in south Abilene, later became the Eisenhower Presidential Center. The Eisenhower home opened to the public as a museum on June 22, 1947. The cornerstone of an Eisenhower/World War II Museum was laid in June 1952 by the General himself, just before he accepted the draft and formally announced his candidacy for President. This museum was completed in 1954, and the President was in attendance when it was formally opened on November 11 of that year. He was impressed by the results, and told the leadership of the foundation that if they could raise the money to build a facility, he would donate his papers and other materials to it. Again, President Eisenhower was present when ground was broken on October 13, 1959. The project took three years to complete, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson joined the retired President Eisenhower at the dedication on May 1, 1962. Operation of the site was turned over to the NARA in 1966, when it became the fourth library in the system. This campus has five buildings, the Library, the Museum, the Visitors Center, his Boyhood Home, and a chapel with his final resting place. I have a photo of Margaret and I in front of the General Eisenhower statue there. I have a couple of brochures about IKE and about twelve postcards, four from outside the various places, and eight from inside the museum and the chapel. Did you like Ike?
Abilene, Kansas
After our busy day in Kansas City and Independence, we took it easy on our trip to Abilene, Kansas, the next day, June 11, 1986, as it was only 145 miles away, about a two-hour drive on I-70, as we passed Topeka, Kansas on the way. Abilene is the county seat of Dickinson County, Kansas, on the north side of the Smoky Hill River in the Flint Hills region of the Great Plains, 27 miles east of Salina, Kansas, 94 miles north of Wichita, and 139 miles west of Kansas City. As of the 2020 census, the population of this city was only 6,460, but it was the home town of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Greyhound Hall of Fame. In 1854, the Kansas Territory was organized. In 1857, Dickinson County was founded and Abilene began as a stage coach stop. In 1860, it was named Abilene, meaning “grassy plains.” In 1867, the Kansas Pacific Railway, the Union Pacific, pushed westward through Abilene. In the same year, Joseph G. McCoy purchased 250 acres of land northeast of Abilene, where he built a hotel, the Drover’s Cottage. He also had a stockyard equipped for 2,000 head of cattle, and a stable for their horses. The Kansas Pacific put in a spur line at Abilene that enabled the cattle cars to be loaded and sent on to their destinations. The first twenty carloads left September 5, 1867, heading for Chicago. Thus, Abilene grew quickly and became the first “cow town” of the west. McCoy encouraged Texas cattlemen to drive their herds to his stockyards. From 1867 to 1871, the Chisholm Trail ended in Abilene, bringing in many travelers. Thus, Abilene, Kansas, became one of the wildest towns in the west. The stockyards shipped 35,000 head in 1867 and became the largest stockyards west of Kansas City, Kansas. In 1871, more than 5,000 cowboys herded from 600,000 to 700,000 cows to Abilene and other Kansas railheads. As railroads were built further south, the end of the Chisholm Trail was slowly moved south toward Caldwell, near the Oklahoma border, while Kansas homesteaders concerned with cattle ruining their farm crops moved the trail further west. Town marshal Tom Smith was replaced as marshal by Wild Bill Hickok (1837-1876) in April 1871. Hickok’s time in the job was short, since he lost his job two months later. In 1887, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway built a branch line through Abilene to Superior, Nebraska. In 1996, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway merged with Burlington Northern Railroad and renamed it the current BNSF Railway. Abilene remained a cattle yard town, with the rail system also hauling grain and other crops. Thus, after the Civil War, in the late nineteenth century, Abilene was a cow town with a lot of cowboys. Cowboy-era Abilene is the fictional setting for the Randolph Scott 1946 film Abilene Town, which in turn became the inspiration behind the 1963 hit song “Abilene” recorded by George Hamilton IV. The much larger city of Abilene, Texas, takes its name from Abilene, Kansas. I have a couple of brochures about the Old Abilene Town. Have you ever been to Abilene, Kansas?
Truman’s War in Korea (1950-1953)
The Korean War was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea, supported by China and the Soviet Union, and South Korea, supported by the United Nations Command led by the USA. This conflict was one of the first major proxy wars of the twentieth century Cold War. Fighting ended in 1953 with an armistice but no peace treaty, leading to the ongoing cold war Korean conflict that still exists until today. Korea had been a Japanese colony for 35 years, but was divided by the Soviet Union and the United States into two occupation zones at the 38th parallel after WWII. On June 25,1950, the North Korean People’s Army equipped and trained by the Soviets, launched an invasion into the south. In the absence of the Soviet Union’s representative, the UN Security Council member states voted to repel the invasion. The UN forces comprised 21 countries, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. However, by early August, the Republic of Korea Army and its allies were nearly defeated. On September 15, UN forces landed at Inchon near Seoul and re-captured it. Then they invaded North Korea in October, capturing Pyongyang and advancing towards the Yalu River, the border with China, under General Douglas MacArther. On October 19, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army crossed the Yalu and entered the war on the side of the North. Communist forces captured Seoul again in January 1951 before losing it to a UN counter-offensive two months later. After an abortive Chinese spring offensive, UN forces retook territory roughly up to the 38th parallel. Armistice negotiations began in July 1951, but dragged on as the fighting became a war of attrition and the North suffered heavy damage from USA bombing. Combat ended on July 25, 1953 with the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement, which allowed for the exchange of prisoners and created a two-and-a-half-mile Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the frontline, with a Joint Security Area at Panmunjom. In the USA, the war was initially described by President Harry S. Truman as a “police action,” since the USA never formally declared war, because the war operations were conducted under the auspices of the United Nations. Thus, this war has been referred to as “The Forgotten War” or “The Unknown War,” because of the lack of public attention it received, relative to World War II and the Vietnam War. However, this conflict caused more than one million military deaths and an estimated two to three million civilian deaths. No peace treaty has ever been signed, making this a frozen conflict. In August 1950, President Truman obtained the consent of Congress to appropriate $12 billion for military action. General MacArthur believed it was necessary to extend the war into China to destroy depots supplying the North Korean effort. President Truman disagreed. They met on October 15, 1950, on Wake Island. By April 15, 1951, President Truman relieved General MacArthur as supreme commander in Korea, and put General Matthew Ridgway in charge. MacArthur came back to the USA and gave his “Old soldiers never die they just fade away” speech. General Mark W. Clark replaced General Ridgway as commander of the United Nations Command on May 12. 1952. When Eisenhower succeeded Truman in early 1953, he wanted to end the war. As a result of this war, North Korea had been virtually destroyed as an industrial society, while South Korea became a major trading partner for the USA, so that many Koreans came to the USA. What do you know about the Korean War?
Gene Finnegan Remembers Living Eighty Wonderful Years 