細節
EISENHOWER, Dwight D. Typed letter signed ("Ike"), to Lewis Strauss (1896-1974), Palm Desert, California, 26 January 1965. 1 page, 4to, personal stationery, with pencil annotations by Strauss at bottom.
IKE'S "SAD JOURNEY TO LONDON" FOR WINSTON CHURCHILL'S FUNERAL
"I am sending these birthday felicitations to you a little early this year," he tells his friend and former Atomic Energy Commissioner, "because I leave in a few hours for the sad journey to London. Mamie and I hope that your 69th year will be filled with only good things, including your speedy return to good health and vigor." Strauss's birthday fell on 31 January, but Eisenhower would be in London on the 30th for the funeral of his fellow warrior, Winston Churchill. After his stroke on 10 January, the government immediately started planning a state funeral, clumsily code named Operation Hope-Not (Churchill would have named it better). He died on the morning of 24 January, aged 90.
Fifteen years before, on his 75th birthday, Churchill quipped, "I am ready to meet my Maker, whether my Maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter." The British people, however, would not part with him without a week-long outpouring of respect and affection. He lay in state three days at Westminster Hall as over three-hundred thousand mourners filed past. After the funeral service at St. Paul's, his coffin was borne down the Thames to Waterloo Station, where a special train carried him to the family grave near Blenham. Eisenhower--the most famous of Churchill's living wartime contemporaries--played an especially important role in the ceremony.
IKE'S "SAD JOURNEY TO LONDON" FOR WINSTON CHURCHILL'S FUNERAL
"I am sending these birthday felicitations to you a little early this year," he tells his friend and former Atomic Energy Commissioner, "because I leave in a few hours for the sad journey to London. Mamie and I hope that your 69th year will be filled with only good things, including your speedy return to good health and vigor." Strauss's birthday fell on 31 January, but Eisenhower would be in London on the 30th for the funeral of his fellow warrior, Winston Churchill. After his stroke on 10 January, the government immediately started planning a state funeral, clumsily code named Operation Hope-Not (Churchill would have named it better). He died on the morning of 24 January, aged 90.
Fifteen years before, on his 75th birthday, Churchill quipped, "I am ready to meet my Maker, whether my Maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter." The British people, however, would not part with him without a week-long outpouring of respect and affection. He lay in state three days at Westminster Hall as over three-hundred thousand mourners filed past. After the funeral service at St. Paul's, his coffin was borne down the Thames to Waterloo Station, where a special train carried him to the family grave near Blenham. Eisenhower--the most famous of Churchill's living wartime contemporaries--played an especially important role in the ceremony.