By Julie Brennan
For The Express
They share the same birthday (although they were born in different years) and the same, affectionate nickname. In fact, there are many common threads between the late Ralph "Ike" Eisenhauer of Lock Haven and the country's 34th president, the late Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower.
The two Ike's were born on Oct. 14, the local Ike in 1927 in Buffalo, N.Y. His mother, brother and Ike moved to Lock Haven shortly after the 1936 flood, and Ike attended and graduated from Lock Haven High School in 1945. After school, he worked as an apprentice in construction and also had aspirations of being a radio telephone operator.
"He was a good talker he could talk to anyone. He really liked talking to people," says Ike's wife, the former Geraldine "Gerri" Powers, who met Ike at the roller skating rink in Jersey Shore. "My sister introduced us. Ike was a very good skater and, like I said, he was a very good talker, too."
Despite her parents' disapproval, Gerri says she and Ike continued to see each other, sometimes meeting at her sister's home in Lock Haven.
Then in 1950, Ike was drafted into the Army.
"Ike's picture was in the local newspaper with a group of men who were leaving the Clinton County area to be inducted into the Army," remembers Gerri. "They were headed to Harrisburg and were the first contingent of local draftees to report for service since the reactivation of the of the selective service program."
"Ike went to basic training at Fort Dix, then he was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. George Shade (former Lock Haven City Councilman) was at Fort Leonard Wood, too, so his wife Sue and I went down to see them. We took a train to St. Louis."
Gerri returned to Lock Haven, but then moved to Fort Leonard Wood. She and Ike were married in May of 1950 in Stillwater, Okla., by a justice of the peace.
"We had a little place on a hill, but when Ike was sent overseas, I came home," says Gerri.
Ike was sent to Korea, but the details of his wartime service are scant. His military record notes that he served in the Headquarters and Headquarters Company 498th Engineering Aviation Brigade.
"He never wanted me to know about it, and he didn't want to talk about it when he came home," says Gerri. "He knew Morse Code because he wanted to get into radio communications, but he went into the engineering group in the Army because he also liked the building part of things."
While Ike was in Korea, Gerri gave birth to their first child. It would be another eight months before Ike would see his daughter, Carol.
"He sent me a kimono from overseas, and he sent a tiny kimono and little slippers for Carol," says Gerri.
Ike was discharged from the Army on August 31, 1952, having been awarded both a Korean Service Medal from the U.S. military and the United Nations Service Medal for Korea, an international military decoration established by the U.N. The first international award ever created, it recognized the multi-national defense forces which participated in the Korean War.
Back home, Ike, Gerri and baby Carol moved in with Gerri's parents in Stavertown and Ike went back to work with the ironworkers. They moved around a bit, renting a place in Pine Creek and then in Lock Haven, as they continued to grow their family, which today includes seven children.
In addition to Carol Eisenhauer, there are daughters Ruth Cathcart and Penny Norris, all of whom live in Lock Haven. Son James also lives in Lock Haven. Daughter Leona Palski is in Antes Fort, son Michael is in California and son David is in Bellefonte. The family today also includes eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
"I was a mommy's girl, and Ike always took me home to my mom's when I was pregnant," laughs Gerri. "We lived in Washington D. C. in the mid-1950s and Ike had to bring me home every month to see my mother."
After my mother died, we moved to Loganton," remembers Gerri. "Ike took the furnace out of our house and moved it by himself to Loganton. He was so good at all those things. He worked hard and was always very good to people. During a snowstorm, they had closed Interstate 80 and people were stranded. Ike invited some of them to our house for a meal!"
Over the years, Ike worked construction locally. He was part of the steelworkers union, Local 772, out of Clearfield, and had a hand in many important projects in the area.
"He helped build (several of the buildings at) Lock Haven University and Kephart Plaza," says Gerri. "And he worked on several projects at Penn State and helped expand Beaver Stadium in the mid-1970s."
It was after the Beaver Stadium project that Ike had daughter Carol pen a letter to PSU football coach Joe Paterno.
"Dad was ill, but he was a big fan of Penn State football," remembers Carol. "So I wrote a letter for Dad to Coach Paterno telling him that Dad had worked on the stadium and that he wanted his youngest son, David, to meet him. Paterno invited Mom, Dad and David up to State College."
"Joe was very nice," adds Gerri. "He invited us up and got us 50-yard-line seats at a football game. We also had our picture taken with Joe in his office."
Ike developed cancer and died too young, at the age of 53, in 1980. But his memory lives on in his family.
"He was a great dad he was a hero," says son James, who, like his father, served in the Army. James was with the 82nd Airborne Division, serving from 1977 to 1981. He then spent another eight years in the Reserves.
Adds daughter Carol, "He was a great disciplinarian. As kids, we had to stay in the yard, but Dad made sure it was a big enough yard for football games. He could do all kinds of things he was a good writer and good at math, he was good at electronics and fixed things like TV sets. And I remember he could write backwards; you couldn't read it until you held it up to a mirror."
"He taught us a lot of little lessons on life that come back to us today," says Carol. "He always bought us puzzles and brain teasers he wanted us to use our minds."
"Ike was good to the family and he was always good to me," says Gerri of her husband of 30 years. "He brought my cigarettes and coffee up to me in bed. He also taught me how to cook, because, as the youngest of 12 children, I never learned at home!"
While they don't know many details of his time in the Army, Gerri and her family are very proud of Ike's service to his country. They were equally proud to sponsor a Hometown Hero banner with Ike's photo on it, a banner that flies along Lock Haven's levee Riverwalk near Lock Haven University.
"He never liked the name Ralph he went by Ike," says Gerri, noting that her husband did receive birthday cards from the president who shared the same name, even though the spelling was different. "Everybody called him Ike; nobody knew him by Ralph."
And like the "I like Ike" slogan that helped usher fellow Army veteran Dwight D. Eisenhower into the Presidency, it could be said that Lock Haven's Ike Eisenhauer was nearly as popular.
"Ike kept in touch with a lot of his military buddies there were several from the area," says Gerri. "He always had lots of friends. He was a good catholic, a great talker and he was always willing to help."
