<--PREV Doc #558  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #560 Document #559; November 23, 1953 To Warren Anderson Series: EM, WHCF, Official File 125-B ; Category: Personal The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part III: The Space Age Begins; October 1957 to January 1958 Chapter 7: Beef and Budgets   Dear Mr. Anderson: Rarely have I been so touched by any letter as by yours of the twentieth. Mrs. Eisenhower and I lost our first--and then only--son when he was three and a half years old. I am keenly aware of the sense of total loss that must engulf you.1 To provide some answer for you concerning the hazards presented by unfenced canals to the children of our country, I am sending your letter to the Department of the Interior.2 I assume that the canal must be part of some project constructed under the Reclamation Bureau of that Department in response to needs and demands of your region. In any event, an appropriate official either in that Department or any other that may be responsible, will give you an explanation of the existing situation and any other information he believes you might find interesting.3 I know that no words of mine can diminish the pain you feel in the loss of your son, even though I assure you that you have my deep and sincere sympathy. Certainly I hope that through some proper way, steps can be taken to see that this kind of tragedy is not repeated in the future.4 Sincerely 1 On November 20 Anderson had written of the November 16 drowning of his three-year-old son in "an unfenced canal that meanders through our county here in California." "We live just a few yards from it," he wrote, "and it's a danger to our children. I can't fence it nor any of my neighbors because it belongs to our government" (same file as document). According to Anderson, his son was the thirty-third victim of the canal. He appealed to Eisenhower as a grandfather of a small boy to have the area fenced and patrolled. For background on the accident see the preceding document. On the death of the Eisenhowers' first son, Doud Dwight, see Eisenhower, At Ease, pp. 180-82. 2 The letter to Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay is the preceding document. 3 Eisenhower had received two reports immediately following the accident, both of which conflicted with Anderson's letter (see U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, California Projects, Canal Superintendent to Chief, Tracy, California, Operations Office, Nov. 18, 1954; and ibid., Operations Supervisor to Operation and Maintenance Superintendent, Sacramento, Nov. 21, 1953, same file as document). Following an investigation by the Bureau of Reclamation of the Department of the Interior, it would be reported that the canal was a quarter-mile from the Anderson home and that the fence had been judged in good repair by meter readers on November 1. According to the report, the fence was inspected regularly, but an inspector had not visited the area in the sixteen days between the meter reading and the drowning (Dexheimer to Hagerty, Nov. 25, 1953, same file as document). In a letter of November 27 McKay would advise Anderson that the investigation had disclosed that the canal fencing had been damaged "in some unexplained manner," allowing entry to the area. He said that the President had requested more information, particularly regarding safety measures planned to prevent further tragedies, and he assured Anderson that ways were being sought to install additional fencing and to increase patrols of existing barriers, safeguards that he said would have the "full and active cooperation" of the Interior Department (same file as document). 4 A similar incident would occur in the Central Valley on September 13, 1954, at a project under construction by a private contractor. Eisenhower's advisers would take "extreme care not to open the floodgates which could only injure the President"; they recommended that he not personally participate by writing the victim's family (Brenner to Commissioner, Bureau of Reclamation, Sept. 14, 1954; Smyth to Snyder, Sept. 15, 1954; Harlow to Snyder, Sept. 17, 1954; and Harlow to Smyth, Sept. 23, 1954, all in same file as document). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal To Warren Anderson, 23 November 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 559. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/559.cfm <--PREV Doc #558  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #560

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