<--PREV Doc #20  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #22 Document #21; February 4, 1957 To Marion Bayard Folsom Series: EM, AWF, Administration Series The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XVIII - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace Part I: A New Beginning, Old Problems; January 1957 to May 1957 Chapter 1: The Mideast and the Eisenhower Doctrine   Memorandum for the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare:1 Attached is a note from General Mark Clark, my long time friend and recently national campaign chairman for the American Heart Association.2 Will you please study the memorandum carefully and give me a draft on which to base a reply? Incidentally, with respect to his final paragraph in which he mentions that a former President who had been a victim of polio initiated the great March of Dimes, I think it is more accurate to say that this was done by friends of the President and not by him personally.3 In other words, if I am to have any special connection with a program of attack upon heart and related diseases because I myself had a coronary occlusion, then it would appear that while I might support the matter, I should not be in the forefront of the project. To do so would seemingly give it a touch of self-interest.4 This, of course, is more of a personal matter. What I should expect from you is an analysis of the money now available, the money needed, the sources from which it should come, and the availability of scientific personnel to make use of more money--and so on.5 1 Folsom had been appointed Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in August 1955 (see Galambos and van Ee, The Middle Way, no. 1513). 2 General Mark Wayne Clark, president of The Citadel and former commander of U.N. forces in Korea, had been national campaign chairman for the American Heart Association since 1954 (see Galambos and van Ee, ibid., no. 7). Clark's January 29 note thanked Eisenhower for meeting with him on December 20; he also enclosed a memorandum outlining the Heart Association's plans for attacking heart disease (AWF/A, Folsom Corr.). See also Oglesby Paul, Take Heart: The Life and Prescription for Living of Dr. Paul Dudley White (Boston, 1986), pp. 114 - 30. 3 Clark had written that "the experience of a former president with polio became the dramatic focal point of a fight which has already saved thousands of lives. . . . It would be splendid if you would give at this time your personal leadership to a similar attack on diseases of the heart and related diseases." The Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, from which the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis grew, had initially been a private philanthropy established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1927. The decision to use the proceeds from the first nationwide fund- raising campaign of 1933, the President's Birthday Ball, to support a national organization resulted in part from Roosevelt's 1930 proposal for "'one vast national crusade against infantile paralysis'" (David L. Sills, The Volunteers: Means and Ends in a National Organization [Glencoe, Ill., 1957], pp. 42 - 45). 4 At the time of Eisenhower's September 24, 1955, heart attack, the White House had rejected linking a fund drive for the American Heart Association with the President's illness and sixty-fifth birthday (see New York Times, Sept. 30, 1955). Nonetheless, the publicity surrounding the President's heart attack had brought the Association to the fore as the authoritative source of information on heart disease. Contributions to the Association had increased by thirty-nine percent in 1956 and by 1957 would pass the twenty million dollar level (William W. Moore, Fighting for Life: The Story of the American Heart Association 1911 - 1975 [Dallas, Tex., 1983], pp. 71 - 75). On Eisenhower's heart attack see Galambos and van Ee, The Middle Way, no. 1595. 5 Folsom would respond to the President on February 19 (AWF/A). The Secretary would suggest that the Heart Association's promotional efforts to stimulate wider public interest in heart diseases and to raise funds was "fitting as a private endeavor, but not as an undertaking of the Federal Government." Folsom would support Clark's suggestion to establish a group to explore broader questions relating to medical research and would plan to establish a Committee on Medical Research. Eisenhower would respond to Clark on February 19 (AWF/A, Folsom Corr.), informing him of Folsom's answer. Eisenhower would add that while he felt "quite strongly that private giving for medical research must be sustained and increased," any role that he might play in such an effort "would have to be most carefully considered." Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Marion Bayard Folsom, 4 February 1957. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 21. 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/second-term/documents/21.cfm <--PREV Doc #20  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #22

Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission 1629 K Street, NW Suite 801 Washington DC 20006 Phone: 202.296.0004    Fax: 202.296.6464