<--PREV Doc #548  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #550 Document #549; January 24, 1958 To Julius Earl Schaefer Series: EM, AWF, Name Series ; Category: Personal The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XVIII - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace Part III: The Space Age Begins; October 1957 to January 1958 Chapter 7: NATO and the Cold War   Dear Earl:1 Except in its details, your suggestion for a better integrated education for our young men in the Service Academies was made by me to Admiral Nimitz as long ago as 1947. He and I really got steamed up on this purpose, which we had outlined to ourselves in principle. It turned out that we were defeated by staffs that found in the idea such insuperable technical and administrative difficulties that we had to give up.2 Of course at that moment we had only two Academies, and our first thought was to avoid the construction of a third one, so that by transferring candidates back and forth between the two we would get practically the same basic education for all.3 Your suggestion takes cognizance of changed conditions; now it may seem more appealing than it did ten or eleven years ago. In any event, you may be sure that I shall bring it to the attention of Secretary McElroy and some of his associates.4 The other day my friend Al Gruenther was in Wichita, but he told me that he did not get to see you. I am sorry because he is one of my very fine friends. With warm regard, As ever 1 Schaefer had been vice-chairman of Boeing since 1938 (see Galambos and van Ee, The Middle Way, no. 1316). His January 22, 1958, letter to Eisenhower is in WHCF/OF 3-WW. 2 See Galambos, Chief of Staff, no. 1271. Retired Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz had been serving as special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy since 1947. As Chief of Naval Operations he had served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff with then Army Chief of Staff, Eisenhower. 3 On the establishment of the Air Force Academy see ibid., no. 1697, and Galambos and van Ee, The Middle Way, nos. 980, 1584. See also John P. Lovell, Neither Athens Nor Sparta? The American Service Academies in Transition (Bloomington, Ind., 1979), pp. 45 - 56, 59 - 69. 4 Schaefer had suggested a six-year program of military training. The first two years, at West Point, would be used to educate students in the customs and traditions of the Services, and to teach land warfare and philosophies, as well as basic academic subjects. The third and fourth years, to be served at the Naval Academy, would stress modern naval warfare, with an emphasis on mechanics, engineering and the sciences. The fifth and sixth years, at the Air Force Academy, would emphasize air strategy and techniques, along with an academic program of advanced engineering and scientific subjects. The graduates of this program, Schaefer wrote, "would be well-rounded, technically trained military men and citizens . . . with the capability to specialize in any field to which they might be called. More particularly, they would be better prepared to understand and appreciate the broad concept of duties that would fall to administrators, and later to formulators of national policy. Certainly this would be true for our present age of dynamically changing functions involving space and speed." There is no correspondence with Secretary McElroy on this issue in AWF. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal To Julius Earl Schaefer, 24 January 1958. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 549. 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/549.cfm <--PREV Doc #548  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #550

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