Show JFl'i isi ily Weekly June 26 i960 Eisenhower Mrs and Next Friday celebrate their 44th wedding anniversai y here is an intimate glimpse of the First Lady to her dear and near someone by the President I By MARGARET DE MILLE 20 years Prominent in the fashion merchandising world for Cecil producer-directMargaret de Mille is a niece of the late fdm Mille B de Mille and is the sister of famed choreographer Agnes de She has been a personal friend of Mamie Eisenhower since they first met in wartime Washington in 1943 Twice a grandmother Miss de Mille lives with her husband in New Rochelle N Y or I : met my friend Mamie during the war just after Eisenhower had gone overseas to launch the attack on North Africa A girl I knew in Kitty was staying at the Eisenhower apartment the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington and she invited me down for a weekend She also invited me to shop for bedspreads and curtains which due to wartime shortages were more plentiful in New York than in the District of Columbia I arrived on a Friday evening in June 1943 lugging my bulky package of curtains Kitty greeted me and introduced me to Mamie and I noticed for the first time those clear blue eyes that sparkle with friendship It is hard to do Mamie justice either by words or photographs Nothing can convey the freshness of her complexion the delicacy of her coloring or her feminine daintiness— nor can any still picture I General Attlee and Sir Acquaintance with people like Clement Winston Churchill never lets Mamie forget old friends 1 convey her vitality or her healthy animation which is as powerful as an electric current My first weekend in Washington was a quiet one 8 Familty Weekly June 26 1960 It was fiercely hot (those were the days before air conditioning) The curtains I had brought down we proved to be too long for Mamie’s windows so sat hemming them up and chatting in our nightgowns! It was a completely relaxed and intimate two days of My wartime job was in the New York office the OPA (Office of Price Administration) and in every time I had to go to the national office Washington I stayed with Mamie in her spare room (Kitty had returned to her home in New Jersey)Mamie lived quietly during the war years staysoon ing in her apartment most of the time I learned it was the gathering place for the wives of other generals who were overseas The women met in the evening to play mahjong to talk to share news and to comfort one another though the war as such was rarely discussed It was at this time that I learned that everything in Mamie’s life is placed on a very personal basis I would hustle in from New York full of what I - |