Dwight D. Eisenhower was born Dwight David Eisenhower or "Ike" on October 14th, 1890 in Denison Texas. His parents were David and Ida Eisenhower. He was the third son out of seven children. At the young age of two he moved to Abilene, Kansas. This is where Dwight D. Eisenhower grew up most of his life. This is where, as a boy, he discovered his rich love for history. "Ike was born too late to know Hickok or Abilene’s Wild West past firsthand, but relished its history throughout his life, as his lifelong habit of reading Westerns attests. The interest in history stimulated by his Abilene upbringing reached back to ancient times. He mentions Hannibal, Caesar, Pericles, and Socrates as among his boyhood heroes, competing with cowboys and lawmen for his admiration. Ike’s devotion to the study of the past sometimes came at the expense of other homework and chores and once led his mother to lock up his history books as punishment for neglecting his childhood duties. Classmates also noted Ike’s fascination with times past. A high school yearbook prediction envisioned him as a professor of history at Yale. (His brother Edgar was predicted to become President.)" (Dwight D. Eisenhower Library Archives)
Dwight also had a love for many other things as well such as football, boxing, fishing, hunting, camping, and playing poker, "the latter learned at the hand of an eccentric outdoorsman and adventurer who taught him how to compute percentages and figure odds, invaluable skills for the future military and political leader."(Dwight D. Eisenhower Archives) These skills later on helped him in making decisions, computing the odds, and judging character in wartime situations in the years to come. One of another great character traits of his was that during football games, some of his teammates would refuse to lineup if there was an African American on the opposing side of them; Ike would volunteer for the position and then shake hands with the man. This showed that he believed that there were not an racial differences between the African Americans and whites even as a young boy in high school. After graduating from High School, Ike was enrolled into West Point.