News Release

President Eisenhower's great-grandson offers interviews to Iowa media

AMES, Iowa – June 22, 2006 - Merrill Eisenhower Atwater shares a lot of family stories these days about the time his great-grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower crossed the country in the first transcontinental motor convoy in 1919.

The expedition was to make a lasting impression on the young Army officer, and was to have an even greater significance for the United States when he later became the 34th president. President Eisenhower battled for a national system of roads and signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 that funded initial construction of the Interstate Highway System.

"My grandfather is remembered for many things, but the Interstate System was a real priority for his presidency," Atwater said. "There's a quotation from him that explains how he felt about priorities. It goes, "We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective."

"It was absolutely miserable," Atwater said of Eisenhower's trip as a Lieutenant Colonel in the military convoy, trudging across Iowa in heavy trucks on the Lincoln Highway.

Atwater said, "It was a lousy trip---62 days of heat, breakdowns, mud, bridgeless river crossings, and rough roads. Where bridges did exist, the heavy military vehicles often broke through the bridge decks. They covered 3,251 miles, from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco , Calif. , at an average speed of 6 mph and a little over 58 miles a day,” said Atwater , a communications major at Missouri Western State University.

Atwater is among 100 people who left San Francisco on Friday, June 16 as part of a coast-to-coast convoy. Featuring 20 trucks, recreational vehicles, cars and buses, it celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Interstate Highway System. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) organized the convoy to retrace the perilous Lincoln Highway the 1919 convoy traveled.

Atwater is keeping a journal of the convoy, which will be placed in the Eisenhower Library in Abilene , Kansas , alongside the journal his great-grandfather kept in 1919. He is also filing a daily Internet blog of his observations at http://www.interstate50th.org/blogs.shtml.

The AASHTO convoy will be making two stops in Iowa this Friday, at Living History Farms in Urbandale and the I-80 Truck Museum in Walcott. Unfortunately Merrill Eisenhower Atwater will not be with the portion of the convoy stopping in Iowa. He will be in Abilene on Thursday and Friday attending commemorative events at the Eisenhower Museum. However, he has agreed to conduct phone interviews with any interested Iowa media as he travels with the convoy this week and next. He will also be available to conduct television interviews with affiliates of Iowa news organizations at the locations of the convoy stops.

Interview arrangements may be made by contacting: Dana Alexander Nolfe, Chief Public Affairs Officer with the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, who is traveling with the AASHTO convoy at cell 401-265-5197; or Merrill Eisenhower Atwater at cell 816-294-8164.

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