Season 6, Episode 4: A Presidential Odyssey (to Abilene, KS)

September 4, 2026

In this episode, podcast hosts Daniel Pewewardy and Jenny Durham take a trip to Abilene, KS to visit the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home. They interview Jim Ginther, Supervisory Archivist for the library and talk about unique items in the collection, how they are celebrating America250, and why you don't have to be a scholar or history buff to visit a presidential library.

This transcript was generated using Adobe Premiere Pro and was reviewed for accuracy by a member of the Library's Digital Services team before publishing. If you find a transcription error, please contact us with any corrections and we will make those corrections as quickly as possible.

[music]

Daniel, voiceover Hey, Jenny, did you see The Odyssey yet?

Jenny, voiceover No, I didn't.

Daniel, voiceover Oh, my gosh.

Jenny, voiceover I keep having people ask me, too. And maybe.

Daniel, voiceover It's so good. It's so good. Especially if you like Circe because Circe shows up.

Jenny, voiceover I love Circe. She's my girl.

Daniel, voiceover And it was, It was, it was creepy. Like, the cyclops was scary. And also, like, I'm like, I'm scared, like, I would, I never want to get lost again. And like, I'm very, like, I'm always checking maps now. Like, I have my map app because I'm like, I don't want to get stuck out, because recently we went on an odyssey of our own, to...

Jenny, voiceover Oh, yeah, we went to Abilene, Kansas.

Daniel, voiceover Abilene, Kansas. Luckily, our phones worked. We were able to get there on time and get back in a timely manner. There was some storms, so it was kind of like Poseidon's rage a little bit.

Jenny, voiceover Yeah. And there was like, what, a statue of Wild Bill Hickok?

Daniel, voiceover There was a statue, like, kind of like the Cyclops. I don't remember if Eisenhower had a glass eye, but there's a Eisenhower statue.

Jenny, voiceover There was an Eisenhower statue, but it was cool. Didn't scare me.

Daniel, voiceover Yeah, it was really cool. The whole place.

So this is Read Return Repeat. Shout out. I'm Daniel, the inspiration librarian and co-host.

Jenny, voiceover And I am Jenny, the, enrichment librarian, also a co-host.

Daniel, voiceover And we're here talking about, our episode this month is actually to celebrate America250. We thought, wouldn't it be cool to learn about presidential libraries?

Jenny, voiceover Yeah. And we have a presidential library, what, like an hour and a half drive away?

Daniel, voiceover Yeah.

Jenny, voiceover Which is really cool. And why not go and find out what a presidential library actually is? And, like, why would you want to go to one?

Daniel, voiceover Yeah, it's, Samantha was our tour guide and kind of, she's the comms person for the library. And we got, and she hooked us up with their supervisory archivist, Jim Ginther.

Jenny, voiceover And he has a really fascinating background that we talk about in the episode, which I just, you kind of learn like who winds up working at...

Daniel, voiceover He's been working in archives for over 20 years, and I think he worked at the Marine or Navy archives. And he's basically been doing American history archive stuff for like 20 years.

Jenny, voiceover Yeah, he knows a lot about like, the military history and stuff too. And it's really cool. It was just, we learned so much even as librarians.

Daniel, voiceover So let's go ahead and just jump into it. We're going to swing over to our interview with Jim Ginther, senior archivist at the Eisenhower public—or Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Daniel Hello and welcome to Read Return Repeat. I'm inspiration librarian Daniel Pewewardy with Wichita Public Library's adult literacies department.

Jenny And I am enrichment librarian Jenny Durham, also with the Advanced Learning Library's adult literacies department.

Daniel And we're very excited to be where we're at, which you can kind of tell is a different, like, setting from the backdrop. We're here with Jim Ginther, supervisory archivist for the Eisenhower Presidential Library. So before we start, can you tell us about—you were telling us about this room before. Can you kind of give us, like, a little bit of a history about it? And why this room is kind of cool.

Jim So this room is actually, we use now in the library is the director's. office, but this room was actually designed originally as President Eisenhower's office, when, following in a pattern of the presidential libraries prior to this one being built, the presidential libraries had offices for the presidents to use.

President Truman in particular in his library, spent quite a bit of time at the library overseeing operations there. And it was believed that presidents would use the offices in the library to conduct day-to-day operations. As it turns out, President Eisenhower had a farm at Gettysburg where he chose to live out his retirement years and did not spend much time in this office here at the Eisenhower Library. But that is what this office was originally designed for, would be the office for the president.

Daniel That's so cool.

Jenny Yeah, this is really neat.

Daniel So before we get started, you, you're an archivist. Can you kind of give us, like, a little bit of your history and, like, why you like being an archivist and all that?

Jim Who couldn't like being an archivist? [Daniel laughs] That's so, yeah, sure. My background, so I came to being an archivist a little bit different. Now, today, you would go through a library or archival science program, become an archivist. My background is having a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University. My training is largely through apprenticeship and public history programs. And then learning by doing, mostly. I started out with the Vietnam archive at Texas Tech University and then went on to the Marine Corps's archive at Quantico, where I spent 20 years and then had been here with the Eisenhower Library for just under five years now.

Daniel So you probably, you spent, like, your whole professional career, like studying American history, right?

Jim Yes, indeed.

Daniel I bet you've been busy with America250 going on.

Jenny Oh, man.

Jim We have been. Yes. This last couple of months, we have done two major exhibits. One with the National Archives, the out of the vault exhibit. We had a number of documents from the National Archives that were touring. Some pretty significant stuff to the, to the Midwest here. Things like the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Brown versus the Board of Education decision was here. The Louisiana Purchase treaty was here. The, some things related to Eisenhower, the, the executive order sending troops to Little Rock for the, to, the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.

Those kind of things were here. We just opened an exhibit called Ike's Work, which we can talk about a little bit as well, that relates to documents here in the collection. That's a major exhibit. We just recently for A250 had a play called The Well-Lit Shadow that was actually drawn. We had a young playwright from Kansas State University, named Emmett Spaw, who came over and did a play based on materials out of the archive that highlights some of the issues of the McCarthy era that was done as one of the kickoff events. We held a naturalization ceremony here on the 1st of July and had 54 new citizens become naturalized citizens here on site. So, yes, it has been very busy for the A250 events here.

Daniel That's really cool.

Jim Yes.

Jenny And I imagine we have stuff going through the end of the year as well.

Jim Yes. In fact, Ike's Work will be up for the next 18 months. One of the great things that, about that particular exhibit is it's a rotating exhibit. We will have, over the next 18 months, documents from the exhibit rotate through that exhibit. So it will constantly refresh over the next year and a half. Both the exhibits, both the artifacts and the documentation in that exhibit, even though that it will stay focused on the central theme of these 23 accomplishments that President Eisenhower thought were the most significant things about his administration, those documents, those artifacts will continue to refresh.

Jim And will continue to be refreshed.

Daniel So refresh. You mean, like, if I visit this month and then I can come back in, like, six months and see some different stuff?

Jim Pretty much in three months.

Daniel Oh, cool.

Jim Yeah. So you will see new things out on...

Jenny Yeah. And Abilene is only about an hour and...

Jim An hour and change, about an hour and 20 minutes.

Jenny Just a little over an hour from Wichita. Yeah.

Jim Come early and come often.

Jenny Yeah.

Jim Over the next few.

Jenny Before we got talking here, you did mention that the Eisenhower Presidential Library didn't actually start as a presidential library. Can you talk a little bit about the history of, like, its evolution? With that and the museum, which is also on the same property?

Jim Sure, did not. So you raise a couple of points that I think are really important for people to understand. We are very unique, not only as a library, but as a presidential library, even within the presidential library system. The Eisenhower Library—The Eisenhower Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home, if you really want to get into the official title of it, is part of the National Archives system. The presidential library system started in 1939 with President Franklin Roosevelt when he decided to donate his papers to the people of the United States.

Which is something that most people don't understand. Prior to 1935, there's no national archives system. There is no system for collecting the records of the United States prior to 1935. Prior to 1939, there is no systematic means for collecting presidential papers. And prior to. 1970—if this were 1978, there is no actual legal mandate that presidents have to turn over their papers to the people of the United States, their private papers, right? So when President Roosevelt turns his papers over, that's the first time that there's actually any real consideration of systematically collecting presidential papers.

Prior to that, they end up in Library—at the Library of Congress, or in university libraries, or even in private collections. So, President Roosevelt sort of gets this started. President Hoover donates his papers. President Truman. 1955, under President Eisenhower, the Congress passes the Presidential Libraries Act to give support to the idea of creating libraries where these donated papers will become have permanent resting places, repositories where they can be collected and preserved and taken care of.

This library itself is unique even within that system. There are currently 16 presidential libraries within the NARUS system, we're one of them. But we're even kind of unique in that, in that we existed not as a presidential library, but as a museum dedicated to then-General Eisenhower, not President Eisenhower, and his accomplishments as a, as an Army general. Many I think probably in your audience know that General Eisenhower was supreme allied commander in Europe during World War Two, responsible for commanding Allied troops during D-Day and the liberation of Europe from, from the Nazis in World War Two. And that is how this site began.

We were talking a bit earlier: the site is a unique site. It, it is part library, part museum, part historic site. It contains the, the presidential library, the presidential museum, and President Eisenhower's boyhood home, which people don't know is, sits on the site that it has always sat on. It was not moved here. It sits on the site where President Eisenhower grew up. But the home was the first piece of this particular site. It was donated by the family after President Eisenhower's mother, Ida, died in 1946, to the Eisenhower Foundation. It was the beginning of the museum and memorial to General Eisenhower's accomplishments. to the Eisenhower Foundation.

Museum was added to that to become a, a, museum to General Eisenhower's wartime accomplishments. The foundation developed that. And then in 1952, General. Eisenhower decided to run for president and did so successfully. Now the mission shifts. We now need a presidential library. The plans for the museum were expanded to expand to cover that mission, to cover the need for, covering his presidential accomplishments. And, later on, the president approached the foundation, said, if you can build an appropriate place for my presidential papers, I will also donate those to the site.

In 1962, the library was, was dedicated and presidential papers came here. And then he made the decision to have the, the Place of Meditation designed and constructed. That is the final resting place for the president and his in the First lady, Mamie. They are buried here on the site. And ultimately, the final piece of the site was added in 1975 was the visitor center. And that completes the entire site. But it is a, it is a unique place. Most presidential libraries, a single site, single building: library, museum and inside a single. We are a multi, multi-building campus that evolved over time.

Daniel How many other, the presidential libraries are also resting places for those presidents?

Jim I am not... Reagan's site...

Jenny Yeah. I was curious about that, too.

Jim Reagan and Truman, yeah, I believe so.

Daniel So I guess it's kind of like this trinity of, like Eisenhower the president, Eisenhower the war hero, and then Eisenhower, like the Kansan. It's kind of like you kind of—

Jim Yes. Which I think is one of the very unique things that we can do here at the Eisenhower Library. And one of the things that makes us very unique, many of the libraries are very focused on that four or six or eight years, whatever it was that the president was, in fact, president. Being located here in Abilene, we have the ability to tell the complete story, whether that's experiencing President Eisenhower's boyhood by being present in that home, to experiencing his, his life and presidency through the material culture that's in the, in the museum through the artifacts and through the weapons, through the clothing, through the, you know, various artifacts that are there to being able to do a deep dive into his life through the documentation that's here in the library. Or just to be surrounded by the town that he considered home. You know, the... that is a unique opportunity that is not available to any other presidential library.

Jenny And I think compared to other presidents, Eisenhower seems so connected to the identity of Kansans. And I've lived in other states. I'm not originally from here. But from an outsider, that's one thing I've noticed. And that's not always the same with other presidents, where they're so tied with a state. I mean, there are some, but I think that's something else that's also unique is that he really is tied to, you know, Kansas.

Daniel The Kansas identity. Yeah.

Jenny Yeah.

Jim He did say the proudest thing that he could say is that he was from Abilene.

Daniel So that's, that's really cool. Yeah. No, I'm just in awe of this whole... there's so much we didn't know about the library coming here that had all this stuff going on, and then, like, it's just it's really cool. The whole facility is really cool. And we're going to, like, hopefully explore a little bit after this interview and share some of what we saw.

I guess, like you are, you're an archivist and you come to work in this big, like, monumental historical—like, like this is, there's so much history here, I guess. Like, what's your typical day look like?

Jim Is there a typical day? So a typical day could be all over the map. But the most typical thing that happens every day is that we're dealing with, with research questions from the public. The, the library over the course of a year—so maybe a typical year, I know that doesn't get what, but that would be an easier way to sort of approach it, right? And so we, over the course of a year, we're going to deal with 1,500 questions, off-site questions from the general public. Right? Abilene is a difficult place to get to.

Daniel Yeah. Oh yeah.

Jim So a considerable amount of our time is, is spent just answering questions from the public. Another 200 people are going to visit us to do in-depth research in the, in the research room. Plus our on-site visitors, we're going to support, you know, a dozen lunch and learn programs. We're going to support 3 or 4 major programs from the National Archives by, for instance, this year there was a big push to get all of the material that we had on UFOs and unidentified aerial phenomena to the National Archives to get it out. There is a big push by the, by the White House to get that out and available. Parallel to our Ike's Work exhibit, which is focused on letters to the president, the National Archives is doing a parallel project from all of the presidential libraries to focus on letters to the president and in correspondence with the White House. So we were doing research to sort of supply material to, to that.

Daniel That's so cool. I told the crew beforehand, I was like, I'm not allowed to talk about aliens, even if you bring them up. That's one of my favorite, like... [laughs]

Jim So, so that's going on. That's just, that's part of it. But then you have all these other things: digitization, collection processing, collection maintenance, preservation. Where we're having to go in, we're changing the mundane things like changing out bad boxes and you know, or... but it's, all of this has, has to go on sort of simultaneously all at the same time. So when you say a typical. day, you know, I've had, I've had school groups come on and say, well, you know, what is your, what does your day look like? Well, first hour of the day I'm going to be administrator. And then the next hour of the day I'm going to be chemist, and the next hour of the day I'm going to be a climate control specialist. In the next, you know, in the next 30 minutes, I'm going to be a legal expert in the next minute, you know.

Daniel So typical library job.

Jim Typical library job, right? Yeah, right. [Daniel and Jenny laugh]

Jenny Some people ask what do public librarians do on a typical day.

Daniel That's right. Well, we're hosting a podcast today.

Jim Yeah. Right. You're doing a podcast today. So those, so I don't want to dodge the question. I think what I want to do is maybe give your listeners a little bit of an understanding of the complexity. There's so many people who would come here and go, oh, all you're going to do is sit down and put papers in boxes and you're going to read stuff all day. And maybe what I want to give them a feel for is just the level of complexity and maybe the range of kind of knowledge and experience it has to go into a typical day—

Jenny Yeah, there's a lot of—

Jim —for the folks on my staff.

Jenny —skills. I actually have a related question that might be a little bit more specific. Is there any like since you have been in your role here, any particular project or something that you've been involved in that you particularly like, enjoyed, or is memorable or just kind of has been like a highlight and that might maybe give an example of maybe something that you might do in your job that may be more than just routine stuff.

Jim Ike's Work, the exhibit we just finished, I think, has been one of the highlights of what we did. And what I loved about that project is it was an entire staff collaboration. It wasn't just the archive staff, wasn't... that took on, and it originated.... It originated with Eisenhower, okay? We were looking for something to do for America 250 and originally, it started out with a single memo that President Eisenhower did. It's, it's a single list that he dashed off literally, literally says here, here are just some things that I think we accomplished. 23 things, I didn't even refer to anything. Here are 23 things, right, in this amazing list that starts that starts with Alaska and Hawaii statehood. Extension of Social Security. Creation of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

The biggest public works system, or biggest public works project ever done in the, in the Interstate highway system. The, the maintenance of the only peacetime defense, you know, maintenance of a peacetime defense force capable of meeting our defense needs. The creation of a single, the, the conception, creation, and deployment of the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile system. Right? The, the reining in inflation and creating balanced budgets in, I want to say three or four of the years of the eight years of the presidency. Doing all this with, with a, with a Congress controlled by the opposition parties six out of eight years. Right? I'm just stashing these off the top of my head.

Daniel That's, that's Eisenhower, right?

Jim That's Eisenhower.

Daniel That's Eisenhower. That's like, what is he... that's... yeah.

Jim So that's where the project begins, right? And then we started digging into correspondence, right? Like how are people reacting to these kind of concerns? What were they writing the White House, how was the White House reacting? One of the things that's really. Interesting about the Eisenhower White House, right, is. we, we think that the kind of the White House is distant and aloof and they don't really care, right? If you go into the, if you go into the, so the correspondence with the White House, everyday people are writing the Eisenhower administration about concerns. Hey, I can't, I can't feed my family or my kid needs medical care and I need to get a ride to the Mayo Clinic, and I don't know what to do. Or hey, I've got this great idea for how we build a highway system across the country, and I want to present it to the president.

All these letters are streaming into the white House, and they're not just getting form letters back, they're getting letters from the president's personal secretary or the president's chief of staff, or the White House press secretary, or the science advisor to the president. Or the national security advisor. And they're not just, "Thanks for writing, we'll take it under advisement." It's like, oh, that's a great idea. Let's, let's address that concern. And they're getting these letters back that are personally addressed, addressing the concern that, with thoughtful replies, with "here's what, you know, I'll get that to whoever needs to address that, I will, you know," or whatever that is. But they're getting very personal, direct responses to their concerns. We wanted to showcase that. And so while people are raising these concerns, and one of the things we're trying to show in the exhibit, right, is that this White House responded. Now, they didn't always respond. You know, there's this public discourse now going on between the, the public and the White House that's producing solutions to problems. Not always the solution.

Daniel I bet it's a "who's who" of history showing up in those, too.

Jenny Yeah.

Jim Not always. Sometimes. Yeah. There's very, very common people. But sometimes it is, yeah. Yeah, sure. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's letters from people like a young Martin Luther King Jr.

Daniel That's who I was thinking, yeah.

Jim But sometimes it's a letter from a lady from Arkansas who can't feed her kids. Sometimes it's a letter from, from a girl. in, in Texas who's living in a shoe store who wants to offer her services as a superhero to the U.S. government to fight crime and bad guys. You know?

Daniel I actually, I've read through some of these letters and I was shocked at how many like how much records you have for Elvis Presley and the Beatles because like his fans write to the president at the time.

Jenny I feel like it can also be like a time capsule of, of being reflective of what concerns everyday people had of the time.

Jim That's right. But I think, I think what's most, I think what's most, what intrigued us about that project was the personal approach that this White House took. It wasn't just form letters, it wasn't "we'll take it under advisement." It was that direct engagement with the public in a real desire to try to address real people, real concerns where they were. And I think that, and then to pull that together within artifacts that, that reflected those historic events. And to pull the entire team of this, of this site, together and, and make that happen even as impressive as Out of the Bowl was to me, that was the... the National Archives with all these big documents that never come out of Washington, D.C. To me, I think the next 18 months will be even a bigger thing than that.

Jenny What has been the response to that?

Jim To what?

Daniel Ike's Work.

Jenny To Ike's Work, yeah.

Jim So far, I mean, I have only had a limited time over there because we have a certain... but it seems to me that people have, from what I've gathered from particularly museum staff who go over there and, and do checks over there, that it's been really positive that people are staying and they're lingering over the letters, and they're actually spending time to read the concerns of their, their fellow citizens.

Daniel That yeah, and that's running for the next 18 months. But yeah. Definitely check it out if you can. We're going to take a short break and we'll come back with some more questions. Thank you again for being on, being on the show with us, Jim. You're listening to Read Return Repeat. We'll be right back.

Voiceover The story of the American presidency begins with a general the people trusted to lead what came next. Nearly two centuries later, another general answered that same call. In 1966, Eisenhower sat down and listed 23 accomplishments of his presidency from memory. No records. No notes. Just the work. 41,000 miles of highway. A 2,300 mile ocean highway to the Great Lakes.

A worldwide peace tour. 27 countries visited. Zero new conflicts. The first Civil Rights Act in 82 years. The 101st Airborne sent to uphold the Constitution. Two new states, three balanced budgets. A new cabinet department. From Sputnik's shock to NASA in 13 months. The nuclear triad. Peace through strength. This was the work. But this isn't just one man's list.

Among the 30 million pages in these archives are 10 million letters from Americans who believed their voice mattered. The letters are open. Come read them.

Daniel All right. We are back with Jim Ginther, archivist at the Eisenhower Presidential Library. And you're listening to Read Return Repeat.

Jim, I have a question about just kind of like Abilene in general. How does like a small Kansas town kind of respond to having this, like, this giant facility dedicated to archiving Eisenhower's work and everything? Like, yeah, go ahead.

Jim No, we have, you know, we have a great relationship with the, the visitor and the tourism bureau. We, you know, this is a great community, historic, history-wise. There is a rich history to Abilene, of which Eisenhower is a part. We try to maintain partnerships with our other historic entities within the community. Dickinson County Historical Center's right behind us. We have the, the Abilene Smoky Valley Railroad that is here. It's, it's part of the community here. The Jeffcoat Photography Museum is, is part of that community. So there is quite a bit in addition to the Eisenhower center.

Daniel And there's like, a Wild Bill Hickok or—

Jenny I was going to say.

Jim The Hickock rodeo is...

Jenny There's a lot of old Wild West kind of stuff.

Jim Well, yeah. I mean, Abilene begins, of course, as a, as a cattle town.

Daniel And so, we were talking about Ike's Work and, like, all the things that took place during Eisenhower's administration. And one thing I remember reading that was like one that NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—did I get it right?

Jim Sure.

Daniel Okay, cool. I went to space camp, so... [chuckles] which started during the Eisenhower administration. And I heard you have something called a Luna sphere that there's only, like, three of or?

Jim Right. So one of my two favorite things in the whole collection, one of them is the Luna sphere, which is one of those things that was created by the Russians, actually.

Daniel Oh. So what is it exactly?

Jim So it was a, it was a metal sphere that the Russians were going to send up to the moon, and it explodes. It explodes into tiny, into metal pieces that one of... so one of the debates early on, right, about the moon is we were going to take ideas about colonization, or there was some debate about whether or not we were going to take ideas about colonization to the moon, right? Could, could we claim the moon? Who could claim the moon? Planting flags on things. That's how we had done things here on Earth. Would that be translated to space? Fortunately, we negotiated a treaty that declared that off limits. But one of the things was, is that the Russians had developed a Luna sphere, and we were... these, these metal objects were going to be shot on the moon. They would explode. They would put these metal shards all over and everywhere where they landed, that would be Russian territory.

Daniel Oh, wow. That's interesting.

Jenny That is interesting.

Jim There are only three of these known to exist anymore. Two of them are in Kansas. One of them is here with us and the other one is with the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson.

Jenny How were they acquired?

Daniel Yeah.

Jim Well, one of them was a gift.

Jenny Oh, okay.

Jim To, to the president. It as, as I believe from Khrushchev as a means of saying we are going to beat you there and we are going to—

Jenny Oh, like a power move.

Jim Yeah. It's part of that. It's part of that space race competition.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel I guess the Cold War, like the I guess the Cold War was kind of happening during the time of the administration or?

Jim Oh yeah. I mean, one of the, one of the more successful things of the Eisenhower administration is keeping the Cold War cold.

Daniel Yeah, yeah.

Jim There were plenty of chances for that to flare.

Daniel Is, there has, that's got to be an interesting thing to like look into like or read about like from like when you're like researching the history of it and stuff. The decisions that had to be made to keep peace, like that seems like that's really interesting.

Jim Yes. You don't have enough time in your podcast to hear that. [laughter]

Jenny I was going to say there's whole segments of—

Jim Yeah, sure. Fully, you know, fully a quarter of the presidential papers probably deal in one way or the other about having, you know, to deal with those issues of international policy and trying to keep...

Daniel Outside of a lunar space bomb what are some of the other, like, interesting or fun things that you've seen while working as an archivist here? Are there any other cool things like that?

Jim Oh, sure. I mean, the one thing that I would probably... okay, I wouldn't lose my life over it, but if I don't, if I didn't get it out of this building in a fire, the probably my other favorite object in the collection, the one that people want to see most, is the, the "in case of failure letter" that Ike wrote on the night before that he wrote for the D-Day landings. He there is a famous note that he, I want to say penned. That would be wrong. It's in pencil. It's on a single sheet of paper that he wrote in the event that the D-Day landings were not successful and, he, which I think is perhaps the most revealing—

In a single sheet of paper, maybe the most revealing letter of, about his character that we have in the collection that accepts... it talks about the decision to land the troops on D-Day, the fact that the, the landings had failed and the decision to, to withdraw the troops. He gives credit to the, to the Army, Navy, and Air Forces saying that they had done everything that they could possibly have done and that any blame that attaches to the failure is his alone.

It is a, I think, an amazing piece of leadership. I think it's an amazing example of both courage and responsibility. And I think it shows more about Eisenhower's character than maybe any other single item in the collection. It is the thing that most people want to see. We don't take it out very often because it's a very fragile document. It was pulled out of... because it wasn't needed, it was tossed away, and it was pulled out of a trash can and stuffed in a diary.

Daniel Oh, wow. So it has, like, its own history.

Jim It has its own history. Yes. But yeah, I think it's the most, one of the most revealing pieces about Ike's character that we have in the, in the collection.

Daniel I went to the M.I.T. Museum recently and Nixon has a similar speech.

Jim Oh yeah. For the—NASA.

Daniel For the moon landing.

Jim For the moon landing.

Daniel And they have used—I don't know if was A.I., they created—you can go to this old living room and you sit and you watch Nixon give the speech that he wrote but didn't deliver because they actually landed. I think—I'm sure you get a lot of alternate history of people coming. [laughs] I feel like I've read that letter at the beginning of, like, Man in the High Castle.

Jim Yeah, we have it in, it's in one of the, text pieces in the museum. There's a, a photograph of the, the letter. The letter itself is not in the museum. We keep it here in the archive just because of its fragile nature.

Jenny Yeah and I was curious about that, because if, if it was written in pencil—

Jim It is in pencil.

Jenny And it was initially like, you know, just kind of put in a book or whatever... I mean, can it, how well is it even able to be able to be read?

Jim Oh, it can be read. It's clear.

Jenny Okay. I was wondering, like, did he have a firm hand, was it pencil?

Daniel Pencil, was a pencil kind of like the, the writing utensil of choice for a lot of the papers?

Jim Well, no, a lot of the papers are typewritten.

Daniel Yeah.

Jim And in fact, in many cases, what we have in, in the case of letters is the onion skin copies, because the originals were sent to the person who was going to receive them. So, so in several cases, what we have are the onion—which makes the papers particularly fragile.

Daniel Yeah.

Jim So, yeah. But, interesting. So the flip side of something as serious as the "in case of failure" letter is the demerit book. The class of 1915 at West Point, the class stars fell upon. More general officers came from the class of 1915, General Eisenhower's class, than any other at West Point. Ever. So, you would think that they were a very serious, very committed lot.

They were not. [laughs] We have the demerit book from West Point for the class of 1915. General Eisenhower in particular was not a particularly... you know, you have to remember that General Eisenhower did not know he was going to become General Eisenhower when he left here in 1911 to become a cadet at West Point. He was interested in a free education and a football scholarship.

Daniel Okay, yeah.

Jim That's all he wanted to do was play college football. And so when he left to go to West Point, his primary reason for going was to get a free education, not to become the supreme allied commander of the greatest, commanding the greatest, you know, amphibious force ever to conduct an invasion. So you know, he had something to learn about life, like the rest of us.

Jenny Kind of wonder what he got his demerits for. Like talking too much?

Jim Smoking was—

Jenny Oh.

Jim Was one of the big ones. Yeah. You have to remember, General Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, when he went to West Point was 21, almost 22 years old when he became a plebe. So he's older than most of the people who enter West Point at the time when he entered what essentially was his freshman class. He's older than the other cadets. He is not as willing to put... you know, there's a lot about being a plebe at West Point that is about teaching discipline, about reshaping your, you know, your values, about reshaping your discipline. He's a little old for that nonsense. And he doesn't, he chafes under it some. And so some of the, some of the demerits are a reflection of his, you know... he gets, he gets why they're doing it, but he doesn't...

Jenny In a way, I feel like—

Jim He doesn't respond maybe as well because he's older.

Daniel Also, there's got—oh, go ahead.

Jenny Oh, I'm sorry.

I feel like that also makes him, could make him more relatable. Like because we do put our leaders or our president on a pedestal and seeing those things that they were human, just like us and they had vices. So having those types of pieces are really interesting.

Jim One of the things that I think is, is great about the library here, in having it in Abilene, right? We were able, over the course of time to, people who knew President Eisenhower when he lived here in Abilene, we have collected papers and letters. He did correspond with some of his associates from way back when, and he continued to keep correspondence up with it. And some of that is the more, some of the more revealing about the inner Eisenhower, right? And we were very fortunate to have that. And again, many presidential libraries do not have that inside look. President Eisenhower was a fairly guarded person. He wasn't terribly effusive about his inner, inner life, his inner feelings. And to have be able to have collected some of that, at least, is a very valuable, valuable addition to the collection.

Jenny I can see how that's really helpful with authors too.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny Like if someone wanted to write up like a biopic—

Jim His correspondence, for instance, with his brother Milton, that was very revealing about his, his inner world as, as his other brothers as well.

Daniel I guess, yeah, what did he do for fun?

Jim Fishing. He loved to fish. Golf. Golf was his pastime. Cooking out, barbecuing.

Daniel Oh, very cool. Does he ever, are there any recipes there?

Jim There are, yeah. We have a box full of family recipes.

Daniel Oh, my gosh.

Jim There's a cookbook over in the VC for some of the family recipes.

Daniel I guess, like we haven't—we probably should have talked about this at the beginning of the episode, but like, what is a presidential library, like exactly? Just like, and how does it differ from like your, what most the general public might consider a library?

Jenny Well, I think a lot of people also know like the Smithsonian or whatever and they're like, why would you have individual presidential libraries if everything goes to, you know, the Smithsonian Library or the National Archives in D.C., like... yeah. And again, why is it different from a public library, but also...

Jim Well, so part of the problem is, is the presidential library isn't technically a library. We do actually a program for the, for the foundation's Ike education program called Where are the Books. This the question we get asked all the time. We do have, oddly enough, we do have one of the largest book collections in the presidential library system. We've got about 24,000 volumes that relate to the administration or to things that relate to the administration. But mostly we're not. Because the Library of Congress was the only thing that President Roosevelt sort of understood as something similar, we sort of got called presidential libraries, but we're really archives for the most part, and research libraries. So we're, we're closer to what most people probably in the audience would understand is like a university manuscript collection, that would be closer.

Jenny Or like a state library.

Jim State library, yeah.

Jenny State libraries have a lot of like, governmental type stuff too.

Jim Right. So but we don't sort of collect broadly in governmental records. We're very narrowly focused on the administration. So we're not necessarily trying to collect Department of Energy records or depart—you know, Department of Agriculture records. We are narrowly focused on the administration and the people who were members of that administration. Now, we do have personal papers collections, for instance, or manuscript collections from people who were, for instance, cabinet members in the administration or economic advisers or military advisors, science advisers, those kind of things.

But we don't, we didn't, we don't necessarily collect broadly. You're not going to find Department of Agriculture records or Department of Defense records for the most part. You know, that is National Archives job. That's, and even though we're part of the NARUS system, we are very narrowly focused on the administration for the most part, or President Eisenhower in particular, and his associates in administration. So that does set us apart. We're not a general collecting library.

You can't necessarily just pop in and pull a book off of the shelf, go over in the corner and read like you can in a public library. Right? We are a research library in that sense. In the sense of sort of a college library would be or a state library would be in, in that sense.

Jenny So if someone were wanting to visit a presidential library, then is that something where they would be better off making an appointment and kind of having an idea of what they're wanting to look for?

Jim Yes, but I want to be careful there. So because you wanted—you were asking about, we were talking a little bit earlier about what people would find unusual about a presidential library.

Jenny Yeah.

Jim So yes, you do all of the—all of the visits to do research here are by appointment. I want to be careful with that, though, because I don't want that to throw up a wall to people coming to see us.

Jenny People like, "I can't come because..."

Jim Because I get that question all the time. People are like, oh, I have to be credentialed to go there. Yes, there is a certain amount of training you have to take to come here. Because when we bring materials out to you in the research room, you are getting the same papers, the same materials that would have gone on President Eisenhower's desk. We have to teach you how to handle that.

Daniel Oh, yeah. Of course.

Jim Right? That doesn't mean we're withholding anything from you. We just want to make sure that the next person who comes in has the ability to handle and work with those same materials. Right? So we have to teach you a little bit about how to handle, respect those materials, take care of them. Because if I lose them, they're gone. Right? Nobody else could see—if they're, if they're lost or destroyed, they're damaged, we have no way to replace them. They're one of a kind. Again, I don't want to intimidate anybody away from using them. I just want them to understand and respect what we're doing. Having said that, we're open to anyone. I had a 7-year-old come in and do research last year.

Daniel That's, that's funny.

Jenny That's really cool.

Daniel That's really cool. That's so cool.

Jim Who wanted to work on Eisenhower and Stalin. And came all the way from Denver.

Daniel That's funny.

Jim He and his 10-year-old brother.

Daniel I mean, like, he better got an A. [laughs]

Jim Oh, no, he went better than that. He made a three minute, he made a five minute PowerPoint and a three minute video presentation that he sent back to us to talk about his experience of doing work at the Eisenhower Library. The reason I bring that up is I think people, the thing that people would find is that anybody can come here, right? And that you could find a way to do research. You don't, there's no credentialing in that sense. You don't have to be a scholar. You don't have to be from Wichita State to come here.

Jenny You can just be interested.

Jim You can just be interested. We have people who come here and do family history research. We have people who come here and do local history research. We have people who come here and do research on agriculture trends. We have people who come here and do research on medicine or farming or whatever. You don't even have to be researching on presidents or diplomacy or military history or all of those things that we associate with being presidential and lofty and weighty. There, the presidency touches on almost every aspect of American life. That's part of what we were doing with Ike's Work. We wanted people to see that the presidency hits almost all of us in one way or the other. You can come see that here and you don't have to be special to come do that.

Jenny Yeah. Even with public libraries, people are very intimidated by. it So I could imagine a presidential library like that's elevated tenfold.

Jim Yeah.

Jenny And I mostly wanted to make sure like, people knew like the process of, well, if I want to go, like, how do I go about doing it, knowing that they can, you know, come in and... and usually the instruction on how to handle stuff has usually happened when you, before you see the—

Jim Yeah. Right.

Jenny Because I've done it before in like with photographs usually like—

Daniel Definitely seems like a linen glove place, right?

Jim So we can handle—it isn't, actually. And in fact, actually National Archives has gotten away from that. Other than handling original photographs, we've gotten away from that because we actually found that linen gloves destroy paper faster than anything else.

Jenny I think that when I went, they had it only for the photographs, like they actually had told me when you're handling paper, don't, don't use the gloves because you run the risk of tearing it.

Jim Yep, you tear it.

Daniel I'm teaching myself comic book grading right now, so, like, I didn't—they recommend the gloves, but I'm going to go with you on this.

Jenny Yeah, I think I just heard gloves is only for photographs.

Jim So mainly, coming into the library is really simple. The easiest thing to do is email us and tell us you want to come. We do have to set up appointments. Because we have limited staff like everybody else, and we want to make sure you get a great experience coming here, that you get what you want. So we would start out just trying to understand what you're trying to research. Doesn't matter what that is. You don't have to have some lofty topic to come in. We will treat you just, you know, whether you're a government official coming down from the Department of State or you're somebody sitting in your living room at home, doesn't matter. We don't care. We're going to treat you the same one way—regardless. We just want to get a handle on it so that we can get material out and ready to go when you get here.

Jenny I was going to say, it saves you time, too.

Jim Saves you guys a bunch of time.

But then there's going to be a couple of forms to fill out. We've got, we've got information we got to collect. We've got to issue your researcher card, that sort of thing. There is a training video that we will send you to. In the end, you will get a certificate. And from that, we've got to get that. Part of the reason we have you do that is that saves you time. We don't then have to put you through that when you get here. And you know, we are open, you know, during the week Monday through Friday, you know, 9 to 4. So you don't have to get here tremendously early. You know, we will... And then also your researcher card gets you into the museum. So that is a bonus to that. So all of that can take place, but it's not a hard process, really easy to do. We will walk you through that via email or via a video chat or however you want to handle that. It's not a big deal. It's just that if we can handle all that before you get here, you get to spend more time with the paperwork, with the paper and the documents and the museum and things like that.

Daniel I will say, I know a few of our listeners are like science fiction writers, and I'll just say, check it out, guys. Come check.

Jim So that's one of the things—I don't know if the letter's actually out in the exhibit. I know we pulled it for the exhibit. There's like all kinds of science fiction, what seems science fiction. There's a letter from a guy who wanted to remake the the interstate highway system we were talking about by putting periodic, I call them spaceports because they were designed to handle car traffic, rail traffic, air traffic and space traffic all in the same time. He wanted to put these periodically along the highway.

Daniel Yeah.

Jim So even if you're into science, science fiction, there were people who were actually proposing to the government that we go full-on...

Daniel Space race.

Jenny This was like the midst of the atomic age.

Jim In the 1950s, yeah.

Jenny So like I imagine—

Jim The sky was the limit.

Jenny Yeah.

Jim What they were proposing.

Daniel I love retro-futurism and mid-century stuff.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel Just like the look of the place is really cool.

Jenny So if somebody wanted to visit the presidential library but maybe isn't really into the research part, we still have other stuff here that they could see. What other options are available for someone that's maybe not as interested in the research, but they want to still check it out?

Jim Oh my gosh, You can spend all day here and never do research. So of course we have the, the boyhood home, which is phenomenal to experience the Eisenhower boys as, as kids. The, we do tours of the home, half-hour tours of the home where you can go in and see the house as it was when, when Ike's mom—it's almost exactly as it was when, when Ike's mom lived her final years in the house there. The house is loaded with materials that were in the house at the time she lived there. Quilts, coverings, furniture. All of that can be experienced exactly as it was, including the radio that she used to listen to her son on when he was commanding troops in World War Two that the boys gave her.

So all of that is there so you can experience life as she knew it, and as to a degree as the boys knew it when they were growing up there in the house. And if you get fortunate enough to get William over there, our curator, you will learn more about the Eisenhower family and particularly about Ida and the... yeah, so that part of it and that, that is a totally different way to experience, right? To be surrounded by that atmosphere of just, you know how it is, right, to go into a historic building, be surrounded by that, the atmosphere, the items, the things that that were important to an individual, that made up their life, is a totally different way of experiencing a person's life and, and childhood. Right?

Jenny And it's like the closest way we can really experience time travel.

Jim Yes. In a way it is, right. It's like walking into a time capsule.

Jenny Yeah. Which is really cool.

Jim You can go from there to the larger experience of the museum, which is laid out more or less on a timeline of the president's life, beginning with his boyhood in Abilene and the story of his, his parents and his brothers and growing up here in Abilene. And that progresses through his military career early on at West Point. And then is, and what's great about that experience is that is more of a focus on he and Mamie and is told through, through the words of Ike and Mamie together. And this just magnificent teamwork that they've forged throughout their life and their marriage and, and it was not always a perfect team. There were rocky, rocky points along the line, right? Ike and Mamie come from very different backgrounds. Ike comes from the south side of Abilene, from the wrong side of the tracks. Mamie is a bit from a very wealthy, almost...

You know, she's almost a socialite family. She comes from very privileged background. They go into living as an army couple in the, in some of the most difficult years it is to be an Army officer and, and wife in the interwar years and forged this tremendous relationship that ultimately leads to the White House through some of the most difficult years coming out of, you know, both going into World War Two and coming out of World War Two. And so, you know, not only are we telling this story. Of this tremendous period of American history, but also this phenomenal story of this couple who manage to weather that together and, and forge, you know, this tremendous story of leadership for a nation. It's, and to experience that through the artifacts and material culture that we have, have over there is phenomenal. You know, one of the, one of the things that I love is that we balance that story with rooms. We have one whole gallery over there devoted to Mamie herself and the dresses and the whole part of being First Lady in the White House. You know, it's not just about Ike, it's a combined story.

Jenny I think that's kind of neat, too, because you don't see as much highlight on like, first ladies. And so people that are into women's history or people that are into World War Two presidential history, it sounds like there's kind of a little bit for everyone.

Jim Her story is woven into it from the time she enters Ike's life when he is, you know, first sent to Fort Sam Houston. as part of his first duty assignments right out of West Point, all the way through to the very end. It's, it's, and I don't think you can tell that story without her. That would, would be to misrepresent.

Daniel "I like Ike" is like a historical phrase. Is there like a lot of information about like his campaigns here as well?

Jim Oh yeah. We have all of the records. From the Republican National Committee on both of the campaigns and plus all of the campaign stuff that that was developed around the campaigns, either from the RNC or from the specifically the Eisenhower campaigns.

Daniel I would like to like, see, like the genesis of who pitched that phrase, "I like Ike."

Jenny Oh yeah, that slogan.

Daniel That would be real cool. I can come do it. So that was like my thing I wanted to learn about. I can come see what you have on that.

Jim You can come do that.

Daniel That's cool. That's really cool.

Jenny This kind of ties into what you were saying about like how somebody would go about visiting. So if somebody was visiting, we can just say a presidential library in general for the very first time, what do you think they would find the most surprising or unexpected about it? And that could be in general or specific to this library.

Jim How easy it is.

Daniel Yeah?

Jim That's what they would find surprising. How easy it is and how open it is. I get researchers from Europe all the time who go, who say, we can't do this there. We can't, we don't, we come here to study our country because I can't do it there. Right? That's, so and I don't... I mean, you might have been looking for a different kind of answer, but I think, but I think—

Jenny That actually makes sense, though. We get people from other countries that will come visit us and be like, it's, it's free?

Jim Yeah.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny I know in some European countries there's just like subscription, but like there's like a small fee they pay to have access to a library. It's not even necessarily that they're living in an oppressive country because I think in like Ireland they just pay, it's like a special based instead of taxes. I mean, we kind of do because of taxes, but it's just a little bit more forthright. So things are not as accessible in terms of library collections like they are in the U.S.

Daniel Yeah.

Jim But I mean, I think those are... I mean, there are all kinds of cool stuff I can try out and say this, these would be the things. But I think people, the ease of use of the library, it's really not that hard to come here. But also just the, the broadness of most people, I think, have this sort of intimidation factor about presidential libraries. They, they really think that they're closed off. They're off limits. There's nothing here that 2ould be of interest. And I really want to break that idea down, because I think almost everybody who comes here is surprised about how easy it is, how friendly the staff is.

Jim How, how much they find once they get here. And that... so I, I'm not trying to dodge the question. I really, that is what surprises people when, when they get into the collection.

Jenny And I think that ties into a lot of misconceptions too, that like, it's not for me because I'm not a scholar.

Jim Right.

Jenny Or I don't work in government or something.

Jim Yeah.

Jenny And I think, you know, for having all the presidential libraries that we have, a lot of people like don't really know what they are, what they do.

Daniel Yeah. I guess, before we get out here, America turned 250 years old this year. Being like, a, like, kind of like a... a facility, at least, like, like that's geared towards a particular part of American history, I bet you've been busy.

Jim Yeah.

Daniel Yeah, with what's been going on. What is like, I guess, we talked about Ike's Works. Have a, have there been, like, have you noticed any, like, increase in visitation with holiday or the anniversary or anything or, and what do you have planned for the rest of the year? Anything else upcoming?

Jim I don't know that we've actually gotten the numbers back. Sam, do you know? They're up?

Daniel That's awesome. Yeah.

Jenny There's been a lot of engagement with just that kind of history in general, too. I've seen a lot of like documentary. There was a recent documentary that I watched. It was like a series. I forgot what it's called. I think it was called The American Experiment. It's really interesting. And it has figures from all across the political spectrum, which is what I appreciated.

Jenny This kind of ties into that because like America250 we're talking about legacy.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny What do you think—and maybe we can kind of end with this—Eisenhower's like most underrated accomplishment? This can be, like, a personal kind of thing because he had a lot of different accomplishments. But what do you think is one that maybe not as recognized as it should be?

Jim Yeah, probably civil rights. Probably civil rights. His, his successors get so much more... you know, the, the Voting Rights Act, the civil rights acts that are, that are passed under President Johnson and President Kennedy, but the vote, the Civil Rights Act of '57, first civil rights legislation since the Civil War. And even though it didn't go nearly as far as President Eisenhower had hoped, it's 80 years between the Civil War and that legislation.

Jenny And it was like that first step, really.

Jim And that laid the foundation for all that was to follow in the '60s.

Jenny And when, like, Jim Crow was still going, like, really strong at the time to kind of go up against that is hard.

Daniel Yeah. And again, like, I feel like there's so much history here. I feel like there's an entire verse of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire. [laughter]

Jim Very true. Yeah.

Daniel That involved Eisenhower.

Jim I mean, yeah, I mean, if you look at that song. Right? I mean, fully half of it is Eisenhower administration.

Jenny Oh, yeah.

Daniel Yeah. Yeah, it's...

Jim It's, it's a good lesson in what that era's, and I think, I think it's important to consider, I mean, if you think about President Eisenhower. And so if we're going to talk a little bit about... between Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower is the only president who's going to serve eight full years. But during that time period, when you have a time where there's, you know, he goes and the Korean War ends, there's no global hot war conflict. It's easy to pass over all of the things that are actually happening. The Cold War stays cold That's a massive accomplishment.

Jenny Yeah, because all the really hot activity during the Cold War didn't really happen till like the mid- to late '60s.

Jim All of these things that we talk about, these 23—and 23 is, again, off the top of his head.

Jenny Yeah.

Jim Right? When you start adding those up, you see the clip that advertises the exhibit. And you think about that in an eight year period with a potentially hostile congress, under balanced budgets. And then start thinking about how hard that is to do. Now you're talking about some pretty significant accomplishment, but it's all done very quietly. It's all done without fanfare. It's all done with it, it's just—

Jenny No spectacle.

Jim With, with a quiet elegance that is just getting the job done, you know?

Daniel That's, that's really cool. Again, thank you again Jim for letting us check out the library and, and talking with us and telling us all about Ike. Can we call him Ike? [laughs]

Jenny Everybody calls him Ike.

Jim Yeah, you can call him Ike.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel I'm assuming there's hundreds of books written about Eisenhower. Like, and I'm like, so for people that might want to learn more about the man, the president, the general, I mean, do you have any recommendations for where to start? Like, what's the good like, which is like, like, something that you just think is like, does a good job at, like, representing him as a human.

Jim Oh, well, yeah. So that one's easy. The thing that I think that best represents Ike the man is, is a book Ike wrote which is, it's called At Ease—

Daniel Oh, cool.

Jim Stories I Tell to Friends. It was something that he wrote after the presidency, and it was, it was kind of written by President Eisenhower to fill the gaps he thought were left out of the biographies. Some of it is childhood stories. Some of it is stories from, from World War Two. Some of it is stories from the White House years, and even carries on a little bit into the retirement years. But it was just, he literally took a tape recorder and was like, I'm going to fill the gaps. And it's literally him telling stories. And then they were, of course, it was polished into a book, but it's literally just trying to tell some of the things that didn't get caught by the, by the biographers.

Daniel So he recorded it?

Jim He did.

Daniel Is there, can I get an audiobook read by him? Or not? Does that not exist?

Jim You can't. But one of the things because one of the things that again, surprises people about the library, very little of our, very little of our material is digitized. One of the things we're in the process of doing is digitizing the recordings that became At Ease. And we hope at some point to be able to put those out and have Ike tell the stories in his own words.

Daniel That would be really cool.

Jenny That would be really interesting because when you go to like, I don't know if it's on the Library of Congress website or the National Archives, you can get recordings of like well-known writers, like reading excerpts or like poems is a big one that I've seen. And these are old recordings, too. And so I was wondering, like, if something like that would exist.

Jim Yeah, this would actually be the reverse. These would be just sort of the raw recordings that the, that the book was drawn from. He didn't literally dictate the book necessarily.

Jenny Oh, no, I figure they were short recording on a—

Jim But yeah. Yeah, short recordings.

Daniel Well, thank you. We've had an awesome time learning all about Eisenhower and the library and you, Jim. So thank you again.

Jenny Yeah, I've learned a lot. I want to become, get my little research credentials, come back and visit.

Jim Privileged to be part of it. My wife grew up in Wichita. The public library there is a big part of her life. I was excited to have a chance to be part of this.

Daniel Yeah. And definitely if you want everyone to come to a program, come visit us, check it out. We would love to have you.

Jim I'd love to do that.

Daniel Yeah. Is there a website? People want to just check out the library or the museum and everything. Is there a good website to direct people to and to find out more?

Jim EisenhowerLibrary.gov.

Daniel That's easy enough.

Jenny That's easy to remember. Where can people find the library or museum on social media?

Jim So Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Threads and Instagram.

Jenny All the big ones.

Daniel Yeah, Ike has expanded into cyber space.

Jenny So it's @IkeLibrary?

Daniel @IkeLibrary.

Jenny Across the—okay.

Daniel Thank you again, Jim. And yeah. We're excited to check out the, the library some more. So, yeah. Happy to have you on. Yeah.

Jim Thank you for having me.

Jenny Yeah, thank you for being on Read Return Repeat.

Daniel, voiceover That was a lot of fun. I, that was actually a really fun interview. And also just it was cool to, like, get out of town for a second.

Jenny, voiceover Oh, yeah. And I've never been to Abilene before. And it was kind of fun to—I've never been to a presidential library before and I'm a librarian.

Daniel, voiceover Yeah, that was my second presidential library. And it was, it was cool. It was really cool to check it out. I love the... I'm a big, like, architecture nerd and it's just a beautiful campus. And, and seeing his childhood home there was really cool too.

Jenny, voiceover Oh yeah, it was cool. And it made me really want to like, learn more about Eisenhower. I think the fact that I didn't know he was a painter and I like to paint, so I thought that was really cool.

Daniel, voiceover I yeah, I actually was like, wow. He was like a really cool painter. And pretty good. Shout out to Abilene, Kansas. We did have lunch there. Pretty good Mexican food. I was actually enjoying—I forgot the name of the place, but—

Jenny, voiceover I don't remember the name.

Daniel, voiceover Abilene is a cute town.

Jenny, voiceover Yeah, and also just many, many thanks to Jim and Samantha, like, for just taking time out of their day.

Daniel, voiceover Yeah, that was really cool. They, they made it, they took us on a tour. Kind of treated us like they gave us the all-star treatment. And, it was, it was a lot of fun. Jim was a really awesome interview, and Samantha was really hospitable and great. And I can't recommend checking out the library enough.

Jenny, voiceover Yeah. And, definitely check out that exhibit.

Daniel, voiceover Ike's Works.

Jenny, voiceover Yeah, they were talking about, that we talked about it in the interview.

Daniel, voiceover Yeah.

Jenny, voiceover It's going on for like 18 months, and it sounds really cool. So if you get a chance to check it out, I, I wholeheartedly encourage you to.

Daniel, voiceover EisenhowerLibrary.gov to find out more information about the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Jenny, voiceover Yeah. And you'll want to definitely like check their hours ahead of time because their hours are different from the museum. So definitely go to their website before making a trip.

Daniel, voiceover Hey. So I do have an announcement before we get out of here, Jenny. So as you know, I do spooky stories for grown ups where we have people read scary stories. And this year we've decided to do a couple different things different. The first of things it is it will be at Wizard's Alley, which is on North Saint Francis near the Douglas and Saint Francis intersection next to Bite Me Barbecue. It will be the night of October 23. And this year, Spooky Stories and Read Return Repeat are combining for a very special episode where me, Jenny, maybe some special guests will read you, the listeners, spooky stories.

Jenny, voiceover Yeah, I think this will be fun. I'm really curious to hear what kind of stuff people come up with. We have a great community of writers here.

Daniel, voiceover To submit a short story or poem for us to read on the podcast, please visit Wichita library.org/services. Scroll down to the short story portal and you can submit via the short story portal. I'd like to have all the submissions to go over for the podcast by October 2. We will release more information about this on our socials, so make sure you check our socials.

Jenny, voiceover I'm so excited about it.

Daniel, voiceover Yeah, I'm excited for this episode. We haven't done a live episode in a while. I think since like Banned Books Week a couple of years ago.

Jenny, voiceover It's been a minute.

Daniel, voiceover Or when we did the ReadICT kickoffs. I'm excited to get back, come out and check us out again. That's October 23 at Wizard's Alley. More info, you can check out wichitalibrary.org/events for more information and check us out. Check us out on YouTube. Wherever you listen to podcasts at Spotify and leave a review.

Jenny, voiceover Rate us, leave a review. That's how people find us.

Daniel, voiceover Yeah, let us know what you think. And, yeah, we'd love some feedback. So if you can, whatever app you use, if you can leave a review through that podcast app, leave it, let us know. We'd love to hear back. And, thank you guys again and we will see you on the next episode.