Mary Jean Eisenhower Visits Cary

Written By Richard Greene
Photographed By Kristen Brown

Though she has interacted with heads of state and other dignitaries most of her life and though she's been on the receiving end of numerous awards and accolades around theworld, Mary Jean Eisenhower said she feels truly blessed when she gets to rub shoulders with ordinary folks who are putting personal diplomacy into action.

And Cary is one of those places, Eisenhower said. She was in town earlier this month to thank and recognize students and adults alike who are active with Sisters Cities Association of Cary.

On Sept. 11, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower, Mary Jean's grandfather, launched People to People International to help foster personal communication and cross-cultural understanding that could transcend diverse communities and nations. A direct offshoot of that organization is Sister Cities International, of which the Cary association is a part. Today, the two nonprofit groups often work in tandem to better promote friendship through direct citizen-to-citizen contacts.

"Cary has an extremely dynamic Sisters Cities association," said Eisenhower, who has served as president and chief executive officer of the Kansas City-based PTPI since 2000.

"The Cary group has a lot of good people working very hard on this peace-through-understanding concept," she told Cary Magazine in an Oct. 10 interview on the afternoon prior to an evening address at the Cary Town Hall.

"Any time I get a chance to interface sincerely with people who are making it happen, that's when I'm in heaven," she noted.

While in town, Eisenhower presented Student International Ambassador Awards to two area students involved with Sister Cities of Cary. Receiving the awards were Selby Lo, a senior at N.C. State University, and Leslie Ann Willis, a freshman at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Eisenhower said she is encouraged by how both high school and university students are becoming increasingly involved in international affairs.

"I'm just amazed at not only how aware kids are on an international level, but how much they thirst to really know about each other," she said.

According to Eisenhower, People to People has a presence in 135 countries with more than 80,000 families and individuals actively participating in PTPI programs.

She specifically highlighted the achievements of a high school chapter in Princeton, N.J., with about 75 students, most of whom are 15 years old.

"Without the aid of adults, they put together a dinner and raised more money that night for the eradication of landmines than our entire board of trustees did in a year," she said.

"This is but one example of what students, who are acting locally but thinking internationally, can achieve when working together for the common good of others," Eisenhower continued.

Soon after her Cary engagement, Eisenhower headed to Cambodia, where she joined a colleague of hers for a week to visit the PTPI-sponsored landmine removal team.

Though she grew up as the daughter of an ambassador to Belgium and the granddaughter of the 34th president of the U.S., Eisenhower said she did not automatically aspire to become the top officer of People to People.

In fact, what dramatically changed her career path was a chance meeting with the son of a former Cold War-era enemy. In 1996, Eisenhower was invited to address a worldwide PTPI conference on the organization's "heart and soul." Easy enough, she said. She'd tell them "granddad stories."

The night before she was to speak, a friend grabbed her and said there's somebody who wanted to meet her — Sergei Khrushchev, son of former Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev.

"I had met his father when I was little, and he had frightened me," Eisenhower recalled.

"When I shook Sergei's hand, he made a classic comment, and I started laughing. Forty-five minutes later, I walked away absolutely elated because I had talked with one of the nicest people I had ever met in my life. That's the concept of People to People, which helps remove the mystery between peoples," she further reflected.

"I went back that Monday and put my engineering firm on notice that I was changing my life, basically," Eisenhower added.

A few years later, she become PTPI's chief ambassador. Since 2000, she's traveled to more than 40 countries advancing its mission.

But as excited as Eisenhower gets about People to People, she relishes the opportunity to share memories about her grandparents.

In an answer to a Cary Town Hall audience question about her grandmother, Mary Jean Eisenhower described Mamie Eisenhower as "my mentor and absolute soul mate."

She recounted the final media interview she gave two months before suffering a stroke, during which Barbara Walters asked her how she wanted people to remember her.

"My grandmother was really taken aback by the question and said, 'Well, I've never really thought about that.' She stopped, then put her hand up and replied, 'Just a good friend.' And that's the way she was," Eisenhower told the group.

When asked by Cary Magazine for a favorite memory about her grandfather, Eisenhower described when Latiscia, her best friend, died at age 9 from a birth defect in her heart. Eisenhower was 7 at the time.

Visibly struggling with Latiscia's death, Eisenhower was sitting on the couch at her grandfather's farm in Gettysburg, Pa. Her granddad was watching one of his favorite TV programs, Green Acres.

"Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him glance at me. He turned off the TV, sat down beside me and started talking with me about Latiscia. It was very touching. He had his arm around me, and I put my head on his chest, and I heard his heart beat," she explained.

"I felt so safe and so secure, like the world was going to be all right," she added. "And at that moment, everything was fine."