May 13th – May 18th 2026
This road trip continues from Chicago (https://myvoice.rajeevkuruganti.com/2026/06/26/chicago-may-7th-13th-2026/) to Columbia and then to Denver.
On May 13th 2026, I drove from Chicago to St. Louis, Missouri to have lunch with my ex project manager and friend Jennifer. After about 5 hours, I reached St. Louis and had lunch with Jenn. It was good to see her after more than 4 years. We worked together on Kessel Run and afterwards during Covid 19 we worked for another 1 year on the same project.
Prerna, Naman and Navan started around noon from Chicago and drove straight to Columbia, MO to Navan’s apartment. We relaxed with Komal (Diptiben’s daughter) and her family at Navan’s place. On saturday 16th, Naman left for Tampa, FL and reached his place. I left Columbia to Littleton, Colorado on Sunday morning 17th May. I stopped in Abiline, Kansas to visit the Dwight Eisenhower musuem and library. The distance from Columbia to Littleton is about 740 miles and took 10+ hours. I drove in 2 days stopping for the night at Hays, Kansas.
Dwight Eisenhower Musuem
This was my first visit in visiting a Presidential Library and Museum; interestingly Dwight Eisenhower’s Museum and library is in Abilene, Kansas. The main reason was Dwight Eisenhower grew up in Abilene Kansas and became a general in the army immediately in World War II, successfully led the allies to victory and retired from the Army.
Dwight Eisenhower, born in 1890 and passed on 1969, was an interesting man he was a general during D-Day in World War II. There is a movie being released this year (2026) on him played by actor Brendan Fraser. The Allies then wanted him to lead the D-Day of WWII and they trusted him implicitly and his strategies. The power group is shown below:
Eisenhower retired from the Army and public life and was collecting his pension after WWII. After the war, the Allies would like to put a NATO agreement (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). When they were discussing as to who would be the best diplomatic person to draft the agreement, the nations leaders thought of Dwight Eisenhower and requested President Harry Truman to appoint him as the representative of USA.
An interesting saying about Dwight Eisenhower is that the ‘job always found him’ – as leader of the DDay in WWII or NATO lead to draft the agreement between 12 countries. After he completed this task, he returned to his retirement. However, the country was not done with his leadership.
After Truman, he became the President, not by choice but by pressure. He was approched by both the Democratic and the Republican parties to run for president. He believed in peace after the war so much so and realized he had to build the country and generate jobs. He chose the Republican party primarily as Truman (Democratic) did not like him and his policies, although they worked for more than 10 years together when Eisenhower was a general. Ike (Eisenhower’s nickname) won in landslide victory over the democratic candidate and was president for two terms.
He also started NASA and interstate highway between states and removed segregation in schools wherever the federal government had power to remove segregation. He could not remove it in Mississippi and Alabama, where Martin Luther King started fighting for those 2 states and it went up to the Supreme court before segration ended there too in the 60s.
His achievements are too many to enumerate and the wikipedia covers a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower
This trip is continued on another post with return to Monroe Township, NJ https://myvoice.rajeevkuruganti.com/2026/08/07/littleton-colorado/
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