Mamie Eisenhower Was A MONSTER Off Camera

A carpet with no footprints. In Mamie Eisenhower's White House, the maids learned to walk along the walls so that a freshly vacuumed carpet never showed where anyone had stepped. By one account, a wheelchair stayed out of sight while Jackie Kennedy, two weeks after major surgery, toured the house on foot. And Mamie described her own childhood in three words: "I was rotten spoiled." Was America's grandmotherly first lady in pink a monster off camera? This is the story of a rich girl who lost her first son at three, moved thirty-three times as an Army wife, spent a world war alone while the gossip followed her husband, and was branded a drinker for an inner-ear disease. Not a monster, but a woman who controlled the only thing she could: her house. *Sources* National Park Service, "Mamie Eisenhower in World War II" Miller Center, Mamie Eisenhower White House Historical Association Click Americana, the 1960 White House tour