Birthday Fellows

A group of prominent businessmen last summer thought of a fine birthday present for President Eisenhower: they wanted to fix over a room in his Gettysburg farmhouse and fill it with Pennsylvania Dutch antiques. But when the group presented the idea to Mamie, she promptly vetoed it. The President, said she, already owned "too many things." Why not set up a scholarship in his name?

Last week 30 of the 58 trustees* of the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, Inc. met with the President for the first time to tell him just how their program would work. It contained a dash of Rhodes, a smidgin of Fulbright and a seasoning of Point Four. Its object: to train "rising young leaders" in non-Communist nations to help solve their countries' most urgent social and economic problems.

Each year a selection committee in various countries will determine the problems it wants worked on and the men & women it wants trained. Then the trustees will map a program for each fellow. Some fellows (college degrees not required) may be sent to ranches to learn about raising cattle; some will go to farms, others to corporations, and some to colleges and universities. At the same time, some Americans will be sent abroad--to study housing in Sweden, or the cellulose industry in Finland, or jets in Britain.

The Eisenhower trustees intend to start off next fall with about 20 fellows (estimated cost for each: $7,000-$8,000), but hope eventually to have 100 a year. Ike himself was pleased with his birthday present. The program, said he, "can well become the most meaningful thing that has happened in our time."

*Among them: Chairman Frank Abrams of the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, Navy Secretary Robert Anderson, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, Governor James Byrnes, Oveta Culp Hobby, Paul Hoffman, John Roosevelt, Editor Ben Hibbs of the Saturday Evening Post, President Millicent Mclntosh of Barnard College, Edward R. Murrow, President Juan Trippe of Pan American, Thomas J. Watson Jr. of I.B.M.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.