Homeward Bound

After six weeks in Denver, the convalescing President grew happily restive as the autumn days flew swiftly. He walked as much as 500 feet without halting; his visitors were many. He talked to visitors about his heart attack. For the first few days, under sedation, he had felt completely spent, not caring what happened next. He had felt his own pulse and found it laboring like a weary steam locomotive: "Chug . . . Chug, Chug, Chug . . . Chuuug." Now the rhythm was calm and strong and regular. That was a good sign, and there were many more.

His medical bulletins eliminated the phrase "without complications." He shaved standing up; barber Martin Himmelsbach cut his hair. He phoned the Doud home to say hello to Mamie's mother. With his painting easel, he sat out in the bright-lit sundeck foyer in a straightback chair, copying a recent LIFE photograph of his grandson, David, which showed the boy in a black ten-gallon hat with a fishing rod over his shoulder.

The Electric Chair. Often he walked down the hall to Mamie's room to chat and pace the room for exercise while she breakfasted or lunched. His own meals were hearty ones: steak, prime ribs of beef, roast partridge. Attendants brought his lunch to Mamie's room one day, his breakfast the next. He was allowed to roam about whenever he wanted to on the hospital's eighth floor, permitted out of bed any time except during his two-hour afternoon rest. Pushing its control button i, he received some visitors in "my electric chair," a fancy convalescent device that raised and lowered his back and legs or gently oscillated. After 15-minute morning huddles with Sherman Adams, he received official callers, among them Postmaster General Summerfield and Labor Secretary Mitchell. Summerfield later told reporters that he had talked to the President about legislation to raise first-class mail rates to 4-c-, airmail to 7-c-.

Ike's most interesting visitor of the week was Britain's famed Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, who stormed Fitzsimons Army Hospital in a gorgeously gaudy uniform, with 38 ribbons in ten rows.

After a 40-minute talk with Ike, centering on Germany, Monty faced newsmen, said: "The President looks better than I ever saw him before . . . alert, interested

... I was amazed." Monty, who went to Denver in lieu of keeping a year-old date with Ike to tour the Gettysburg battlefield, warmed to his subject: "He's your President, but there are a lot of us in Europe who want to come and see him . . . We value him very highly, terribly highly ... He is one of the very few who . . . visualize this vast problem [defense of the free world] in a global way.

"A great many political leaders today have a background that is legal . . . [They] approach problems from that angle, legal or logical. He approaches them from a human, emotional angle. He can just smile at people and they do try. He is not only your guy, but our guy. He's needed today from the world angle and from your national angle ... I go away refreshed and having drawn inspiration from that man."

"No or Nuts." After that testimonial, reporters asked if the President seemed eager to get back to work. Said Infantryman Monty, mixing a cavalry metaphor: "He's biting the curb. I think he's eager to resume the reins." Then reporters asked Press Secretary Hagerty to comment on recurring suggestions that the President might resign if he decides not to run again. Said Hagerty: "You can take it in either of two words, or you can take it in one: no or nuts. Does that answer that one?" Cracked Monty: "That's what you call a fast ball."

A chest X-ray taken last week with Ike in a standing position showed that his heart remains normal in size. "The doctors are very pleased," reported Jim Hagerty. One final physical task--stair-climbing--remained before the President qualified for departure, scheduled for Nov. 11, when he will go to Washington, then on to his farm home at Gettysburg. At week's end, he had begun practicing on a two-step exercise stile in his room, preparing for the steps he would soon climb to board his plane, the Columbine--homeward bound.

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