DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER . 1953-1961

Bringing to the presidency his prestige as commanding general of the forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms to ease the tensions of the Cold War. He pursued the policies of "Modern Republicanism," pointing out as he left office, "America is today the strongest, most influential, and most productive nation in the world."

Born in Denison, Texas, on October 14, 1890, and brought up in Kansas, Eisenhower was the third of seven sons. Skilled at high school sports, he received an appointment to West Point. He excelled in staff assignments in his early army career. After Pearl Harbor, he was called to Washington for a war plans assignment. On D-Day, 1944, he was supreme commander of the troops invading France.

After the war, he assumed supreme command over the NATO forces assembled in 1951. Republican emissaries to his headquarters near Paris persuaded him to run for president in 1952. "I like Ike" was an irresistible slogan; Eisenhower won a sweeping victory.

Negotiating from military strength, he tried to reduce the strains of the Cold War. In 1953, the signing of a truce brought an armed peace along the border of South Korea. The death of Stalin the same year caused shifts in relations with Russia. Both Russia and the United States had developed hydrogen bombs. With the threat of such destructive force hanging over the world, Eisenhower, with the leaders of the British, French, and Russian governments, met at Geneva in July 1955. The president proposed that the United States and Russia exchange blueprints of each other's military establishments. The Russians greeted the proposal with silence, but were so cordial that tensions relaxed.

After suffering a sudden, severe heart attack in September 1955, Eisenhower recovered, and in his second term continued most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs. As desegregation of schools began, he used troops to assure compliance with the orders of a federal court; he also ordered the complete desegregation of the armed forces. "There must be no second class citizens in this country," he wrote.

Eisenhower concentrated on maintaining world peace. Before he left office in January 1961, for his farm in Gettysburg, he urged the necessity of maintaining an adequate military strength, but cautioned that vast, long-continued military expenditures could breed potential dangers to our way of life. He concluded with a prayer for peace "in the goodness of time." Both themes remained timely and urgent when he died, after a long illness, on March 28, 1969.

JOHN F. KENNEDY . 1961-1963

On November 22, 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected president; he was the youngest to die.

He was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, he entered the navy. In 1943, his PT boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer, and an injured Kennedy led the survivors to safety. Back from the war, he became a Democratic congressman for the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. Recovering from back surgery in 1955, he wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history. By 1960 John F. Kennedy was a first-ballot nominee for president. Millions watched his television debates with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Winning by a narrow margin in the popular vote, Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic president.

His inaugural address offered the memorable injunction: "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." As president, his economic programs launched the country on its longest sustained expansion since World War II. Responding to ever more urgent demands, he took vigorous action in the cause of equal rights, calling for new civil rights legislation. With the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought American idealism to the aid of developing nations. But the hard reality of the Communist challenge remained.

Kennedy permitted a band of Cuban exiles, already armed and trained, to invade their homeland. The attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro failed. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union renewed its campaign against West Berlin. Kennedy reinforced the Berlin garrison and increased the nation's military strength, including new efforts in outer space. Confronted by this reaction, Moscow relaxed pressure in Europe, but sought to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. When this was discovered by air reconnaissance in October 1962, Kennedy imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound for Cuba. The Russians backed down and agreed to take the missiles away. The American response to the Cuban crisis evidently persuaded Moscow of the futility of nuclear blackmail.

Kennedy now contended that both sides had a vital interest in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and slowing the arms race - a contention which led to the test ban treaty of 1963. The months after the Cuban crisis showed significant progress toward his goal of "a world of law and free choice, banishing the world of war and coercion." His administration thus saw the beginning of new hope for both the equal rights of Americans and the peace of the world.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON . 1963-1969

In his first years of office, Lyndon B. Johnson obtained passage of one of the most extensive legislative programs in the nation's history. Maintaining collective security, he carried on the struggle to restrain Communist encroachment in Viet Nam.

Johnson was born on August 27, 1908, in central Texas, not far from Johnson City, which his family had helped settle. He felt the pinch of rural poverty as he grew up, working his way through Southwest Texas State Teachers College. He learned compassion for the poverty of others when he taught students of Mexican descent. In 1937 he campaigned successfully for the House of Representatives on a New Deal platform, and during World War II he served in the navy, winning a Silver Star in the South Pacific.

After six terms in the House, Johnson was elected to the Senate. In 1954, he became the majority leader and obtained passage of a number of key Eisenhower measures. He was elected vice president in 1960. When Johnson was sworn in as President after Kennedy was assassinated, he obtained enactment of the measures President Kennedy had been urging - a new civil rights bill and a tax cut. He urged the nation "to build a great society, a place where the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor."

After Johnson won the 1964 election The Great Society became his agenda for Congress in January 1965. The program advocated aid to education, attack on disease, Medicare, urban renewal, beautification, conservation, development of depressed regions, a wide-scale fight against poverty, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, and removal of obstacles to the right to vote. Congress, at times augmenting or amending, enacted the recommendations. Millions of elderly people found succor through the 1965 Medicare amendment. Under Johnson, the country also made spectacular explorations of space. When three astronauts successfully orbited the moon in December 1968, Johnson congratulated them: "You've taken ... all of us, all over the world, into a new era . . ."

But two overriding crises had been gaining momentum since 1965. Despite Johnson's best efforts, unrest in black ghettos troubled the nation, and fighting continued in Viet Nam. Controversy over the war had become acute by the end of March 1968, when the president limited the bombing of North Viet Nam in order to initiate negotiations. At the same time, he startled the world by withdrawing as a candidate for re-election so that he might devote his full efforts, unimpeded by politics, to the quest for peace.

When he left office, peace talks were under way; he did not live to see them successful, but died suddenly of a heart attack at his Texas ranch on January 22, 1973.

RICHARD M. NIXON . 1969-1974

During his presidency, Richard Milhous Nixon succeeded in ending American fighting in Viet Nam and improving relations with the U.S.S.R. and China. But scandal brought fresh divisions to the country and ultimately led to his resignation.

Born in Yorba Linda, California, on January 9, 1913, Nixon had a brilliant record at Whittier College and Duke University Law School before beginning the practice of law. In World War II, he served as a navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific. On leaving the service, he was elected to Congress from his California district. In 1950, he won a Senate seat. Two years later, General Eisenhower selected Nixon, age 39, to be his running mate.

Nominated for president by acclamation in 1960, he lost by a narrow margin to John F. Kennedy. In 1968 he won the election. His accomplishments while in office included revenue sharing, the end of the draft, new anticrime laws, and a broad environmental program. One of the most dramatic events of his first term occurred in 1969, when American astronauts made the first moon landing.

During 1972 visits to Beijing and Moscow, Nixon reduced tensions with China and the U.S.S.R. His meetings with Russian leader Leonid I. Brezhnev produced a treaty to limit strategic nuclear weapons. In 1973, he announced an accord with North Viet Nam to end American involvement in Indochina. His secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, negotiated disengagement agreements between Israel and its opponents, Egypt and Syria in 1974.

In his 1972 bid for office, Nixon won by one of the widest margins on record. But within a few months, his administration was embattled over the "Watergate" scandal, stemming from a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee traced to officials of the Committee to Re-elect the President. Nixon denied any personal involvement, but the courts forced him to yield tape recordings which indicated that he had, in fact, tried to divert the investigation.

As a result of unrelated scandals in Maryland, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned in 1973. Nixon nominated, and Congress approved, House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford as vice president. Then, on August 8, 1974, faced with impeachment, Nixon announced that he would resign.

In his last years, Nixon gained praise as an elder statesman. By the time of his death on April 22, 1994, he had written numerous books on his experiences in public life and on foreign policy.