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While the President's answer was a classic solution to a delicate problem, it was also the truth. Bluff Edgar Eisenhower, a popular and respected member of Tacoma's legal community, loves to recall how he and Dwight (two years younger) used to fight "for the sheer joy of slugging one another." In fact, he still boasts that he can lick young Dwight any time, any place—a statement that Ike heartily denies.
"I Want to Forget." Night after the President's press conference, both Edgar and Milton Eisenhower were guests at a White House stag dinner. Milton and Ike took Edgar aside for a brief lesson on how to keep out of trouble while talking to news-hungry reporters. Ike chided Edgar about his budget comments, asked how much Edgar's own office expenses had gone up. Edgar hedged. He had recently moved into a spanking new office (in Tacoma's Puget Sound Bank Building) and therefore had no basis for comparison, he said. Leaving the White House, Edgar said he had not changed his mind about the budget, but added brusquely: "I want to forget the whole thing as fast as I can."
The Eisenhower budget's professional and political critics would hardly allow Edgar to forget what he had said. But in their attempts to read a serious family split into the affair, they forgot something themselves: Edgar and Dwight Eisenhower have always fought for the sheer joy of slugging—but when blood poisoning set in after High-Schooler Dwight fell and hurt his knee back in Abilene, Kans., it was Edgar who stayed two days and nights at his bedside and prevented a doctor from amputating.