By Frederick N. Rasmussen , Sun Reporter|August 03, 2008
In a recent Sun column, Theo Lippman Jr., a retired Sun editorial writer and author, wrote that if Sen. John McCain is elected, "he will take the oath of office when he is 72 years and five months old. That would be the oldest ever at the first day of a presidency."
Ronald Reagan was the oldest man when he was elected to the presidency and was 69 years and 11 months old when he arrived at the front door of the White House.
Reagan's seniority bumped William Henry Harrison, who was born in 1773, to second place, but he still holds the record for presidential brevity.
Harrison, a Whig, was 68 when he was inaugurated on a rainy and cold March 4, 1841, which probably contributed to the new president's coming down with pneumonia. He died a month later on April 4.
Lippman also added a quote from Um ... Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean by author Michael Erard that when Dwight Eisenhower began his eight year presidency, he was 63.
"Wrong," Douglas R. Price, a semiretired Chestertown businessman and collector extraordinaire of presidential trivia, who in his younger days was a member of Eisenhower's White House staff, wrote in an e-mail.
"That was not the case," Price wrote. "I attended Ike's 62nd birth anniversary celebration aboard his presidential campaign train in Texas on Oct. 14, 1952, fourteen weeks before he was inaugurated at 12:32 p.m. on Jan. 20, 1953, as the 34th president."
Price added that "Ike was still 62 when sworn in as president and was not 63 until Oct. 14, 1953."
"Ike always said that you have one birthday and the rest are 'birth anniversaries.' That was his outlook," Price said.
The confusion over his exact age and date of birth may have risen out of the fact that a birth certificate for David Eisenhower, as he was known after being born in Denison, Texas, on Oct. 14, 1890, had never been filed in the Grayson County clerk's office.
Ike was a toddler when his family left Denison and moved to Abilene, Kans.
"In time, his mother changed his name to Dwight David Eisenhower, in part thinking two Davids (her husband was David) in the house would be confusing," Price said.
"In the fall of 1952, The Denison Herald reported that there was no record of Eisenhower's birth there," Price said.
After reading the story, Lonnie S. Roberts, a Denison resident, wrote to Mamie Eisenhower, who replied in a letter, that her husband "was amused that he wasn't a matter of record in Grayson County," reported The New York Times.
