Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, in 1890 and grew up in Abilene, Kansas. Throughout his life he exemplified the plainspoken midwestern values that marked his childhood. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and went on to a distinguished career in the military. During World War II he led the invasion of Normandy, France, in 1944 and was the supreme commander of Allied forces in Western Europe. He later became the first military commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Eisenhower was not affiliated with either major American political party, but a draft effort led him to enter the Republican presidential nomination campaign, and he won the 1952 election. Eisenhower thus became the first elected Republican chief executive since 1928 and the first president born in Texas, and he was the only career military officer elected president in the twentieth century. He was reelected by a large margin in 1956. Indeed, during his two terms, Eisenhower emerged as one of the most popular presidents of the century, in accord with his campaign slogan “I like Ike.” He presided over the maturation of the cold war and a period of domestic prosperity that was marked by rising consumer culture and the beginnings of the modern civil rights movement. Eisenhower died in Washington, D.C., on March 28, 1969.