54 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY earlier assessment. Mamie Eisenhower vowed she would not return to the camp unless Eisenhower had the location updated and improved from its rather “shabby” state. Since the Navy Department ran the location, Eisenhower utilized money from the Navy budget to do so. This update remodeled the cabin, surrounded it with increased security and additional guest structures as well as additional amenities, and, as mentioned above, rechristened it Camp David after the Eisenhower’s grandson. The renovations and improvements went beyond indoor upgrades to suit Mamie Eisenhower’s more refined tastes. For example, construction added a “projection booth” where movies could be shown to satisfy the president’s escapist passion for the westerns or cowboy movies popular during the 1940s and 1950s. His movie tastes replicated his passion for reading inexpensive western fiction, both to escape the pressures of command during Eisenhower’s leadership of the European theater of operations during World War II as well as his presidency. Not all of Eisenhower’s guests to Camp David approved of his movie selection. British Prime Minister Harold McMillan privately complained of his 1959 visit to the presidential retreat about the evening trips to watch movies at the in-house “theater.” While he enjoyed his visits with Eisenhower who had befriended him during the war, and he certainly recognized the importance of the business done in a more low-key location, he regarded the evening viewing of movies as “inconceivably banal.” Apparently they provided a truly dreadful experience for his British sensibilities and cultural tastes. Outdoor picnic tables and cooking area apparently did make visits more pleasant, and the president, a well-known and passionate golfer, had a three-hole golf course patterned after the famous Master’s course at Augusta National and another of the president’s favorite golf stops, Burning Tree, built as well. In addition to movies, reading, and golf, Eisenhower used time at Camp David to engage in a different sort of relaxation, oil painting. At other times in Eisenhower’s presidency, he even brought Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev to Camp David for negotiations, hoping that the informal and rustic nature of the location might make Khrushchev more amenable during some of the Cold War’s warmest and most intense times. Since FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower, virtually every U.S. president has used Camp David in some fashion.8
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