"Ike's remaining nine years were generally happy ones. He presided over the farm, and Mamie the house at Gettysburg. He painted frequently, a hobby begun at Columbia and pursued without much talent, almost purely for relaxation. There was still the Gang for golf and bridge, Scrabble with Mamie in her sunroom, and there were grandchildren to indulge. The Eisenhowers also began spending the winters at Eldorado Country Club in California's high chaparral, doing much the same things. Being Ike, writing was an obvious recourse. But while Crusade in Europe had been dictated in a blazing three months, Eisenhower now struggled for three years with his White House memoirs, and the two-volume product was not nearly so crisp, bordering on turgid, actually, robbed of energy and coherence by security considerations. But later he bounced back and produced At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, a look back much more in the spirit of MacArthur's Reminiscences, and accordingly more readable. Unfortunately, Ike's good times were punctuated by heart attacks, one in November 1965 he recovered well enough from to play golf again; but a coronary in April 1968 landed him in his last stop, Walter Reed, ward 8, VIP suite. Here he suffered a third the day after giving a televised speech to the GOP convention in Miami about to nominate Richard Nixon for president. It was from the same sickbed that he watched Nixon win the election and the White House, and then his daughter Julie marry Ike's grandson David, tying these two now presidential families together with bonds of matrimony. For Ike, there was no escape from Nixon. And nothing to do but wait for the end in the suite Mamie had decorated in soft pinks and greens. On March 27, he told his son he wanted to be taken off life support: "I've had enough, John. Tell them to let me go." The next morning he summoned John and grandson David and had them lower the stage and stand at attention while he uttered his last words: "I want to go; God take me," then lapsed into unconsciousness. He died just past noon, March 28, 1969. The next day his body was placed in the Capitol Rotunda, in a standard-issue Army coffin, clad in his Ike jacket uniform, devoid of decorations, only his five stars. Among the mourners was Charles de Gaulle, as promised, with him to the end. The Washington ceremonies concluded, his flag-draped casket was placed on a funeral train for Abilene, where two days later Dwight David Eisenhower was laid to rest on the property of his boyhood home in a simple funeral for just family and close friends, next to the grave of little Icky. A decade later Mamie joined them there. But before she did, when asked by grandson David if she had ever truly known her husband, Mamie replied: "I'm not sure anyone did.""