A major catalyst that precipitated Dwight's parents leaving the River Brethren and joining the Watchtower involved Ike's eight-month old brother, Paul, who died of diphtheria in 1895. This tragedy devastated the Eisenhower's, and the theological explanation that Paul is in heaven provided by the River Brethren did not satisfy them. At this time, three neighborhood women were able to comfort the Eisenhower's with the hope that they would soon see their son. This comfort was the Russellite teaching that death was merely sleep, and that all those in the grave will be resurrected shortly. In 1895 it was taught that this resurrection would occur in the new world which was expected to arrive before 1914, a mere nine years away then (Gruss, 1976). The three women - Mrs. Clara Witt, Mrs. Mary Thayer, and Mrs. Emma Holland - also sold Ida a set of volumes which were then titled Millennial Dawn (later renamed Studies in the Scriptures) and a subscription to Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, now named The Watchtower. Ida soon became involved and influenced her husband to join a short time later.
David and Ida's interest in Armageddon (the war the Watchtower teaches God will destroy all of the wicked, i.e. all non Witnesses) and the imminent return of Christ was highly influenced by the Watchtower preoccupation with end times events, especially the date of Armageddon. Likely, too, other acquaintances aside from Watchtower followers shared an interest in end-times date predicting including by their uncles Abraham and Ira, both of whom were evidently influenced by the end-times date speculation of the Tabor, Iowa evangelistic sect called the Hephzibah Faith Missionary Association (Dodd, 1994:2).
Dodd concluded from her extensive study of the Eisenhower family religious involvement that Ida soon became a "faithful and dedicated Witness and actively engaged as [a] colporteur [missionary] for the Watch Tower Society until her death" (Dodd, 1959:245). Soon the force that dominated the lives of everyone who lived in the Eisenhower frame house in Abilene was religion (Kornitzer, 1955:134). Dwight Eisenhower's faith was "rooted in his parents' Biblical heritage," and the Eisenhower boys' upbringing was "steeped" in religion (Fox 1969:907; Lyon, 1974:38).
