3 presidents, future or past, called the IE home

As noted here last month, Lyndon Baines Johnson spent nearly a year as a resident of San Bernardino. This was in the 1920s, nearly four decades before the Texan ascended to the presidency after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

One of the young LBJ’S jobs in San Bernardino was operating the elevator in the fourstory Platt Building, possibly preparing the future president for some of life’s ups and downs.

Anyway, in that column I wrote: “To my knowledge, no other U.S. president ever lived in the Inland Empire.” Thank goodness I hedged.

Because as reader Ron Gonzalez reminded me, former Michigander Gerald Ford lived in Riverside County’s Rancho Mirage in retirement. After his 1976 loss to Jimmy Carter, our 38th president moved there — to a home on the 13th fairway of the Thunderbird Country Club — and made Rancho Mirage his home until his death in 2006. And that’s not all. After his presidency ended in 1961, Pennsylvanian Dwight Eisenhower leased a winter home in Riverside County’s Indian Wells. Assuming the role of snowbird-in-chief, our 34th president lived on the 11th fairway at the Eldorado Country Club part-time until his death in 1969.

Eisenhower’s local years were outlined in a 2006 article in Palm Springs Life titled “We Still Like Ike.”

Presidents Day, give or take, seemed like a good time for me to revisit this subject.

So: Does this mean that three U.S. presidents — Eisenhower and Ford as well as Johnson — called the Inland Empire home?

It does, as long as you consider the Coachella Valley, home to the two post-presidents, to be part of the Inland Empire. Some don’t, con

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP A painted portrait of Gerald R. Ford hangs in the entry of the late president’s home in Rancho Mirage in 2012, six years after his death. He was the 38th U.S. president.