Dwight D. Eisenhower left his mark on the world, to be sure. But he quite literally left it on Colorado - on the fireplace mantle of a Brown Palace suite, when he pinged a golf ball off it during one of his many vacations spent in the state.

The Rocky had many tales to tell about the former president when it printed the news on March 29, 1969, that "Ike" had died after several heart attacks.

LONDON (AP) - Comrades-in-arms as well as leaders of nations whose forces fought under him and against him extolled Dwight D. Eisenhower Friday as a man who guided the liberation of Europe in World War II and helped calm a jittery postwar world.

"I am very distressed," said Field Marshal Lord Montgomery, the British ground commander under Ike in the war. "I want to be left alone now." He and Ike had their differences during the war.

. . . For the great and the small, the passing of Eisenhower summoned up memories of the great events of peace and war in the 1940s and 1950s. One way or another, Eisenhower was involved in most of them.

The paper carried the expected military and political tributes earned by a great man, stories that filled 14 pages.

But it was the small, human remembrances of the time he spent in Colorado that make the Rocky's coverage still worth reading today.

His wife, Mamie Doud Eisenhower, grew up on Lafayette Street in Denver, and the couple married at Fort Logan. Relatives, golf and trout always lured him back.

His favorite fishing spot was St. Louis Creek just outside Fraser. The town's Cozens Ranch museum still holds rooms full of Eisenhower memorabilia.

The President was given Colorado fishing license number one in 1953 and has received it every year since,

reporter Don Lyle wrote the day after Ike died.

. . . The people of Fraser never did quite get used to the outlandishly-dressed posse of reporters who, pretending they were Westerners, rode out to the ranch daily for press conferences and to check Ike's fishing luck.

That year Eddie Eldridge, Ike's Rocky Mountain News carrier, got a thank you note for fine service from the President.

Eisenhower's Colorado vacation in 1955 looked like it was off to a great start after a round of golf at his favorite course, Cherry Hills Country Club. He and club pro Ralph "Rip" Arnold stopped for lunch and headed out for another round that ended after one hole "in a shock which left the nation and most of the World holding its breath," Lyle wrote. Ike suffered one of his heart attacks, and he spent the next 48 days in a wheelchair recuperating.

Years later, the president said he might have retired in Colorado had it not been for his health and doctors' fears for him living at altitude.

Lyle wrote:

Ike's last visit to Colorado was a sad one, too. On June 3, 1966, he came back to Denver to transfer the body of his first son, Doud Dwight Eisenhower (who died of scarlet fever), from the Doud family plot at Fairmount to the Eisenhower plot in Abilene.

Eisenhower's legacy lives throughout the state. During his presidency, the Air Force Academy opened (with a golf course named in his honor) and the Blue River water dispute was settled. He gave his name to a Colorado Golf Association scholarship fund for young, needy golfers. After his death, the Eisenhower Tunnel under the Continental Divide would carry millions of skiers and tourists into the mountains he loved.