A new elementary school named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower has opened in his boyhood home of Abilene, Kansas, 46 years after he left office.

Parents considered Eisenhower as a name for an Abilene elementary school in the 1960s. But it wasn’t until Thursday that fourth- and fifth-grade students began classes in a building bearing the name of the 34th president and supreme Allied commander during World War II.

The school that some parents wanted to name Eisenhower decades earlier was ultimately named after President John Kennedy based on a tradition of naming district schools after assassinated presidents. The district hadn’t built a new elementary school since then.