An optimist was a person who thinks things can be done. No pessimist ever did anything for the world. Billy Graham said the end of the world was coming, but Truman didn’t believe it. Courtesy mattered greatly to him. He had heard a story of a gas attendant who refused to fill Tom Dewey’s tank, and Truman strongly disapproved. Later he would chide the press for calling the First Lady “Jackie.”
The great men of the Roman Republic were not military men, he said. Hadrian was the greatest; his own favorite, however, was Marcus Aurelius, who thought always of the welfare of his people.
Listened to long afterward the tapes would be extremely difficult to follow, full of static, full of the sound of other voices in Truman’s office, as people came and went. His own voice was strong, lower and more appealing than his platform voice. Often everyone would break into laughter. The mood was one of a good time, good fellowship, and clearly Truman delighted in it.
Unlike the day at Fort Leavenworth, some of the filming sessions went extremely well. His answers “came back rich with detail, and with all the sharp authority of the man who’d been there,” remembered Robert Aurthur of one particularly good session in New York. “Two or three times it was Mr. Truman who asked for another try, saying he could do better.” When, at one point, concern was voiced over whether the President was wearing the same necktie as he had during previous sessions in Independence, Truman asked if that really mattered. “Because if while I’m talking about Korea people are asking each other about my necktie it seems to me we’re in a great deal of trouble.”
To Miller and Aurthur, he seemed exceptionally alert and fit. His first impression, Miller remembered, was, “My God, he’s not old at all!” But in fact Truman had begun to slow down, even slip a little. To those who had worked with him at the White House, those who had known him from years past in Independence and Kansas City, he was noticeably different from the man he had been. He moved with less authority. He had become slightly hard of hearing. Responding to questions, he was often inclined to give a quick abrasive answer for effect, an old man’s wisecrack. He had been asked so many of the same questions so often in recent years that he had developed a set of pat answers that sounded no better than pat answers. Sometimes he talked as if quoting his own books or old speeches. Other times, and only in the company of men, he used more profanity than in days past. And while the famous smile, the cheerful, personable demeanor remained, his private disdain of certain people and trends of the moment was greater than ever before. He hated the fashion of long hair on young men, and greatly disliked being called “senior citizen.” Asked if he thought there would ever be an expedition to the moon, he said probably, but he could not imagine why.
In private, every once in a while, he could revert still to old habits of the mouth as if he were not aware of what he was saying. “People in Independence haven’t changed a darned bit,” he remarked at one point. He had nothing against Mormons, he told Miller, they were exceedingly hardworking people. But a lot of old-timers in town “hate them just as bad as they ever did,” Truman said, and “for the same reason some people hate to eat at the same table with a nigger.” It was prejudice, he said.
He worried about the mounting national debt and “this poor broke government of ours,” He intensely disapproved of what he saw happening to politics because of television. “I don’t like counterfeits and the radio and television make counterfeits out of these politicians.”
He hated to see the town being swallowed up by tract houses, billboards, gas stations, and traffic. And ironically, sadly, it was the automobile and the highway, two of the loves of his life, causing the change. Most mornings now, he had to stop and pick up litter—beer cans and candy wrappers—thrown into his front yard.
His lingering anger over General MacArthur seemed excessive. “There were times,” Merle Miller remembered, “when you wanted to say to him, ‘Look, you know, you had the last word. Leave it lay and bask in your triumph.’ ”
Of Eisenhower, he could hardly say anything without resorting to profanity.
But then Kennedy, too, seemed nearly as misguided to him as had Elsenhower. Truman was utterly appalled by the Bay of Pigs fiasco, as was Acheson.
There was an unfortunate preoccupation at the Kennedy White House with “image,” Acheson wrote to Truman.
This is a terrible weakness. It makes one look at oneself instead of at the problem. How will I look fielding this hot line drive to short stop? This is a good way to miss the ball altogether. I am amazed looking back to how far you were from this. I don’t remember a case where you stopped to think of the effect on your fortunes—or the party’s for that matter—of a decision in foreign policy.
“Keep writing,” Truman replied, “it keeps my morale up—if I have any.”
“You must remember our head of State is young, inexperienced and hopeful,” he told Acheson in another letter. “Let’s hope the hopeful works.”
Hearing that the Democratic Party, at Kennedy’s suggestion, was going to put on a $l,000-a-plate dinner, Truman was appalled. “If as and when that happens we’ll just quit being democrats with a little d.” Nobody had consulted him on the matter. “To hell with these millionaires at the head of things.”
Of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, he said, “I just don’t like that boy, and I never will.” In May of 1960, Matt Connelly had begun serving a prison sentence for income tax evasion. Convinced of Connelly’s innocence, and like others, convinced that Connelly was being made the victim of a Republican vendetta, Truman had done all he could, including helping to raise money to defray Connelly’s legal expenses. In March 1961 he had written to Bobby Kennedy to urge a pardon for Connelly, who was by then out of prison on parole. But Kennedy had responded by saying only that he was studying the problem. In May, Truman wrote again, providing more detailed background information, and again Kennedy guaranteed his personal attention. But nothing happened, and by the start of 1962, a furious Truman wrote in longhand to the Attorney General:
Matt Connelly has been abused and mistreated as I told you in my original letter. I want him pardoned and his full rights restored. I’ve never spoken to your brother about this and I don’t intend to. But if you think that I enjoy mistreatment and injustice to one of my best employees, you are mistaken. So don’t smile at me any more unless you want to do justice to Matt Connelly, which is the right thing—a full pardon.
In November 1962, Connelly was pardoned by President Kennedy, and it was to the President that Truman sent his letter of gratitude.
Bess, who had been suffering increasingly with arthritis in her knees and hands, had discovered a lump in her breast. Although reported to be benign, it had invaded the lymph nodes and Wallace Graham performed a mastectomy.
The ordeal had been extremely distressing for Truman, who was also later hospitalized, in January 1963, to be operated on for an intestinal hernia—a “little butchering” as he said. In fact, it was an extremely serious operation for someone his age, and he was a long time recovering.
The man who had always loved clocks—who on restless nights had wound the clocks at the White House and kept eight or nine in the Oval Office, who had always wanted to be on time wherever he went—now saw time as the enemy, the pursuer. “That old lady ‘Anno Domini’ has been chasing me and I have to slow up a little bit,” he wrote to Acheson, “particularly since she has a partner in Mrs. Truman.” All three of Bess’s younger brothers, Frank, George, and Fred Wallace, were dead by now.
“At 79 you go to funeral after funeral of your friends, most of whom are younger than 79—and you sometimes wonder if the old man with the scythe isn’t after you,” Truman said in another letter in May 1963, following his birthday.
The murder of John F. Kennedy that fall left him feeling devastated. He had been having lunch at the Muehlebach when he heard the news that Kennedy had been shot, but it was not until later, in his car driving home, that he learned that Kennedy was dead.
“Having come so close to t
hat fate himself,” wrote Margaret, “Dad was terribly shaken by it. For the first time in his life he was unable to face reporters.”
As I was preparing to fly to Washington [Truman later wrote in reply to a query from the author William Manchester] I received a call from President Johnson telling me that a plane was being sent for me and I was able to arrive the day before the funeral. I went directly to Blair House. Shortly after arriving there we rode over to the White House to call on Mrs. Kennedy. I found her as I expected, remarkably self possessed and poised, but to me the deep sadness in her eyes came through. She said to me her husband, the President, spoke of me often and with much feeling and understanding of what we tried to do, and I found myself choked up with emotion.
It is difficult for one who has lived through the Presidency and the trials and burdens that go with it, not to realize the enormity of the tragedy that had befallen the nation and the tragic blow that was visited on his family, and particularly the wife of the President.
Bess had been ill and unable to make the trip. Margaret and Clifton had come down from New York to stay with Truman at Blair House. Seeing her father, Margaret grew concerned. He looked dreadful. A doctor was sent for. Truman obediently went upstairs to his room and was served his dinner in bed. But he was back on his feet the next day to attend the funeral and graveside services, after which he returned to Blair House in the same car with the Eisenhowers. For about an hour in the front parlor at Blair House the two men sat talking. Then Eisenhower returned to his home in Gettysburg and Truman flew back to Missouri.
In the aftermath of the Kennedy tragedy, a bill was passed by Congress authorizing Secret Service protection for former presidents, and so a Secret Service detail arrived in Independence. But when one of the agents called at the Truman house to introduce himself, and told the President that he would no longer have a need for his own bodyguard, Mike Westwood, Truman told him, “Well, I no longer have a need for you, so get out of here.”
Neither of the Trumans had any wish for the Secret Service to return to their lives. Margaret described her mother reacting as if they had just told her she was going to have to spend four more years in the White House. Bess, too, refused to allow the agents on the property. But then President Johnson personally telephoned one evening and convinced Bess that the Secret Service should be reinstated and the Trumans agreed. They were to be watched over from then on, though Mike Westwood continued accompanying the President as before.
Celebrations of Truman’s eightieth birthday in May 1964 went on for more than a week in Independence, Kansas City, and Washington. There was a huge lunch in his honor in Independence and another at the Muehlebach. In Washington on May 8, he celebrated with “characteristic verve and vinegar,” drawing cheers and praise wherever he went. Invited to address the Senate, he sat in a front seat, a rose in his lapel, and listened to glowing tributes from twenty-seven senators, including two of his favorites from his own years in the Senate, Republicans George Aiken and Leverett Saltonstall. It was an historic occasion, the first time the Senate was making use of a new rule, adopted the year before, whereby former presidents could be granted “the privilege of the floor”—a point that Truman felt so deeply that when he rose he was scarcely able to speak.
Thank you very much. I am so overcome that I cannot take advantage of this rule right now. It is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me in my whole lifetime.
It is unique. It is something that has never been done before. And between you, and me, and the gatepost, since I profit by it, I think it is a good rule.
“You can wish me many more happy birthdays, but I’ll never have another one like this,” he said as senators crowded about him to shake his hand.
Five months later, on October 13, 1964, Truman tripped on the sill going into the upstairs bathroom at 219 North Delaware. He fell, cracking his head against the washbasin, his glasses shattering and cutting him badly over the right eye. He then fell against the bathtub, fracturing two ribs. Though still conscious, he was unable to move.
The police were called and he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Two days later, Wallace Graham reported that his patient was “much improved,” his condition “very satisfactory.” But though Truman was soon home again and eventually returned to something like his old routine, he never fully recovered from the fall. He began losing weight, his face becoming drawn, the eyes behind the thick glasses appearing disproportionately large. “He doesn’t look a thing like he used to,” his sister Mary Jane said. “He always had a full face and always looked so well. He takes a miserable picture now, he is so thin. He’s always taken such a nice picture.”
Yet on he went, taking his morning walks with Mike Westwood, or on occasion with Thomas Melton, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, who lived just across Truman Road—the pace a little slower each year, but Truman doing most of the talking, as Melton remembered. Passing an enormous gingko tree on Maple Street, one of the largest, most spectacular trees in town, Truman would customarily speak to it, too.
And what would the President say to the tree, Melton would be asked by a visitor years later. “He would say, ‘You’re doing a good job.’ ”
He and Bess became steady patrons of the Independence Public Library. In another new Chrysler, this a light green model, Mike Westwood would drive them, Truman riding in front, Bess in back. At the library she would go in and return with an armload of books.
The correspondence with Acheson also continued, Acheson writing at length to keep Truman posted on the Johnson presidency, as he knew Truman wanted. But Truman dictated his letters now and had less and less to say.
In the summer of 1965, Vivian Truman died at age seventy-nine. “His passing has meant a great loss to me,” Truman told Acheson. Within days Ted Marks, too, was dead and Truman attended both funerals.
When, on July 30, 1965, President Johnson came to Independence, to sign the new Medicare bill in Truman’s presence at the Truman Library, there was, in the words of one account, “sad amazement” expressed in the large Washington contingent over Truman’s pitifully frail appearance. His voice, however, remained firm and he talked of several projects he planned for the library.
Sitting at Johnson’s elbow, a cane in his lap, he watched the signing into law of legislation for health care for the aged such as he had proposed twenty years before.
“You have made me a very, very happy man,” Truman told the President.
Nellie Noland died, and Jim Pendergast. Among the private sorrows of Truman’s final years had been a falling out with his old friend Jim Pendergast. There had been a misunderstanding in 1958 over the endorsement of a local Democratic candidate, which left each of them convinced the other had betrayed their friendship. It was a sad, unfortunate impasse, and when Jim Pendergast, after a long battle with cancer, died in the spring of 1966, Truman, who attended the funeral, knew another chapter of his life was closed and not at all as he wished.
Attending funerals had become a part of his life. Thomas Melton, the Presbyterian pastor, would later recount an unforgettable graveside scene one grim winter day in Independence:
Quite often we have committals for people who are not from this area when they die. It was in February if I recall correctly and it was very cold and bitter, a lot of snow that year. And we were going to have a committal at the city cemetery. So I went to the appointed place…. There was no one there but the undertaker…no pallbearers. And we thought we’d wait until the appointed time [as announced] in the newspapers, in case anybody would come…. In came this green Chrysler and I recognized the car immediately. I knew it was Mr. Truman’s car. The Secret Service man got out and stood in his position and Mr. Truman walked over to the bier, and I was amazed. I went ahead with the committal. Snow was still in the air, cold…. After I had my benediction, I asked him, I said, “Mr. President, why are you here? It’s cold and bitter. Did you know this gentleman?” And he said, “Pastor, I never forget a friend.” And I was j
ust speechless. This was the President of the United States.
Lyndon Johnson came to Independence several times again, hoping to enlist Truman’s endorsement of the war in Vietnam. But Truman, who as President had first pledged American support for the French against Ho Chi Minh, made no statement about the war. Privately, he had become more and more disillusioned with Johnson’s leadership.
In 1967, in his eighty-fourth year, Truman stopped coming to the library on a regular basis. Nothing was said in explanation; he just was not there much any more.
When, in early 1969, the new President, Richard Nixon, expressed a desire to come see Truman, he and Bess agreed. The President and First Lady called at 219 North Delaware on March 22. They were with the Trumans for half an hour, then drove to the library, where Truman, who was not having one of his best days, stood expressionless while Nixon, at a concert grand piano outside Truman’s office, played “The Missouri Waltz.” To many who were present, and who knew how much Truman disliked the song, it was a difficult moment. But when Nixon finished, Truman turned to Bess and asked what it was he had played.
Margaret and Clifton Daniel had had two more children by now—Harrison and Thomas—making a family of four sons. Twice with the Daniels, in late March 1968 and again the same time the next year, the Trumans returned to Key West, where, with the four boys, Grandpa would be seen walking the streets of the old town wearing a blue blazer and a baseball cap, enjoying the air and sunshine as in times past. These would be remembered as among the happiest weeks for all of them. He felt “damn good for an old man,” Truman told reporters.
But he had been hospitalized for the flu that winter and was beginning to feel like the last leaf on the tree. Adlai Stevenson, Churchill, Douglas MacArthur were all dead. During the stay at Key West came the news of the death of Eisenhower. Truman wrote a gracious tribute.
Truman Page 132