Harry Truman

by Margaret Truman

  “I don’t know, Mamma.”

  Mamma Truman frowned at the mere thought her son might pass up an opportunity to thrash Senator Taft. “Don’t you think it’s about time you made up your mind?” she asked him.

  On May 29, Mamma Truman was so improved that Dad and Mother and I flew back to Washington. Early in June, we took a trip to Canada, but Dad kept in close touch with Grandview by mail and telephone. “Tell Mamma to ‘behave’ herself,” he wrote on July 10. A few days later, his sister Mary sent him very disappointing news. Mamma Truman’s broken bone was not healing, and the doctors were now saying she would probably never get out of bed again. On July 25, Dad wrote to Aunt Mary: “It is certainly too bad after all the effort and work you put forth for her that Mamma can’t get up. But it has been a great fight and we almost won it. Anyway we know that everything possible was done.”

  By this time, Mother and I had gone home to Missouri. I was practicing hard, getting ready for a reconstructed concert tour. There was no trace of worry, only the usual complaints about loneliness in the letters Dad sent me in mid-July.

  It is very lonesome around here even if I do work from daylight until dark [he wrote on July 16]. It is much nicer when someone is around making a “noise.” Then the “ghosts” continue to walk up and down the hall and around the study. . . .

  I hope your lessons are working out to advantage. I sure want that postponed concert tour to be a grand success. . . .

  Don’t eat too much chocolate ice cream, be nice to your aunts and go see your country grandma once in a while. . . .

  On July 19, he was teasing me: “Do you need anything - money, marbles or chalk? You may have anything I have. You should see the most beautiful and ancient ring the latest Arab visitor gave me. It is a peculiar stone carved evidently in ancient Egypt. The ring itself was made before Christ. I can’t get it on.”

  Early in the morning of July 26, his sister Mary called Dad at the White House to tell him Mamma Truman had pneumonia and was close to death. Dad had to stay in the White House long enough to sign the armed forces unification bill, one of the great achievements of his administration, but he was airborne before noon. He was dozing in his cabin when his mother’s face suddenly appeared before him with amazing clarity. Dad sat up, terribly shaken. A few minutes later, Dr. Graham handed him a report which the pilot of the plane had just received. Mamma Truman was dead. “I knew she was gone when I saw her in that dream,” Dad said. “She was saying goodbye to me.”

  We met Dad at the airport at 3:30 p.m. He was calm but sad. Mamma Truman had been part of his life for so long he found it hard to realize she was gone. In spite of his grief, he immediately took control. He appointed me his deputy, charged with making sure “none of the family gets pushed around during the funeral.’”

  The next two days were hectic. Dad spent most of his time in Grandview, talking to people who came to pay their respects. The following day, July 28, I summed up in my diary as follows:

  Monday, July 28th, 1947

  The funeral was at home in Grandview. It was brief, as Mamma Truman wished. The house was covered with flowers and even the floor was carpeted with floral tributes. The Cabinet sent a huge wreath of red roses and President Alemán of Mexico a huge wreath. One of the gardenias came from Cuba and one of the glads from the Senate. Mother got an enormous spray of red roses, Mamma Truman’s favorite, for the casket. All the other flowers were sent to hospitals. We all drove to Forest Hill Cemetery for the services and they were short too. She is beside Grandfather Truman now.

  On August 1, Dad was still feeling his loss.

  Someday you’ll be an orphan just as your dad is now [he wrote to me]. I am going up to Shangri-la today and will meet your ma at Silver Spring on Monday as I return to town. Wish you were coming back with her. This place is a tomb without you and your mother.

  I have been looking over the thousands of letters, cards & telegrams about your old grandmother. They come from every state and every country and are very kind. Have heard from the Pope, King George, Chiang Kai-shek, the Queen of Holland and every President in the Western Hemisphere.

  But the ones I appreciate most come from home. Heard from men & women your mother and I went to school with - some I hadn’t heard from in forty years. Got one from the colored man who always waits on me at the Kansas City Club and one signed Fields [head White House butler], Pye [another butler] and Prettyman [his valet], one signed by all the sergeants who guard my plane. I like them more than all the topnotchers. Your dad just can’t appreciate a formal stuffed-shirt approach. Had letters, cards and wires from all Senators, House members and governors, even Dewey and Taft.

  I picked up my singing career again with an appearance in Los Angeles. I sang in the Hollywood Bowl on August 26, 1947, with Eugene Ormandy conducting the orchestra. On October 17, I relaunched my concert tour in Pittsburgh. Mother, Mr. and Mrs. John Snyder, Mrs. Fred Vinson, Pearl Mesta, and several other Washington supporters flew in to boost my morale. Dad would have given anything to come, but he absolutely vetoed the idea, in spite of strong pleas from the mayor of the city and Senator Myers of Pennsylvania. “I’m afraid I’d upset the apple cart if I went,” he wrote to me a few days before the event. I understood exactly what he meant. He wanted me to get the publicity, and it is impossible for anyone, even the President’s daughter, to manage this when the Chief Executive and his traveling circus arrive on the scene.

  The concert was a success and I took off on a swing through the south and southwest, singing every second or third night at places like Amarillo, Forth Worth, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Memphis, and Shreveport. Dad kept very good track of me as you can see from this letter he wrote on December 3, 1947:

  My dear daughter - I called you last night because I was not sure you were comfortably and properly situated in Des Moines.

  You should call your mamma and dad every time you arrive in a town. . . . Someday maybe (?) you’ll understand what torture it is to be worried about the only person in the world that counts. You should know by now that your dad has only three such persons. Your ma, you and your Aunt Mary. And your Aunt Mary is running around just as you are. [Aunt Mary was very active in the Order of the Eastern Star.] So - you see beside all the world and the United States I have a couple of other worries.

  On December 21, I ended my tour with a concert in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. It was one of the most wonderful nights of my life. Dad could join the audience here without turning the city inside out. Every seat was filled. The Cabinet sent me a great basket of red roses, and I received eleven bouquets over the footlights. I sang better than I had sung anywhere else throughout the tour. Dad was immensely pleased. I really think in some ways he enjoyed the evening more than I did.

  It was a perfect prelude to our first White House Christmas. The thought of Christmas at home without Mamma Truman was too painful for Dad. So he invited the whole family to join us at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Here is how he summed it up in a memorandum he wrote on his calendar that day:

  We have a most happy and pleasant Christmas, with all the brothers of Bess present. Frank, George & Fred with their wives Natalie, May & Christine with two children of Fred - David & Marion. . . .

  My sister, Mary Jane came on the 22nd and I am sure spent an enjoyable time. My brother could not come - in fact I didn’t ask him because he told me he intended to have his family at the farm. He has four boys all married but one and a lovely daughter. I called him and he said 22 sat down to dinner at his house. I am sure they had a grand dinner - a much happier one than a formal butler served one, although ours was nice enough.

  But family dinner cooked by the family, mother, daughters, granddaughters, served by them is not equalled by White House, Delmonico’s . . . or any other formal one.

  ALONG WITH INTERNATIONAL crises and personal grief and singing debuts, 1947 was the year of the Truman Traveling Troupe. This was the nickname I conjured up for the inevitable “circus” Dad took with him on his
trips to Mexico, Canada, and Brazil. These trips were not vacations - they did not have the slightest resemblance to the trip Dad took to Bermuda in 1946. They were serious political expeditions, aimed at building solidarity between the United States and our sister nations in the Western Hemisphere. With Russia threatening aggression in Europe and Asia, Dad felt it was vital to build friendship on our borders.

  I did not go with Dad to Mexico in early March. I was preparing for my concert debut. He tried everything to entice me to join him, but I am just as stubborn as he is, when I make up my mind to do something. So he flew off without me.

  Tremendous crowds greeted him in Mexico City. Relations between Mexico and the United States had frequently been strained and at times downright hostile in the past. We fought one war with them, and almost went to war a second time in 1914, and again in 1916. My father was anxious to sweep away the legacy of suspicion of the United States that these confrontations had created. So he made the first state visit ever undertaken by an American President to Mexico.

  He was delighted by the enormous crowds. In response, he broke away from his Mexican and American Secret Service escorts and mingled with the people. In an address to the Mexican legislature, he pledged that the United States would continue to observe the nonintervention clause of the Good Neighbor Policy. But he insisted nonintervention did not mean indifference. Dad also managed to exhaust Secret Service men and reporters by climbing up and down pyramids and temples outside Mexico City, unbothered by the thin air - the altitude is over 7,000 feet - that later gave several Olympic athletes all sorts of trouble.

  The following day, my father drew upon his knowledge of history for a gesture that aroused the deepest emotions in the Mexican people. He suddenly announced he wanted to visit Chapultepec. The State Department types in the American Embassy were aghast. The American army had stormed this fortress in its successful assault on Mexico City. Among the Mexican garrison had been several hundred young cadets who fought to the last man, with incredible bravery. A handful of them - six, I believe - were trapped on the roof and committed suicide by leaping over the walls rather than surrender. A shrine to Los Niños Héroes had been erected by the Mexican people in Chapultepec.

  After touring the fortress, my father went straight to this shrine and placed a wreath before it. Then he stood with bowed head, paying silent tribute to the memory of these young men who had died so heroically for their country. A contingent of contemporary cadets was drawn up in precise military formation, and when they saw the President of the United States make this almost unbelievable (to them) gesture, tears streamed down their cheeks. “Brave men do not belong to any one country,” Dad said. “I respect bravery wherever I see it.” At a luncheon in the U.S. Embassy later that day, President Alemán of Mexico conferred on Dad the title of Champion of Inter-American Solidarity.

  I joined the Traveling Troupe for our next trip, to Canada, on June 9, 1947. We spent a really delightful three days there. The prime minister, MacKenzie King, was one of the most charming statesmen I have ever met, with a delicious sense of humor. We loved the old world charm of Ottawa. It was like a trip to London with only one tenth the trouble. Even that quintessential Missouri Democrat, Harry S. Truman, admitted he liked the “royal” touches that were a standard part of our greeting. We walked up miles of red carpet and regularly received three cheers and a tiger. Dad spoke to a joint session of Parliament. He hailed the Canadian-American tradition of friendship and reiterated the Truman Doctrine. In a press conference, he told reporters the United States wanted only peace in the world and friendship with every nation. He told them to underline “every.” There was the usual whirl of receptions, lunches, and dinners, plus a stop at Niagara Falls to get the view from the Canadian side, which they solemnly assured us was the best.

  Canada and Mexico were only warm-ups for the main event of the Truman Traveling Troupe - our September visit to Brazil. General Marshall had been representing the United States at the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security. The conference was a diplomatic triumph for the United States. The twenty American nations represented there agreed to sign a pact which forbade any one of them from committing aggression against another nation in our hemisphere, and also bound them to act in concert against an aggressor. Dad was so pleased with this dramatic affirmation of inter-American unity that he decided he would fly there and join in signing the treaty, and at the same time join Brazil in celebrating the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of her independence, on September 7. We flew out of Washington aboard the Independence, the lovely DC-6 that had replaced the Sacred Cow, on Sunday, August 31.

  A stopover in Trinidad for rest and refueling turned into a wild combination of comedy and adventure. In order to reach Rio in time for a scheduled reception, we had to take off from Trinidad at the ungodly hour of 3:00 a.m. It was raining as it can only come down in the tropics, in thick, drenching torrents. To complicate matters, we all had to dress in formal clothes - Mother and I in our best dresses and hats and Dad and his entourage in striped trousers and morning coats. We looked like a bunch of broken-down actors leaving town one jump ahead of the sheriff. But we finally got aboard the plane, buckled ourselves into our seats, and were watching the propellers begin to spin when somebody said, “Where’s Charlie?”

  Charlie Ross was still asleep, back in the commandant’s house where we had spent the night - or more exactly - half the night. Correspondence secretary Bill Hassett volunteered to go get him. By the time Bill had finished sloshing through several miles of jungle in the downpour, both he and Charlie were not exactly visions of sartorial splendor. In fact, their striped pants looked like they had spent the previous year at the bottom of a laundry bag. We finally decided to put them in the middle of the procession and hope for the best. A tailor with a hot iron was not included on the staff of the Truman Traveling Troupe.

  After a fascinating flight across the Brazilian jungle and the Amazon, we arrived at Galeão, across the bay from Rio de Janeiro, where Secretary Marshall and Mrs. Marshall, and Ambassador and Mrs. William D. Pawley met us. A letter Dad wrote to his sister Mary tells the rest of the story from his point of view.

  We were met at the dock by the President, First Lady and Cabinet members of Brazil. We landed on an island in the bay [Galeão], and came ashore in launches. We paraded through the main streets of the town. There must have been over a million people out and I never saw a more enthusiastic crowd.

  We went to the Embassy and had dinner with General and Mrs. Marshall and Ambassador Pawley and his wife. Then next morning - Tuesday - drove up to Petropolis where I closed the conference. . . .

  We spent a quiet Wednesday at the Embassy. The President’s three daughters took Margie to the opera, Tosca. I slipped in for the second act and then left after they caught me and gave me a standing ovation. . . .

  I had only one complaint about our reception. As we crossed the harbor, our battleship Missouri and the Brazilian battleship Minas Gerais thundered out 21-gun salutes. As an old artilleryman, Dad was totally unbothered by the boom of cannon. In fact, he liked it. My sensitive ears found it intolerable. So many salutes were fired in the following days, Admiral Leahy finally got tired of watching me standing there with my hands over my ears and presented me with a roll of absorbent cotton. It didn’t do much good.

  On September 3, Dad again eluded his Secret Service men - even more totally than he had in Mexico City. He and Dr. Graham climbed 1,000 feet up nearby Mount Corcovado and brought back a half-dozen orchids. This soon got into the news, and every orchid grower in the United States, so it seemed, sent samples from his garden or greenhouse to us in Washington.

  On Friday evening came the climax of our visit, a state dinner given by the foreign minister at Itamarati Palace. Here is Dad’s description of it in a letter to his sister Mary:

  We went to Itamarati Palace (and palace it is) to a state dinner . . . after which some beautiful dancers were put on. We sat at o
ne end of a beautiful pool of water lighted all the way around by candles and on which four swans swam and at the other end was a stage. The pool was flanked by royal palms at least 150 feet high.

  After the concert and dance we walked around and met people. That good-for-nothing King Carol of Rumania came and sat by me. I turned my back on him and he got up and left me alone. The President of Brazil said he had crashed the party.

  Last night we had our state dinner for the President at the Embassy. It was a nice affair. Today we review the parade (the Independence parade), go aboard the Mo and start home and will I be glad!

  Dad neglected to add in this letter the marvelous bit of dialogue he exchanged with King Carol of Rumania. Dad had met Carol’s son, King Michael, who had given him a vivid history of how his father had wrecked Rumania with his erratic combination of greed for power and pursuit of his illicit love, Madame Lupescu. So Dad had no use for Carol on five or six counts. When Carol introduced himself, Dad said, “I met your very fine young son in Washington. I think he is greatly to be commended for his courage in staying on the job.” With that, he turned back to Brazil’s first lady, Mrs. Dutra, who was on his left, and resumed conversing with her.

  Carol was hard to discourage, however. “Mr. President, do you speak French?” he asked.

  Dad looked over his shoulder at him and said, “No French - and very little English.”

  This time Carol got the message. He stood up, bowed stiffly, and departed.

  During the parade, we stood at attention in the reviewing stand while what seemed like the entire Brazilian army marched by for four and a half hours. It was a beautiful, even a spectacular show, and the military music was magnificent. But my poor feet almost collapsed. I never felt more relieved in my life when Matt Connelly whispered to me that there was a campstool at the back of the reviewing stand, and I could sit down on it for exactly two minutes. Matt actually timed me - and everyone else - with a stopwatch, so that no one got more than the allotted break.