Bess Truman

by Margaret Truman

  The return address on the envelope was also a comment in itself. She wrote: “1600 Penn. Ave, Wash. D.C.” She still could not bring herself to write that fateful phrase, “The White House.”

  On August 14, Bess shared in the general exultation over the Japanese surrender. She joined President Truman on the north portico to wave to the huge crowd in Lafayette Square. That same day she wrote a letter to Mary Paxton Keeley. Her only acknowledgment of history being made was a parenthesis under the word “Tuesday” in the upper right-hand corner, “(I hope V-J Day)”. The letter began with a lament that “the weeks at home went so horribly fast.” Then Bess turned to Mary’s son, Pax. “I hope Pax is back in this country and is on the verge of a wedding.” She asked Mary for news of a play she had written about Lincoln; it was being considered by a New York producer. (Alas, it did not make it to Broadway.)

  “I left Mother and Marg at home,” Bess serenely continued, while Washington, D.C., and the rest of the country celebrated. “Marg [is] working hard at her voice lessons & has really made some progress this summer. . . . If you get up to Indep. be sure to go see the family. [I] am still planning to read the Sandburg Lincoln as you suggested. Will probably have plenty of time this month. Not much doing except callers. Please let me know about Pax. I think of him so often.”

  Mother’s subsequent letters to me were mostly chitchat about my friends inquiring for me, the activities of an ex-beau. In this same period, Dad was giving his mother and sister a different version of what was happening: “I have been trying to write you every day for three or four days but things have been in such a dizzy whirl here I couldn’t do anything but get in the center and try to stop it. Japan finally quit and then I had to issue orders so fast that several mistakes were made and then other orders had to be issued. Everybody has been going at a terrific gait but I believe we are up with the parade now.”

  Not until August 18 did Bess tell me what was going on - and that was after the excitement was over.

  “Everything has quieted down around the White House,” Bess wrote. “Dad had the Chiefs of Staff of Allies to dinner last night. Just twenty eight altogether. The table was lovely, with small white dahlias and deep rose and violet asters - four large bowls of them & tall candlelabs between them. The Marine Band played all evening and [we] enjoyed it in the upper hall.”

  The sum total of my reaction to this letter in 1945 was: I wish I were there. Now I see it as a summation, an image of the distance between Bess and the presidency. Harry Truman was downstairs giving elegant stag dinners, and she was watching and listening in the upper hall.

  But Bess was still a woman who cared deeply about people she knew and liked. On August 31, she joined twenty other “Wed. USO workers” who journeyed fifty miles to Winchester, Virginia to offer their sympathy to a fellow USO’er whose son had been killed on VJ day on Mindanao. On a happier note, she was enormously pleased that her cousin Maud Louise’s husband, General Charles Drake, had been rescued, alive and relatively well, from a prison camp in China. She sent me a news clipping about it in one of her letters and commented on how happy she was.

  There is a glimpse of her feelings in another letter, written on board the presidential yacht, Potomac, during a Sunday outing on the river of the same name. Bess told me that the navy was going to turn over to us a bigger, more seaworthy ship, the Williamsburg. “Captain Kuver [the commander of the Potomac] says we can go round the world in it! Shall we?”

  She was still yearning to escape the task that was facing her, somehow.

  A letter to Ethel Noland displayed similar sentiments, focusing on 219 North Delaware Street this time. On September 4, after she had been in Washington less than a month, Bess wrote: “I’ve been wondering how all of you are. . . . I am getting anxious to go home again. I was sick to miss seeing Chris and Marian [who visited Grandmother and me in Independence] but there was nothing I could do about it.” She ended this letter with a glimpse of her view of the White House. “The Ambassador of Guatemala and his gal are calling this afternoon so I must get on down there. It’s always something!”

  Meanwhile, President Truman was grappling with the problems of postwar America. As he remarked to his mother in one of the many letters he wrote to her at this time, it was the “political maneuvers” that he had to start thinking about now. On September 6, he made a bold move to assume the presidency in his own right. He sent a twenty-one-point program to the members of Congress, calling on them to join him in a series of programs that would make sure the United States did not collapse into another depression. He called for a massive housing program, an unemployment compensation program, and generous aid to small business. The Republican-southern Democrat coalition in Congress screamed as if he had asked them to surrender their wallets. It was the beginning of a three-year brawl.

  On September 14, Dad and Mother flew to Independence to bring me back to Washington for my final year at George Washington University. By this time, Bess had made it extremely clear to the president that she did not want a repetition of his first visit. This one was supposed to be quiet and private. The local folk were asked in advance to cool it on fanfare and celebrations. But Americans have never been inclined to obey such edicts. A crowd of 200 swarmed around 219 North Delaware Street as the presidential car arrived.

  The next day, when Dad dropped into his old Kansas City barbershop for a haircut, the crowd blocked traffic and almost broke the windows trying to get a look at him. Swarms of drivers and a small army of walkers streamed past the house, making it difficult for any of us to sit on the porches or enjoy the grounds in our usual way without giving the Secret Service men heart attacks.

  Dad flew back to the White House after two days, leaving Mother considerably less than happy with his “quiet” visit. She stayed in Independence for another two weeks, ostensibly to help me shop for a fall wardrobe. From Washington came letters from a troubled president.

  It’s a lonesome place here today. Had Schwellenbach [Senator Lewis B. Schwellenbach of Washington] over for lunch and heard all the pain in the labor setup. Hope to fix it tomorrow. Should have done it 60 days ago. Snyder is also having his troubles too. But I guess the country will run anyway in spite of all of us. Saw Rayburn, McCormack, Barkley and McKellar on the state of the Congress this morning - it’s in a hell of a state according to all four. . . .

  Hope you and Margie are having a grand time - I’m not.

  Two days later, he reported that he had replaced Frances Perkins as secretary of labor. She had told Dad soon after he became president that she wanted to leave the job, which she had held since 1933. He took the opportunity to get rid of some troublesome Roosevelt loyalists in the Labor Department.

  Well I got the job done as I told you I would. But I’m not sure what the result will be. Lew Schwellenbach is now secretary of labor sure enough and I got rid of some conspirators in the “Palace Guard”. . . . I’m sick of having a dozen bureaus stumbling over each other and upsetting the applecart. I’m either going to be president or I’m going to quit. . . .

  I am hoping things will straighten out now and we can go to work. I don’t know what else I can do if they don’t. It surely will be good to have you back here. This is a lonesome place.

  Three days later, on September 22, he told her about an acrimonious cabinet meeting: “We . . . had a stormy Cabinet meeting discussing the atomic bomb. Lasted two hours and every phase of national and international politics was discussed. It was very helpful. I must send a message down [to Congress] on it soon.”

  The funny part of the meeting was that those on the right of me were “Left” and the others on the left were “Right.” Stimson, Acheson, Interior (Fortas for Ickes) Schwellenbach, Wallace, Hannegan, McNutt were arguing for free interchange of scientific knowledge, while Vinson, Clark, Forrestal, Anderson, Crowley were for secrecy. Anyway I’ll have to make a decision and the “Ayes” will have it even if I’m the only Aye. It is probably the most momentous I’ll make.

 
; The message - the plea - in these letters was unmistakable. He was trying to get Bess back into the partnership. But she could not manage it. Her anger continued to smolder.

  Meanwhile, Bess was the First Lady, whether she liked it or not. When she and I returned to Washington at the end of September, she tackled the job with dogged resignation. The ladies of the press still were clamoring for more information. Bess decided that Reathel Odum and Mrs. Helm would hold a press conference for her. They gamely obeyed, and met the assembled women reporters looking, Mrs. Helm later wrote, “like condemned criminals.” One of the reporters wrote that “their attitude toward this part of their duties clearly was that there must be an easier way to make a living.”

  Basically, all Miss Odum and Mrs. Helm did was distribute copies of the First Lady’s schedule for the coming week. The still-dissatisfied reporters, nothing if not ingenious, used these schedules to ferret out more information.

  Reathel Odum remembers taking calls in Bess’ second-floor office while the First Lady sat a few feet away, scribbling memos on letters to be answered. “What will Mrs. Truman wear to the tea for the United Council of Church Women today?” the reporter would ask.

  Reathel would pass the question to the First Lady, who replied: “Tell her it’s none of her damn business.”

  Reathel would pick herself up off the floor and say: “Mrs. Truman hasn’t quite made up her mind.”

  Anyone who was too pushy ran straight into Bess’ hard side. One day Mrs. Merriweather Post, who showed up at the White House without an appointment and demanded to see the new First Lady. Bess sent Reathel Odum out to talk to her in the lobby. Mrs. Post did not even get invited to sit down.

  Another woman pestered Bess with letters and phone calls to get her husband appointed a federal judge. Bess told Reathel Odum what she thought of her. “If she thinks I can get a federal judgeship for her fat Overton she is completely out of her mind. It’s very embarrassing to be put on the spot like that. I’m sending [you] her most recent ‘spasms’ . . . keep them for Mr. T’s private file.”

  Bess’ determination to avoid publicity extended to her staff. One of the more ingenious women reporters announced she would like to do a profile of Reathel. After all, she had had an interesting Washington career. She had followed Harry Truman from the Senate to the vice presidency to the White House. Reathel was, understandably, thrilled when the reporter called to tell her that a leading magazine had accepted the idea. Reathel went to Bess and asked for her approval. “Absolutely not,” she said, and that was the end of it.

  Bess was not going to let anyone around her contract Potomac fever, a Truman term for those who get carried away by the Washington limelight. President Truman was encountering some serious cases of it on his side of the White House. First Eddie McKim, whom he had hoped to make his chief of staff, came down with it and had to be sent back to Nebraska. Dad managed this task without losing Eddie’s friendship.

  Commodore Jake Vardaman was a more difficult case. Dad was fond of Mr. Vardaman, who had been a big help in the 1940 senate campaign. He made him his naval aide, a job with more honor than responsibility. (Mr. V. had gone into the navy during the war and risen to the rank of captain.) Not having much to do, the commodore decided that the First Lady needed help. He proceeded to try to “organize” Bess’ correspondence and to tell Mrs. Helm and Reathel Odum that they were doing all sorts of things wrong. Bess had a rather warm conversation with the president about Mr. Vardaman. He was instantly recalled to the executive side of the White House and eventually kicked upstairs to the Federal Reserve Board.

  During these months, Bess was short-tempered with Dad, sometimes in front of me and even in front of White House staffers. One day, George Elsey, a naval aide, soon to become assistant to White House counsel Clark Clifford, was riding in the limousine with Mother and Dad on the way back from a reception at the Congressional Club. The president began complaining about Congress’ refusal to let him expand the executive wing to add more offices. There was a fence blocking the path of this expansion and Dad said: “If they don’t give me permission in a few days, I’m going to get a bulldozer in here and knock that damn fence down and go ahead without their permission.”

  “Harry,” Bess said, waving her fingers under his nose, “you will do no such thing!”

  Bess had scarcely gotten rid of Commodore Vardaman when she found herself embroiled in one of the nastiest political crossfires of the Truman presidency. It started with her acceptance of an invitation from the Daughters of the American Revolution to a tea in her honor at Constitution Hall on October 12. The announcement of this forthcoming event raised the hackles of Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of New York, a thoroughly unpleasant demagogue on race and anything else that could get him a little publicity. Powell announced that his wife, pianist Hazel Scott, had been refused permission to perform in Constitution Hall because of her color.

  This stirred memories of an ugly incident in 1939, when the singer Marian Anderson had been barred from Constitution Hall by the DAR because of her race. Mrs. Roosevelt had resigned in protest from the DAR, which stubbornly refused to change its biased policy regarding the use of the hall.

  Congressman Powell sent a telegram to Bess the day before the tea, urging her not to attend. He went out of his way to compare what she was doing with Eleanor Roosevelt’s protest. “I can assure you,” he wrote, “that no good will be accomplished by attending and much harm will be done. If you believe in 100 percent Americanism, you will publicly denounce the DAR’s action.”

  Bess stood her ground. She was not a segregationist, but she was also not a crusader. She wired back that “the invitation . . . was extended prior to the unfortunate controversy which has arisen. . . . In my opinion the acceptance of the hospitality is not related to the merits of the issue. . . . I deplore any action which denies artistic talent an opportunity to express itself because of prejudice against race origin.”

  President Truman backed up Bess with a telegram of his own, which reminded Mr. Powell that we had just won a war against totalitarian countries that made racial discrimination their state policy. He said that he despised such a philosophy, but in a free society neither he nor Mrs. Truman had the power to force a private organization to change its policy.

  In his heart, Dad knew this telegram was a mistake. He was far more inclined to condemn the DAR. He already was formulating plans for one of the great breakthroughs against discrimination, the integration of the armed forces. But Bess had decided she was not going to let a congressman tell her where she could have a cup of tea. She still was not quite able to accept the idea that she too was a public figure as much as the president.

  Bess went to the tea. Adam Clayton Powell retaliated by calling her “the last lady.” Dad was furious and forthwith banned the Congressman from the White House. Mr. Powell was right about one thing. Much damage was done, not to race relations but to the Truman partnership. There could not have been a worse beginning to her first ladyship, as far as Bess was concerned. She had been maneuvered into a comparison with Eleanor Roosevelt and had come out a dismal second on the public opinion charts.

  In the midst of this brawl, Bess received a letter from Mary Paxton Keeley, urging her to jettison the DAR. Bess’ answer revealed her stubbornness - and her wrath. “I agree with you that the DAR is dynamite at present but I’m not ‘having any’ just now. But I was plenty burned up with the wire I had from that - in NY.”

  Mother left that word blank, not I. Even when she was steaming, she remained a lady.

  On another matter during this first fall in the White House, Bess demonstrated her normally sound political instincts. The American economy was having a difficult time readjusting to peace. There were shortages of everything from steak to coffee, and prices were rising at an alarming rate. Americans had saved something close to $134 billion during the war and were itching to spend it. A New York Daily News headline read: PRICES SOAR, BUYERS SORE, STEERS JUMP OVER THE MOON. Bess decided
it would be a grave political mistake to launch a formal social session at the White House, with elaborate dinners and receptions. Instead, she announced that she would hold a series of teas and ladies luncheons, beginning on December 1.

  Official Washington grumbled. Nothing is more desired by the ambassadors and bureaucrats and congressmen than an invitation to a White House formal dinner. But the decision was warmly approved by the rest of the country.

  As she approached this truncated social season, Bess wrote another letter to Ethel Noland that again revealed her unhappiness. “I meant to answer your note at once,” she wrote. “But I seem to get very little done that I want to do. . . . I get so homesick some days. Think about you all often.”

  This acute homesickness makes no sense for a woman who had spent most of the previous eleven years in Washington. Bess was suffering from the White House blues, a disease whose symptoms are the opposite of Potomac fever.

  All these negative feelings came to a boil at the end of December 1945 when we went home for Christmas. Mother and I and Grandmother Wallace departed on December 18. Dad stayed in Washington waiting to hear from Secretary of State Byrnes, who was involved in heavy negotiations with the Russians in Moscow. He also decided, he told his mother, that he wanted to let the family have at least part of their holiday without a presidential invasion. So he waited until Christmas Day to fly home. The weather was awful; every commercial plane in the nation was grounded. After waiting four hours, Dad ordered the Sacred Cow aloft. It was one of the wildest flights of his life.