REMEMBERING THOSE TRUMANS

By Edwin Cooney
Dated Monday, February 4, 2008

The passing of Margaret Truman last Tuesday, January 29th in a Chicago, Illinois assisted
living facility brought back a flood of memories and reflections of three remarkable people.

Born Mary Margaret Truman on February 17th, 1924, she was the daughter of then Jackson, Missouri County Judge Harry S. Truman and Elizabeth (Bess) Virginia Wallace Truman.

She was just twenty-one that rainy Thursday afternoon of April 12, 1945 when the phone rang in the Truman’s Connecticut street apartment in Washington D.C. The time was about 5:45 p.m. Margaret was dressing to go to her next door neighbor Annette Davis’s birthday party and from there on to dinner and the theater with her then boyfriend Marvin Braverman. It was her father—the Vice President of the United States--on the other end of the line. She began teasing him because he was going to the Statler Hotel to play poker with his Independence, Missouri buddy Eddie McKim--who was in town on business--instead of coming home that evening as usual. However, Margaret stopped in mid tease when her father told her in a steely voice to get her mother on the line. Returning to her room after handing the phone to her mother, Margaret was shocked when her mother, tears streaming down her face, appeared almost instantaneously in the doorway of the bedroom Margaret shared with her maternal grandmother Wallace.

“President Roosevelt is dead,” was all she said.

From that instant onward the outwardly plain, small town Trumans would be one of America’s most prominent families—and for the next seven years and nine months, the nation’s first family.

Outwardly as ordinary as a package in a plain brown wrapper, inwardly Harry Truman was a veracious reader, talented pianist, first rate public administrator, as well as a quick study and a solid judge of men and circumstances. “He had to be,” Margaret would often insist, “he married my mother, didn’t he?”

Bess Truman grew up an excellent tennis and baseball player. It was said she could knock down a hot grounder and throw a runner out at first as well as any boy in Kansas City. She was argumentative, as was Margaret, and enjoyed reading murder mysteries. A good housekeeper—except that she hated to cook—Bess Truman avoided public speeches, but she was an excellent host and could shake hands as effectively as any politician.

Margaret was thirty-two when she married journalist Clifton Daniel on April 21, 1956. Having been a singer, an actress, and a radio and television personality, Margaret would begin writing in her mid-forties. There would first be an autobiography called “Souvenir” in 1956, followed by books about White House pets in 1969, her father in 1973, her mother in 1986, and first ladies in 1995 to name a few. There would also be a series of murder mysteries with such titles as:

“Murder in the White House”
“Murder in the Supreme Court”
“Murder at the Kennedy Center” —and a number of others.

Margaret seems to have been a combination of her parents. She was argumentative like her mother, artistic, loyal, and outgoing like her father.

Mostly there was Harry Truman, the center of the family. No matter how great his office, Harry Truman was loyal to family and friends regardless of the political cost.

As Vice President, he openly attended the funeral of Tom Pendergast, the Kansas City political boss who had served time for fraud and other charges. After all, Tom Pendergast was a friend.

Then there was the time Washington Post music critic Paul Hume wrote in a review that although Margaret Truman was attractive on stage, she wasn’t a particularly good singer—that she was often flat.

Soon Hume received an angry letter on White House stationary telling him that he’d need a new nose, plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below if he ever met the president!

Fiercely partisan, he could be crude -- such as when in 1960 he suggested that anyone who would vote for Richard Nixon could go to hell as far as he was concerned…or when he suggested that President-elect Eisenhower knew as much about being President “…as a pig knows about Sunday.”

However, he was brave enough to challenge the Russians over Berlin, to fire the immensely popular General Douglas McArthur for insubordination, to advocate civil rights for blacks, and to stand up in support of or challenge labor unions depending on their behavior.

When it was time to leave office, he departed with both dignity and humility. He simply took the train from Washington D.C. to his home at 219 North Delaware Street in Independence, Missouri and “…carried the grips up to the attic.”

Goodness! It almost makes you think that even you could be President, doesn’t it? Hmmm! There was something awfully “American” about those Trumans, don’t ya think?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY