Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip

by Matthew Algeo

  So there I was, stuck in the back of the crowd and signless. Neil played “Song Sung Blue” and “America.” The crowd was only growing larger. When he launched into the obligatory song from the new CD, I finally gave up and headed back to Brooklyn, disappointed.

  Back at my friends’ apartment, I decided to watch the show, which I had recorded. Mostly I was curious to see what Neil Diamond looked like from less than a block away. Imagine my surprise when I saw myself. Unbeknownst to me, a camera mounted on a robotic crane had panned over the crowd exactly one hour and thirty-one minutes into the program. In a sea of screaming Diamond-heads I could clearly be seen for about a second, standing ramrod straight and stone faced. I looked a bit like a stalker. Or an assassin. Nevertheless, I had, in fact, appeared on the Today show.

  Later in the show I saw a close-up of a sign: WHERE IN THE WORLD IS MATT LAUER? The camera pulled back. The stocky guy who’d been standing next to me had had his wish fulfilled too.

  After his morning walk on Friday, July 3, Harry visited the new United Nations headquarters on First Avenue. Truman played a crucial role in the creation of the UN. On the evening of April 12, 1945, just minutes after he had hastily taken the oath of office in the cabinet room of the White House, an aide asked Truman if the San Francisco conference on the United Nations was going to take place as scheduled in less than two weeks. “I said it most certainly was,” Truman remembered. “I said it was what Roosevelt had wanted, and it had to take place if we were going to keep the peace. And that’s the first decision I made as President of the United States.”

  It was at the San Francisco conference that the United Nations charter was ratified. Afterward, a committee formed to find a home for the new organization. European delegates argued for Geneva, the home of the League of Nations, but the Soviets (of all people) pushed for the United States. “The Old World had it once,” said Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko, “and it is time for the New World to have it.” Besides, as Gromyko pointed out, the United States was conveniently located between Asia and Europe. The committee chose the United States—specifically several square miles covering parts of Westchester County, New York, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. The idea was to create an international version of the District of Columbia.

  In early 1946, the General Assembly voted to move the UN from London to New York City until its permanent home in the suburbs was ready. In the summer, the Security Council began meeting in a gymnasium on the campus of Hunter College, a women’s school in the Bronx. Meanwhile, Westchester and Fairfield were having second thoughts about hosting the organization. “A lot of homeowners … got alarmed about the idea of all these foreigners with diplomatic immunity tearing around, running over their children, and having property that couldn’t be taxed,” recalled Isaac Stokes, an American diplomat posted to the UN at the time. In a referendum, Greenwich residents voted 5,505 to 2,019 against hosting the UN. The General Assembly abandoned the “international D.C.” idea and reopened the search for a home. That fall, with classes about to resume at Hunter College, the Security Council was forced to move into an abandoned war factory on Long Island.

  With Westchester and Fairfield now out of the running, cities began to furiously compete for the honor (and lucre) of hosting the UN, much as cities compete for the Olympics or the Super Bowl today. Isaac Stokes was the unlucky diplomat assigned to field calls from cities convinced “they had ‘the place’ for the United Nations.” “I remember Virginia Beach coming in,” said Stokes (though he may have meant to say Richmond).

  Well, the first thing I said to them was, “You’ve got to face one fact. There are black members in the U.N.” I guess at that point there were only two, Haiti and Ethiopia. But there were some very dark Indians and so on. They obviously had second thoughts after that.

  Ultimately four cities were chosen as finalists: Boston, San Francisco, New York, and Philadelphia. The Soviets vetoed Boston because the city’s Roman Catholic Archbishop, Richard J. Cushing, was a vocal critic of their “Godless” regime. European countries opposed San Francisco because it was too far afield. That left Philadelphia and New York, and, for a time, the leading contender was the City of Brotherly Love. “They had done all their homework,” remembered Isaac Stokes. “They were prepared to offer practically the entire Fairmount Park … to the UN.”

  Enter William Zeckendorf Sr., a real estate developer who had recently purchased seventeen acres overlooking the East River in midtown Manhattan for nearly ten million dollars. It was a run-down area of slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants that Zeckendorf planned to turn into a business park to rival Rockefeller Center. Then, on the morning of Friday, December 6, 1946, Zeckendorf read an article in the New York Times about the likelihood that New York would lose the United Nations. The developer called Mayor William O’Dwyer and told him the UN could have the land he’d purchased “for any price they wish to pay.” O’Dwyer summoned Robert Moses, who called Nelson Rockefeller, who called his father, John D. Rockefeller. The elder Rockefeller, who wasn’t crazy about Rockefeller Center facing competition from Zeckendorf’s development anyway, agreed to give the UN $8.5 million to buy the property. The catch, according to Isaac Stokes, was that Congress had to pass a law allowing him to claim the donation as a tax deduction, since contributions to international organizations were not deductible. The law got passed and Rockefeller gave the money to the UN, which bought the land from Zeckendorf, who took a loss on the deal but rescued the organization from Philadelphia.

  President Truman convinced Congress to loan the UN sixty-five million dollars, interest-free, to pay for construction of the organization’s headquarters. (The loan was paid off, on time, in 1982.) Truman himself laid the cornerstone on United Nations Day, October 24, 1949, and construction was completed less than a year later. Designed by a multinational team of architects, the centerpiece of the headquarters is the thirty-eight-story aluminum, glass, and marble Secretariat Building, which soars 550 feet above the East River.

  When Harry arrived for his tour, Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold greeted him in front of the Secretariat Building. Hammarskjold had just been installed the previous autumn, and the two men had never met. They shook hands for photographers, who begged them for “just one more” shot. “Photographers,” Truman warned Hammarskjold, “are tyrants.” Eventually the handshake ended and Harry and Dag went up to the secretary general’s top-floor office for coffee. Afterward, Truman stopped by the pressroom to chat with UN correspondents (and have another cup of coffee). In the Trusteeship Council chamber, a meeting was adjourned so he could shake hands with the delegates. Next door, in the Economic and Social Council chamber, Hammarskjold proudly pointed out the ceiling, which had been designed by an architect from his native Sweden. Pipes and ducts were left exposed, a symbolic reminder that the work of the United Nations, like the ceiling, would never be finished.

  “Acoustically correct!” Truman declared.

  With the former president setting a brisk pace, the tour lasted just forty minutes. “I feel top-notch about the whole thing,” he said at the end. “I am wishing all the success in the world to the United Nations. That will be my wish as long as I live.”

  The United Nations hasn’t changed much since Harry visited in 1953—and I’m not talking about its seeming inability to solve the world’s problems. The buildings look much the same. Security, however, is a different story. A 1953 travel guide says visitors could feel free to “wander around in most of the public lobbies, lounges, and outdoor terraces and grounds.” There was no charge for admission. Today everyone must pass through a metal detector. There is absolutely no wandering. And a tour costs $13.50.

  My tour group was led by a petite and brilliant woman named Julia. Her knowledge of the UN was absolute. She probably could have recited the member nations in alphabetical order. And she never referred to the UN as “the UN.” To Julia it was “the organ-eye-zation.” She was most efficient. Her only flaw was that she couldn’t decide what to do wi
th her hair. Between each stop on the tour she’d either tie it up in a scrunchie or take it down again. It was distracting. Yet also enchanting.

  We toured the chambers: Security Council, Trusteeship Council, Economic and Social Council. Then we came to a small exhibit on disarmament. It included artifacts recovered from the sites of the two nuclear weapons dropped on Japan in 1945—the Truman bombs. From Hiroshima there were cans and coins and bottles all fused into a charred lump by the heat of the blast. From Nagasaki, a stone statue of St. Agnes that stood less than a kilometer from ground zero, the back mottled and charred. None of this was here when Harry visited, of course. But, implicitly anyway, the exhibit questioned his judgment. The bombings killed more than two hundred thousand people. Truman always claimed he never had any second thoughts about authorizing the use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese. “They never would have surrendered otherwise,” he told an interviewer in 1955. “I don’t believe in speculating on the mental feeling and as far as the bomb is concerned I ordered its use for a military reason—for no other cause—and it saved the lives of a great many of our soldiers. That is all I had in mind.”

  “I have never worried about the dropping of the bomb,” he wrote in 1964. “It was just a means to end the war and that is what was accomplished.”

  Julia put her hair up and shepherded us to the General Assembly Hall, where all 192 member-nations have seats. (Actually, each gets six seats, three for delegates and three for alternates.) When Harry visited back in 1953, just sixty nations were represented in the General Assembly. In fact the UN was built to accommodate only as many as seventy, a number that was exceeded in 1955, forcing major renovations. Julia explained that the nations are seated by lottery. Each year, the secretary general randomly selects the name of one country, and the seats are assigned in English alphabetical order beginning with that country. In 2007, Mexico was the lucky Number 1, so it got the best seats in the house, followed by Micronesia. Poor Mauritius—its delegation got the worst seats in the house. Well, not the worst—those are up in the balcony, where we were.

  The General Assembly happened to be in session, and the secretary general was delivering a report. I couldn’t figure out what it was about, but it sounded dreadfully dull. The hall was less than half full. Some of the delegates appeared to be dozing. It seemed no more exciting than the average city council meeting—and considerably less exciting than one in, say, Philadelphia or Chicago.

  And that was it. Julia led us outside, let her hair down again, and delivered a short soliloquy in which she stressed that the UN was not a governmental organ-eye-zation. She ended with a quote from Kofi Anan, who was once asked why God was able to create the world in seven days while it has taken the UN more than sixty years to achieve what it has.

  “The good Lord,” replied Anan, “had the advantage of working alone.”

  The next day was the Fourth of July. Harry and Bess celebrated by catching another show, the matinee performance of the play My Three Angels at the Morosco Theater on 45th Street. (The theater, where both Death of a Salesman and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened, was demolished in 1982 to make way for a Marriott hotel.) That night they had a quiet dinner at the Waldorf and went to bed early. It had been a whirlwind week. It was time to go home.

  11

  Pennsylvania (or, Abducted),

  July 5–6, 1953

  The Automobile Club of New York predicted a record-breaking one million cars would be on the city’s highways over the Fourth of July weekend in 1953. (The auto club also predicted a record-breaking number of highway fatalities, prompting this jolly headline in the New York World-Telegram and Sun: “Hundreds to Die as Nation Observes Independence Day.”) To get a jump on the holiday traffic, Harry and Bess got up before dawn on Sunday, July 5. Two bellhops helped Harry carry their luggage down to the garage, but Harry loaded it all into the car by himself, despite the bellhops’ protestations.

  “I’ll go back up and get the folks for breakfast,” Harry announced after all the bags were stowed to his satisfaction.

  A few minutes later, Harry, Bess, and Margaret entered the hotel’s Norse Grill.

  Harry and Bess pulling away from the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, July 5, 1953. Margaret is in the back seat. Harry dropped her off at her apartment before heading for home.

  “He ordered a half grapefruit, toast, coffee, and bacon,” the New York Times solemnly reported. “The women ordered cantaloupe.”

  After breakfast, the family posed for photographs at the garage entrance, and Harry gave his autograph to two youngsters. When asked which way he planned to drive home, Harry was cagy. “It’ll be a zigzag route,” was all he would say.

  It was seven o’clock now, and Harry was eager to hit the road.

  “This has been a happy week,” he told the reporters and photographers who’d come to chronicle his departure. He and Bess had had so much fun, he said, “it makes it so we want to come back.”

  Then he and Bess and Margaret climbed into the big black Chrysler.

  “Well, let’s go!” he said.

  He pulled out of the Waldorf garage and turned right onto 49th Street. At Madison Avenue he turned right again. At 76th Street he parked in front of the Carlyle, where Margaret lived. Bess asked Margaret, probably for the millionth time, if she was sure she didn’t want to ride back to Independence with her parents. Yes, said Margaret with a smile. She was much too busy in New York to go home just then.

  Bess waited in the car while Harry and Margaret went inside. In the lobby Harry kissed his daughter good-bye.

  Emerging from the hotel, Harry asked a passerby, “Say, where is this West Side Highway?” He planned to take the highway to the Holland Tunnel.

  “Are you really Mr. Truman?” said the perplexed pedestrian. Truman laughed, admitted he was, and got his directions.

  They pulled onto the highway at 57th Street and headed north—the wrong direction. A newspaper photographer named Tom Gallagher who was following the Trumans realized their mistake. He caught up with them at 72nd Street and got them turned around.

  It was 7:40 by the time the Trumans arrived at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, where the toll taker recognized Harry and shook his hand before taking his fifty cents.

  Emerging in New Jersey, they took the Pulaski Skyway to Newark, where Harry picked up Highway 22 and headed west, toward Pennsylvania, disappearing into the growing crush of traffic, just another holiday motorist.

  Shortly before noon, Harry pulled into a service station on the east side of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. One of the attendants, Herbert Zearing, was cleaning the windshield when he realized who his customer was. “I kept working because I didn’t want to look surprised,” said Zearing. Meanwhile, the other attendant, Lester Lingle Jr., filled the car with 11.1 gallons of premium gasoline. The bill came to $3.45. Harry paid with a twenty. Bess, as she had throughout the trip, dutifully logged the purchase.

  After filling up, Harry drove through downtown Harrisburg, past the green-domed capitol, where, according to one account, “one middle-aged man pointed excitedly at the Truman car as he gaped after the driving ex-president.” He crossed the Susquehanna River, picked up Highway 11, and continued west.

  In the town of New Kingstown, just a few miles west of Harrisburg, the Trumans passed a small white building surrounded by a dazzling sea of flowers in full bloom. This caught Bess’s eye. “Harry, turn around,” she said. “Go back. I want to see that.” Harry did as Bess asked. The building was a restaurant called the Country House. They got out to admire the flowers. Then, since they were hungry anyway, they went inside for lunch.

  They were seated and ordered two large fruit bowls. At first, nobody recognized them, even after they chatted with several other customers.

  But one of the cooks had his suspicions. He went out to the parking lot. When he saw the Missouri plates on the big black Chrysler the couple was driving, his suspicions were confirmed. “The place became very excited after that,” said the next day�
�s Harrisburg Patriot, “and everybody asked for autographs.”

  The building that housed the Country House is now the New Kingstown post office. I went inside. It looked exactly like every other small town post office, with a small counter and a wall of PO boxes. There was nothing distinctive about it. It was difficult to imagine it as a restaurant.

  A little farther down Highway 11, in the town of Carlisle, I paid Harvey Sunday a visit. Harvey was the owner of the Country House. Today he lives in a retirement home, in a small room with a bed, a desk, and an easy chair. He shared this room with his wife, Helen, until she died on September 11, 2001—“the day that New York got blowed up,” as Harvey put it. “She died right there,” he told me, pointing to the bed he still slept in every night.

  Though nearly ninety and confined to a wheelchair, Harvey’s mind was still razor sharp. He looked me right in the eye as he spoke. His green eyes were so piercing that I had to look away occasionally, pretending to fiddle with my tape recorder. Harvey said he and Helen built the Country House in 1950. He was working on his father’s farm at the time. “We growed hogs and steers and we growed corn and hay and wheat and barley,” Harvey said. “We thought we could work the farm produce into the restaurant.”

  Harvey and Helen didn’t know the first thing about the restaurant business, but they worked hard and learned quickly. “We wanted to make it stand out a little,” Harvey said. He added a bell tower to the building, and customers were encouraged to ring the bell. Helen decorated the pine walls with hand-painted trays and ironstone china. She did the landscaping, too, planting the hundreds of flowers that drew the attention of passersby—including a former first lady.