by J. B. West
One portion of that new foreign policy—a mutual defense treaty for the western hemisphere—was given a little boost by Mrs. Truman.
President Truman had come back from the Potsdam conference convinced that the Russians intended to take over the world. He decided that the beginning of any prudent policy was to do everything possible to keep the countries of this hemisphere together. He began a lot of out-and-out wooing of the Latin American countries, and so did Mrs. Truman, in her own way.
Beginning in October, 1945, her Spanish class met at the White House every Monday at 11:00 a.m. The enterprising instructor Ramon Ramos, with a spectacular flourish, managed to engage first the Green Room and then the library for his thirty-two-week course for struggling linguists. Among Mrs. Truman’s classmates were the wives of the new secretaries of War and State, Mrs. Robert Patterson and Mrs. James F. Byrnes, along with Mrs. Leverett Saltonstall, wife of the Massachusetts senator, and Mrs. Dean Acheson, wife of the then Undersecretary of State.
During Pan-American week in the Spring, Señor Ramos and his students took over the White House kitchen.
Seven members of the White House class, including Mrs. Truman, cooked a complicated Spanish meal for the other sixty members of the class, who generally met elsewhere. Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower, dressed in a white apron, was among the waitresses who served the meal in the State Dining Room.
“You make a marvelous waitress,” Mrs. Truman told her, and Mrs. Eisenhower laughed gaily.
That spring we had two quite different sets of guests to whom the Trumans extended their hospitality. The first was Winston Churchill, who, though no longer Prime Minister, stopped in Washington en route to Fulton, Missouri, to make his famous “Iron Curtain” speech.
The world had virtually set this great man aside, even as he won his place in the history books. He had been turned out of office; his step was slower, and the glint was no longer in his eye. As he walked slowly around the White House recalling his visits with Roosevelt, he shook his head and remarked sadly, “We got on well.”
But he soon established rapport with the Trumans. Mrs. Roosevelt had coached President Truman on how to cater to the Prime Minister’s various idiosyncrasies, to his interests in books. They most probably would have hit it off anyway, both because of their warm personalities and their mutual interest in preventing Soviet dominance of Europe.
Though it was not an official visit, Mrs. Truman entertained Mrs. Churchill and her daughter Sarah at luncheon.
The Trumans did not reserve fancy entertaining only for the great or near-great. They catered also to their old friends, who had never had an appointment with destiny. For example, the First Lady really put on the dog for her “bridge club” from Independence, Missouri, when they visited Washington. The eight ladies stayed at the White House for four days, chattering and clattering around in the guest rooms, running around Washington with the President’s wife.
“It’s not like the old days,” Mr. Crim and I laughed together, recalling that Mrs. Roosevelt rarely paid any attention to her houseguests, and that it always fell to our lot to look after them.
But Mrs. Truman ran her own tour bureau. During the four days her friends stayed at the White House, she planned every moment of their time, took them sightseeing herself to the Capitol, the National Gallery, Mount Vernon, and even to the Shrine Circus, held a grand dinner in the State Dining Room, and generally rolled out the red carpet as if eight female heads of state were staying on the second floor.
The Trumans were being themselves. Their old friends were not forgotten or left behind. In fact, Mr. Truman had been sorely criticized for attending the funeral of his old benefactor Tom Pendergast, a Kansas City political boss of questionable repute. Loyalty to old friends and maintenance of friendships were very important to both Harry and Bess Truman.
Edith Helm, who served as Mrs. Roosevelt’s social secretary and stayed on with Mrs. Truman, recalled that her entertaining of the enthusiastic Missouri women marked the return of social life to the White House after the war.
“I shall always think of the springtime visit of the Independence ladies as symbolizing that song this country so hopefully sang: ‘When the lights go on again all over the world,’” Mrs. Helm stated.
Although the war was now over, the Trumans had followed the wartime pattern of very small-scale entertaining, and then only when there was some official reason, such as Churchill’s visit, or the stag dinner President Truman held to honor the victorious General Eisenhower. Food was still rationed, and many young men were still overseas. The Trumans did not wish to appear frivolous.
For a short time, though, the social lights did go on again.
In the fall of 1946, Mrs. Helm and Miss Odum called a press conference to announce that the formal social season, Thanksgiving to Lent, would open again in Washington after five years of blackout. Dates for the various events were listed so that Washington hostesses could avoid conflicts with official White House functions.
We started where we had left off in 1941: Six official dinners for a hundred guests each, two honoring the Diplomatic Corps, and one each for the President’s Cabinet, the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate (since there was no Vice President), and the Speaker of the House—and five huge nine o’clock receptions, Military, Judiciary, Diplomatic, Congressional, and Departmental.
The Trumans threw themselves into the job of entertaining official Washington with such a flourish that, despite all the denying in the world (which he did), we could see that the President enjoyed it. He was an extrovert, a friendly man, and he liked company. On the other hand, Mrs. Truman did not, and was truly comfortable only with her family and close friends, but she dutifully performed the duties of hostess.
The press corps who covered the distaff side of the White House were pleased that there was going to be some social action. But they were very unhappy that Mrs. Truman herself never held any press conferences, in contrast to the loquacious Mrs. Roosevelt, who always was making news.
The contrast between the Trumans at home and their official social life was amazing. The Trumans followed to the minute the rules of White House entertaining—rules that hadn’t been deviated from for half a century except for wartime. They brought back all the pageantry, all the formality, all the pomp that we had all but forgotten how to execute.
We had to work out the details, so that all the President and his wife had to do was to be in the right place at the right time. For a reception, they’d march down the stairs to the Blue Room and receive the guests, and then march back upstairs. But, behind the scenes, we spent weeks of preparation and scheduling for each detail of that “right place” and “right time.”
In those days Mr. Crim and I worked out a list of procedures and instructions for everybody involved. The Usher’s Office was in charge of executing all arrangements for State entertaining. Our first was as follows:
Tuesday, December 10, 1946
FUNCTION: Judiciary Reception followed by dance.
TOTAL INVITED: 55 via Northwest entrance (Pennsylvania Avenue)
226 via Southwest entrance
1,052 via East entrance
1,333 Total
CHECKERS ORDERED (for coats): M. O. Carter
CAR PARKERS (door-openers): Harry Charnley
FIRE DEPARTMENT NOTIFIED: Chief Murphy
NOTIFIED: 5 Doormen
DRESS: White Tie
AIDES: 10 Army aides ordered through Lt. Commander William Rigdon (Mr. Truman’s military aide)
10 Navy aides ordered through Lt. Commander Rigdon
(Aides have separate schedule in which they are assigned specific posts and specific guests.)
MUSIC: Marine orchestra notified by Rigdon—22 members in lobby.
Marine orchestra notified for East Room—14 members
FOOD FOR ORCHESTRA ORDERED: Mary Sharpe
The Trumans didn’t do any mingling afterwards. By the t
ime they’d received more than a thousand people, they were ready to call it a night.
Cut and dried? Yes it was, and quite a bit of work for a Presidential handshake and maybe a few words, a glass of light punch and a couple of cookies. An aide would politely remove your cigarette, too, if you happened to violate the “No Smoking” rule. There were no objections from the Trumans, neither of whom smoked. The fire department frowned on that many people in the House anyway, and always stationed firemen around the House, to the dismay of the social secretary.
The best part of a reception was always the ten minutes before the guests arrived—all the butlers and doormen in place, lights dimmed, red-coated Marines sitting in the lobby. You could actually see the elegant arrangements of Mrs. Truman’s favorite flowers, talisman roses, lighting up the State rooms.
And standing near the Grand Staircase, I always felt the magic of the House and the Presidency—listening to the drum tattoo “Ruffles and Flourishes,” and the military march “Hail to the Chief” as the President and his party, preceded by the color guard bearing our country’s flag and the President’s banner, stepped smartly into the room.
The State dinners, elaborate, regal, almost cold in their formality, were welcome after all those dark wartime years. Always white tie, always at eight, they were always preceded by the same ceremony which began the receptions. The Trumans managed to execute them quite well.
Seated across from his wife at the head of the U-shaped banquet table, the gold White House tableware gleaming before him, President Truman presided over more social functions that season than during any other in his administration. There was only one near-mishap in that 1946–47 season. It involved the Diplomatic Dinner.
The diplomatic corps had grown so, since the Roosevelt days, that we simply couldn’t feed them all at one sitting. With all the new nations that sprang forth after World War II, the number of ambassadors in the United States was now up to 62. There was no way that we could seat them, their wives, the Secretary of State and his wife, and the Trumans in the State Dining Room. Not one body more than 104 could squeeze in at the big horseshoe banquet table.
The Chief of Protocol, Mrs. Helm, Mr. Crim and I presented a plan to Mrs. Truman:
Protocol in Washington is governed by the length of service of an ambassador, and diplomats were numbered in the State Department’s blue book according to the time of their arrival in Washington.
According to our plan, the “even” numbers were invited to the first diplomatic dinner and the “odd” numbers to the second. The State Department took great pains to broadcast this system to all the ambassadors, lest someone feel slighted at broken protocol.
Someone did. In fact, one of the most touchy ambassadors canceled out at the very last minute, causing lots of embarrassment. Mrs. Truman was horrified and the President was incensed, not because he gave a hang about protocol but because Mrs. Truman was upset.
The next morning he called in Dean Acheson, the Undersecretary of State, and Stanley Woodward, Chief of Protocol. “I wish to have that ambassador recalled at once,” he told Mr. Acheson firmly.
Mr. Acheson, one of the President’s intimate friends, didn’t hesitate to disagree with the President’s impulsive request.
“No, I don’t propose to overlook it,” said the President. “That ambassador has been rude to Mrs. Truman. That is the end of that, and I don’t want any more discussion.”
Just then, the phone rang and it was Mrs. Truman.
The President was silent for a long time, then he handed Acheson the receiver.
“You must not let Harry do what he’s going to do,” Mrs. Truman told him.
So Mr. Acheson said, “Perhaps you could help me, Mrs. Truman,” and, still holding the phone, began “repeating” to the President what Mrs. Truman was saying, although she, on the other end of the line, was saying nothing.
“She says the press will tear you up,” Secretary Acheson said to Mr. Truman, “… that you’re acting too big for your breeches … that you don’t need that kind of criticism right now.”
Finally, the President reached over and took the phone.
“Well,” he said to his wife, “if you two gang up on me, I’m just lost.”
Then the President picked up a little filigreed-gold picture frame from his desk and took out a photograph of a young girl, dressed in 1917 style, with a note on the back to young Captain Truman.
And he told Mr. Acheson, “Any man who is rude to that girl is in trouble with me!”*
The late Congressman Adam Clayton Powell was in trouble with the President for just that reason. Although later history would prove that the young black Congressman had been a courageous pioneer for civil rights, as was President Truman, Mr. Powell was the one Washington official who was excluded from all the Trumans’ guest lists. It happened because he criticized Bess Truman.
When the Daughters of the American Revolution, who own Constitution Hall, refused to allow black pianist Hazel Scott to play there, Powell, who was Miss Scott’s husband, was rightfully incensed.
When Mrs. Truman later attended a D.A.R. function, Congressman Powell publicly called her “the Last Lady of the land.”
President Truman was furious. He apparently felt that the insult to his wife was worse than the insult to Powell’s wife and to American Negroes. And yet this same Harry Truman was an early champion of civil rights and the first President to integrate the armed forces. He was a complex man, but when it came to his family he was very single-minded. They came first.
State dinners, receptions, and smaller social events have been used successfully by a number of Presidents to win help from new Congressmen or to mend strained relations with old ones. Harry Truman needed all the help he could get, as he struggled with strikes, overly independent Cabinet officers, and a Congress that was ignoring his domestic programs. But the entertaining didn’t seem to work too well for him in that respect.
The social season was curtailed in 1948, however, mainly because Bess Truman considered it in poor taste to put on sumptuous meals in the White House when the President was publicly expressing his concern about hunger overseas, calling on this country’s generosity to aid the war-ravaged nations.
It was a political matter, too. Knowing the whims and peculiarities of Congress, how could the State Department ask for billions in foreign aid for the Marshall Plan, while spending $3,000 to entertain each head of state who visited the White House? Our political leaders then were self-conscious about our growing wealth in a world that mostly lacked it.
President Truman himself went abroad—first on good-will visits to Mexico and Canada, then in September, 1947, to Brazil to sign the hemispheric mutual defense treaty, and in early 1948, to Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Cuba. It was of paramount importance to him that anti-Communist bastions be established or maintained throughout the Americas.
And then, when he returned from all his travels he found his house was falling down.
* As of 1969, the President’s salary was $200,000 a year. In 1949 Mr. Truman’s salary was raised from $75,000 to $100,000.
* Told by former Secretary Acheson at ceremony unveiling portrait of Bess Truman, April 18, 1968. (Official White House transcript.)
3
BY THE BEGINNING OF 1948, his popularity had dropped to 32 per cent in the polls and the newspapers’ favorite game was sniping at Harry Truman. If it disturbed him or daunted him, we never saw it.
Congress was in a rebellious mood. And as it looked for ways to put down this feisty, independent President, it found one in plans to expand the White House.
The Executive Mansion was plenty big as a home, but it had long since failed to meet the office-space needs of a President trying to direct a rapidly expanding federal government.
During his first year in office, the President had proposed expansion of the west wing Presidential offices. He wanted a $970,000 addition—to include a small auditorium for press conferences and motion pictures, a permanent st
age, and a lunchroom for his office employees—mansion employees then ate in the servants’ dining room, but high-ranking Presidential aides had nowhere to go.
In February, 1946, the Senate Appropriations Committee abruptly halted those plans. The reason given for rescinding the appropriation for the expansion was “to preserve the general architectural scheme.”
“They’ve never done that to a President since I’ve been here,” said an astounded Mr. Crim. “Heaven help us if they go so far as to cut back our budget” (then $171,940).
But Congress had not reckoned with Harry Truman, who may have been starting a counterattack when he called us to his study a few days later. It was late afternoon, after he’d come back from the office and he looked weary. But he was ready to do battle.
Beckoning us over to the window in the oval room overlooking the south lawn, he pointed over to the ellipse, to the Washington Monument.
“That’s a magnificent sight, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” Mr. Crim nodded.
“I’d like to be able to take better advantage of that view,” the President went on. “It would be far more correct, in an architectural sense, to have a balcony up here, on the second floor. And it would solve the awning problem downstairs.”
Mr. Crim and I were pleased to think that the President was considering the awnings on the South Portico, which were always in need of cleaning and repair. Those awnings, under which the Trumans took almost every meal, were one of the biggest problems we had.
He showed us some drawings, with a balcony directly above the South Portico. We could see that it would serve as a roof for the porch.
