Bess Truman

by Margaret Truman

  Bess’ reaction to this public scrutiny was demonstrated on June 5, when moving vans took away the furniture Fred and Christine Wallace had left in the house and a team of workmen delivered the furniture she had shipped from Washington, D.C. Mother ordered the blinds pulled and the lights turned on in the middle of the day, so the gawkers on the street saw nothing.

  The renovation of 219 North Delaware did not go smoothly. The plumbers’ slow pace particularly irked Bess. She complained to the president, who wrote to her in mid-June that “the plumber troubles make me tired also - but we are up against it and will have to put up with it. Hope you can get caught up on it in a reasonable time.”

  Somewhat naively, Mother asked Dad what he thought of a proposition that floated in from Fred Wallace in Denver. A well-to-do friend in that city had offered Fred a house, free of charge, which the president would use as a summer White House when he and Mother came to visit Fred and Christine.

  “I don’t believe it would be good policy to let Fred take that house in Denver,” Dad wrote. “We should only have the one in Independence on the basis I outlined to you.” (The basis was the government’s willingness to pay for the improvements.) Dad was worried about giving columnist Drew Pearson, whom he particularly detested, material for a scandal. “If we should go to Colorado we should stay at a hotel and pay for it,” he wrote.

  Bess was disappointed by this decision, although she found it difficult to argue against it. Fred had recently quit his government job and gone into the real estate business. He was not making much money. But that did not justify the risk he was asking Dad to take.

  Some badly needed comic relief was provided by Vietta Garr, our long-running cook and maid, who had left the Wallace-Truman payroll to manage a luncheonette. Bess had asked her sister-in-law May Wallace to persuade Vietta to return. Somehow reporters got wind of this negotiation and asked Vietta if she had made up her mind yet. “I don’t know,” Vietta said. “They’re a nice family to work for but I’m sort of on the outs with the cooking right now.” She gave the newsmen a rundown of the Delaware Street kitchen, speaking with special fondness of the outsized old-fashioned icebox. “I don’t think they will ever have an electric icebox in the house,” she declared. “Mr. Frank owns some stock in the Independence Ice Company.”

  Along with some other pertinent comments, a letter to Reathel Odum provides the denouement of Vietta’s performance. “This house is bedlam and I wish I had never come home,” Mother wrote. “There is someone working in almost every room in the house and a horde of them on the outside. I don’t see any end to it. . . . Vietta came today so that will help. At least I don’t have to cook.”

  In another letter to Reathel during these same weeks, Mother summed her policy in regard to reporters, who were pestering Reathel and Mrs. Helm for stories. “Just keep on smiling and tell ‘them’ nothing.”

  Gawking curiosity seekers, slothful plumbers, hammering carpenters, were not the only upsets Bess encountered in Independence that summer. When she went to the first meeting of her bridge club, the members all stood up as she walked into the room. It was a half humorous, half serious gesture. They were trying to tell her how proud they were that she had become First Lady. They were also expressing some of the awe Americans feel for the presidency.

  Dad had had a similar experience with Eddie McKim. When he came to the Oval Office the day after Dad took over, Eddie started calling him “Mr. President” and could not bring himself to sit down in his presence.

  Mother dealt with the bridge club in her own direct way. “Now stop it, stop it this instant,” she said. “Sit down, every darn one of you.”

  Late in June 1945, the president flew to San Francisco to address the closing session of the UN conference. On the way back, he stopped in Independence. He had promised Bess that he would “do as I’m told” while he was there. She hoped that these words meant she would enjoy his company for a few quiet days. But he brought the presidency with him, and instead of a peaceful interlude, the visit was four days of continuous uproar. As Mother put it in a letter to Reathel Odum, “The place has been running over with all sorts of people.” Both Trumans were learning that a president could not go anywhere without an army of reporters and aides and Secret Service men in his wake.

  In this case, Dad should have realized that the first visit of Missouri’s first president would inevitably be a circus. The biggest crowd in the history of Jackson County roared a welcome at the airport. Dad loved every minute of it, especially the part where he issued a proclamation declaring Kansas City part of “Greater Independence.” On his last day, Dad tried to arrange twenty-four hours at home without intrusions. But he yielded to reporters’ pleas and granted a picture session on the front porch at 3:00 p.m. He had no trouble persuading me to join him, but after a few minutes of click-click they naturally asked for Bess. Dad went into the house to get her. A few minutes later he came out looking unhappy. “Take a few more of us, why don’t you, boys,” he said. Mother had flatly refused to join us.

  After Dad returned to Washington, Mother declared her independence from the Secret Service on her home turf. She called in our resident agents and informed them that under no circumstances was she going to tolerate anyone trailing her when she went shopping or visiting friends. She would put up with surveillance in Washington, D.C., where she could see it was necessary. But not here. Thereafter, when she went anywhere, I or one of my aunts was her only escort.

  Bess’ dark mood may have been worsened by bad news from Denver. Fred Wallace was starting to drink again. But Harry Truman felt, accurately, I fear, that he was the chief cause of her woe. On July 5, on the eve of leaving for a summit conference with Churchill and Stalin in Potsdam, Germany, he telephoned her from the White House. The conversation was so unpleasant, he was still upset about it the next day, when he wrote her this farewell letter.

  I’m on the train, bound for Norfolk, to take the boat (“ship” is navy) for Antwerp. [It was the cruiser USS Augusta.] I am blue as indigo about going. You didn’t seem at all happy when we talked. I’m sorry if I’ve done something to make you unhappy. All I’ve ever tried to do is make you pleased with me and the world. I’m very much afraid I’ve failed miserably. But there is not much I can do now to remedy the situation.

  Tonight I sat in the front row with Vaughan, Vardaman, Snyder and others and listened to a most beautiful band concert by the Air Corps Band - a million dollar organization. They were most pleased to play for me! Why I can’t understand.

  Now I’m on my way to the high executioner. Maybe I’ll save my head. Let’s hope so. George VI R.I. sent me a personal letter today by Halifax. [The British ambassador, Lord Halifax.) Not much impressed. Save it for Margie’s scrapbook.

  As president, Dad was deeply concerned about the potential impact of this venture in diplomacy on his standing with the American voters. He remembered that Woodrow Wilson had ruined his popularity at home by letting European statesmen out-negotiate him at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. Dad was skeptical of what could be gained from any agreement with Stalin, who already had proved himself to be a double-dealer. But he was at least as worried about Bess’ reaction to the presidency. He tried to remedy the situation by writing the frankest imaginable letters to her from Potsdam, in the hope that she would feel a part of this history-in-the-making, even though she was 6,000 miles away.

  This letter describes the opening of the conference.

  I’ve only had one letter from you since I left home (on July 6]. I look carefully through every [diplomatic] pouch that comes - but so far not much luck. . . .

  The first session was yesterday in one of the Kaiser’s palaces. I have a private suite in it that is really palatial. The conference room is about forty by sixty and we sit at a large round table - fifteen of us. I have four and they each have four [seats], then behind me are seven or eight more helpers. Stalin moved to make me the presiding officer as soon as we sat down and Churchill agreed.

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sp; It makes presiding over the Senate seem tame. The boys say I gave them an earful. I hope so. Admiral Leahy said he’d never seen an abler job and Byrnes and my fellows seemed to be walking on air. I was so scared I didn’t know whether things were going according to Hoyle or not. Anyway a start has been made and I’ve gotten what I came for - Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it. . . . I’ll say that we’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed. That is the important thing. . . .

  Wish you and Margie were here. But it is a forlorn place and would only make you sad.

  Dad also reached out across 6,000 miles to talk to Mother in Independence by a special telephone hookup. The phone had a “scrambler” device which prevented anyone from eavesdropping on the conversation. This next letter was written after one of these calls. Potsdam, for those who, like me, never did well in geography, was a suburb of Berlin, and Dad’s comments reflect a recent tour of the shattered Nazi capital.

  It was an experience to talk to you from my desk here in Berlin night before last. It sure made me homesick. This is a hell off place - ruined, dirty, smelly, forlorn people, bedraggled, hangdog look about them. You never saw as completely ruined a city. But they did it. I am most comfortably fixed and the palace where we meet is one of two intact palaces left standing. . . .

  We had a tough meeting yesterday. I reared up on my hind legs and told ‘em where to get off and they got off. I have to make it perfectly plain to them at least once a day that so far as this president is concerned Santa Claus is dead and that my first interest is U.S.A., then I want the Jap War won and I want ‘em both in it. Then I want peace - world peace and will do what can be done by us to get it. But certainly am not going to set up another [illegible] here in Europe, pay reparations, feed the world and get nothing for it but a nose thumbing. They are beginning to awake to the fact that I mean business.

  It was my turn to feed ‘em at a formal dinner last night. Had Churchill on my right, Stalin on my left. We toasted the British King, the Soviet president, the U.S. president, the two honor guests, the foreign ministers, one at a time, etc. etc. ad lib. Stalin felt so friendly that he toasted the pianist when he played a Tskowsky (you spell it) piece especially for him. The old man loves music. He told me he’d import the greatest Russian pianist for me tomorrow. Our boy was good. His name is List and he played Chopin, Von Weber, Schubert, and all of them.

  When Dad got a letter from Mother, his day was made, even in Potsdam.

  The letter came last night while I was at Joe’s for dinner. . . . I can’t get Chanel No 5 . . . not even on the black market. But I managed to get some other kind for six dollars an ounce at the American PX. They said it is equal to No 5 and sells for thirty five dollars an ounce at home. So if you don’t like it, a profit can be made on it. I bought you a Belgian lace luncheon set - the prettiest thing you ever saw. I’m not going to tell you what it cost. You’d probably have a receiver appointed for me and officially take over the strong box. But I came out a few dollars to the good in the game of chance on the boat [he means poker], so it’s invested in a luxury for you. . . .

  But I seem to have Winnie and Joe talking to themselves and both are being exceedingly careful with me. Uncle Joe gave his dinner last night. There were at least twenty five toasts - so much getting up and down that there was practically no time to eat or drink either - a very good thing. Being the super-duper guest I pulled out at eleven o’clock after a lovely piano and violin concert by a dirty-faced quartet. The two men play the piano, the two women the violin. I never heard better ones. . . . It was real music. Since I’d had America’s No. 1 pianist to play for Uncle Joe at my dinner he had to go me one better. I had one [pianist] and one violinist - and he had two of each.

  He talked to me confidentially at the dinner and I believe things will be all right in most instances. Some things we won’t and can’t agree on - but I have already what I came for. Hope I can break it off in a few days.

  Three days later, they were still at it.

  We have accomplished a very great deal in spite of all the talk. Set up a council of ministers to negotiate peace with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland and Austria. We have discussed a free waterway program for Europe, making the Black Sea straits, the Danube, the Rhine and the Kiel Canal free to everyone. We have a setup for the government of Germany and we hope we are in sight of agreement on reparations.

  So you see we have not wasted time. There are some things we can’t agree to. Russia and Poland have gobbled up a big hunk of Germany and want Britain and us to agree. I have flatly refused. We have unalterably opposed the recognition of police governments in the Germany Axis countries. I told Stalin that until we have free access to those countries and our nationals had their property rights restored, there’d never be recognition. He seems to like it when I hit him with a hammer.

  In a final letter, Dad summed up what he and Stalin had failed to agree on.

  The whole difficulty is reparations. Of course the Russians are naturally looters and they have been thoroughly looted by the Germans over and over again and you can hardly blame them for their attitude. The thing I have to watch is to keep our skirts clean and make no commitments.

  The Poles are the other headache. They have moved into East Prussia and to the Oder in Prussia, and unless we are willing to go to war again they can stay and will stay with Bolsheviki backing - so you see in comes old man reparations again and a completely German-looted Poland.

  There was one subject that Harry Truman did not mention in these letters from Potsdam. Throughout the last weeks of July, he got a stream of reports from the test of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico. In the opening paragraphs of his letter summing up the conference, he made an oblique reference to it. He remarked that he had “an ace in the hole” if Stalin refused to reach an agreement. Obviously, Bess knew about the existence of the bomb. But it is also clear that Dad did not discuss with her the decision to drop it.

  This omission does not imply a guilty conscience on his part. On the contrary, it underscores the virtually unanimous conviction among America’s leaders that there was no alternative to dropping it. In the preceding weeks, Harry Truman had studied reports from committees of scientists and military men, all of whom voted by large majorities to use the weapon. The idea circulated by some of Dad’s third-rate biographers that he spent hours reading and rereading the “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet, agonizing over the decision, is utterly absurd. To put it in the negative, no American president, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, could have refused to use this weapon. He could never have defended a decision to go ahead with an invasion of Japan that would have cost American lives, whether the final casualty figure was 10,000 or 1 million.

  After a final conference with his advisers and with Winston Churchill, Dad authorized the Army Air Force to drop the bomb to end the war swiftly. The “Little Boy,” the code name for the first bomb, was dropped on August 6, 1945, while Dad was on his way home from Potsdam. Bess was on a train to Washington, D.C., at the time. She was alone (except for her Secret Service detail), having left me in Independence with Grandmother Wallace. Three days later, John Snyder escorted her from the White House to meet the USS Augusta at Norfolk, when it arrived on August 9. That same day, according to the plan recommended by Dad’s military advisers, a second bomb smashed Nagasaki. Major General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project that created the bomb, had predicted (with amazing accuracy, as events proved) that a second bomb would be necessary to convince the Japanese that the first one was not a fluke.

  John Snyder recalls that Bess was deeply disturbed by this new weapon. “What do you think of it?” she asked him. “Should we have dropped it?”

  John told her it was necessary to end the war and save American - and Japanese - lives. Bess accepted the explanation without comment. But she found herself wishing that Harry Truman had consulted her on this momentous decision. I am not suggesting she would hav
e changed his mind. However, she did not like the way the news had taken her by surprise. It underscored what she felt as she read Dad’s letters from Potsdam, describing decisions on issues that he had never so much as mentioned to her before. She was forced to face an unpleasant fact. She had become a spectator rather than a partner in Harry Truman’s presidency.

  That made her angry.

  What had happened? Depending on your point of view, you can blame it on history, on Bess, or on Harry Truman. I am inclined to blame history, that maddening, mysterious tangle of people and events which Abraham Lincoln reminded Americans that they could not escape.

  History had been accelerating at such a tremendous rate of speed since April 12 that Harry Truman had had no time to discuss with Bess dozens of major and minor decisions. There was no Congressional Record to read and reflect on, none of the leisurely give and take of the Senate, where a wife could analyze issues and personalities and make shrewd observations, helpful suggestions.

  Instead, Bess felt like she was suddenly watching the man she loved driving a supercharged car at suicidal speed around the Indianapolis raceway for eighteen hours a day. Occasionally, he glanced her way, and she was able to shout a suggestion, such as “HIRE CHARLIE ROSS.” But most of the time he was too busy trying to keep the car on the track. She felt more and more superfluous. This feeling combined with her original opposition to Harry Truman becoming president to build a smoldering anger that was tantamount to an emotional separation.

  I stayed in Independence during these tumultuous final days of World War II. Bess wrote me a number of letters, which are a study of her attempt to ignore the kettledrums of history. On August 10, the day after the second atomic bomb exploded and the Japanese tottered, her entire letter dealt with paying a new maid, Leola, $5 each Wednesday without fail and using the balance of the check she enclosed to pay for my music lessons. Her only comment on Washington, D.C., was: “It’s plenty sticky here today and looks like rain.”