Bess Truman

by Margaret Truman

Mary got ahead of Bess again in the grandchildren sweepstakes by being able to report a great-grandchild, a son by her granddaughter Linda. Describing him at four months, she remarked that it was “the ideal age of man because they don’t even look as though they want to say NO, their favorite word later.” I can see Mother nodding emphatic agreement. What a dim view of males older sisters (Or is it liberated women?) acquire.

  I was particularly pleased by a long discussion they had of my biography of Dad. Mary called it a “remarkable achievement.” I realize she is somewhat prejudiced, being my godmother, but she also is a tough critic. She shredded several other books written on the Trumans in her letters to Mother. Mary said she was particularly touched by my tribute to Charlie Ross. By this time, Mary had sent Mother a book of her own autobiographical reminiscences, in which she revealed her broken engagement to Charlie. Mother was fascinated, naturally. “I can’t get over not even suspecting that you and Charlie were engaged,” she wrote. “You had a raft of suitors about that time and I suppose that threw me off.”

  Mother enjoyed Mary’s books about the old days in Independence. The two of them chuckled over Frank Wallace’s adventures with his dog U-Know and their quarrels with the Southern family, who complained about the noise the Paxton and Wallace tribes made on summer nights. Bess remembered with delight the way Mary’s father had told off “Sneaky Bill” Southern when he tried to impose a nine o’clock curfew on the neighborhood so he and his wife could get some sleep.

  In the same letter, Mother commented on how stirred she was by a biographical sketch of Mary’s mother, which Mary wrote for the contemporary Mary Paxton study club. “It brought back many things I haven’t thought of for a great many years,” she said, in what I think is a guarded reference to her father.

  She may have thought about the painful memories of the past. But she was not prepared to talk about them. Around the time Mother turned ninety, my friend Mary Shaw Branton (“Shawsie”) was working on a history of the Swope murders for a study club to which she belonged. She realized that she had a marvelous living witness to the grisly events in Mother. Shawsie called me and asked if she could interview her. “You better ask her,” I said.

  Shawsie arrived at 219 North Delaware Street armed with a tape recorder and a long list of questions. Mother greeted her warmly. She was another of my friends whom she regarded almost as a daughter. Shawsie explained the purpose of her visit. She assured Mother that anything she said would be confidential. She would not be quoted publicly, or even semi-privately within the confines of the study club.

  Mother slowly but firmly shook her head. “You might as well put that away,” she said, gesturing to the tape recorder. “I will not say one word to you or anyone else on that subject.”

  She served Shawsie tea and chatted for a half hour about her grandchildren, Shawsie’s children, and other homey topics. But the Swopes remained in that world of silence to which Mother consigned the painful part of the past.

  She remained acutely sensitive and sympathetic to old friends who were struggling with present problems. She felt bad when she learned that Mary Paxton Keeley had spent Christmas 1973 alone. “It would have been a grim day for me if I had not been able to go to Margaret’s,” she wrote. She told Mary how much she enjoyed her letters and apologized for not answering them one for one. Her arthritis made her writing “practically illegible.”

  For Mother and me, the telephone became more important than the mails, for several reasons. One was her deteriorated handwriting, and the other was my bad record as a correspondent. We chatted long distance three or four times a week. She let me worry about her and generally ignored my various pleas. I argued and argued with her to air-condition the house and escape those awful Missouri summers. “Do you know how much that would cost?” she said. I grew almost as blue in the face trying to persuade her to abandon the upstairs bedroom and sleep downstairs in her mother’s old room. After about two years of refusals, she capitulated on that one.

  Although her arthritis grew steadily worse, forcing her from a cane to a walker and finally to a wheelchair, Mother did not retreat from life - or from politics. She surprised me completely by getting into the political endorsement game on her own. The 1972 campaign, when the press had trashed the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, Senator Tom Eagleton of Missouri, because he had had psychiatric treatment for depression, had aroused Mother’s ire. Although she was worried about Dad’s health at that time, she wrote Senator Eagleton a letter expressing her sympathy and continued faith in him as a man and a politician. When the senator came up for reelection in 1974, she let him know through Shawsie Branton that she wanted to help him.

  Senator Eagleton called on Mother, and they had a lively conversation about the Democratic Party. She confided to him her low opinion of George McGovern, the Democratic nominee in 1972, because he had allowed left wingers to capture the party. “It’s not the Democratic Party I knew,” she said.

  A few months after this visit, Senator Eagleton asked Mother to become honorary chairman of his campaign. After some discussion with me, she agreed. The senator won a satisfying victory.

  Two years later, in 1976, Mother tried to do the same thing for Stuart Symington’s son, Jim, when he decided to run for the Senate, after several successful terms as a congressman. He wrote to Mother asking if she would agree to be the honorary chairman of his campaign. Not only did she say yes, she wrote him a letter (unfortunately lost) which dissected the flaws of his prospective opponents in language so vivid he was flabbergasted. Here was one ninety-one-year-old lady who was not out of touch.

  The Symington-Truman team would undoubtedly have won that election if the Supreme Court, in one of its more dubious decisions, had not struck down the law limiting campaign donations and expenditures. Running against a tycoon who spent $2.6 million on television ads, Jim got swamped. It was a sad example of new but definitely not better politics pushing out the old style.

  Later in 1976, Mother got a win with another endorsement. From her hospital room at Research Medical Center (where she was receiving treatment for her arthritis), she issued a statement backing State Senator Ike Skelton in his race for the Fourth Congressional District seat, which included Jackson County. Through her lawyer, Rufus Burrus, Mother declared that she had known Ike and his mother and father and other members of his family for years and was planning to get an absentee ballot so she could vote for him. In the primary, Mr. Skelton had not run well in Jackson County. With this kind of support from the county’s oldest politico, he won handily.

  Mother enjoyed these forays into politics. She particularly liked her collaboration with Tom Eagleton because her honorary co-chairman was Stan Musial, one of baseball’s all-time greats. When Senator Eagleton visited her on the eve of the campaign, they spent as much time discussing baseball as politics. “She knew every player in the Kansas City Royals starting lineup and had very strong opinions of the plusses and minuses of each one,” the senator told me, bafflement in his voice. He did not realize he was dealing with an ex-third baseman.

  Harry Vaughan, who continued to live near Washington, D.C., kept Mother up on the latest doings in that turbulent town. One of his best letters concerned Mr. Nixon’s dilemmas during Watergate.

  “My dear Lady,” he began, as usual. “As you may have gathered from the press, Mr. Nixon is a very worried man. He is not sleeping very well.

  “One night he had a dream that he was talking to George Washington.

  “Nixon: ‘Mr. President, I am in a bit of trouble. What would you advise me to do?’

  “Geo: ‘Tell the truth.’

  “Nixon: ‘I’m afraid it’s too late for that. I’ll have to think of something else.’

  “The next night he had a similar interview with Harry Truman.

  “Nixon: ‘Mr. President I’m in a lot of trouble. What should I do?’

  “HST: ‘Tell ‘em to go to hell.’

  “Nixon: ‘I have tried that but it does no good.’r />
  “The third night he was confronted by Abe Lincoln.

  “Nixon: ‘Mr. President, I’m in grave difficulties. What would you advise?’

  “Abe: ‘Take a night off and go to the theater.’”

  Considering the smears that were flung at Dad’s administration about the “mess in Washington,” it was pretty consoling for Mother to see Richard Nixon, one of the chief accusers, create the biggest presidential mess in history. But her pleasure was sharply tempered by her awareness of the damage that Watergate and a berserk Congress have done to the presidency. Even under Lyndon Johnson’s tenure, Dad often had said to her, “I’m glad I’m not our grandchildren.” She shuddered to think of what he would say about the maze of restrictions and oversight committees with which Congress has virtually crippled the president’s executive powers.

  Nevertheless, Mother enjoyed the amazing upsurge of enthusiasm for Dad in the wake of Watergate. She chuckled when she saw Republican Gerald Ford described as Harry Truman’s “No. 1 fan” and was delighted when the Truman Library told her how often they got calls from the Ford White House asking for information on Dad. When President Ford came to Independence to dedicate a statue to Dad in 1976, he and his wife Betty had a pleasant visit with Mother. She liked Betty Ford’s forthright style as First Lady, even though it differed from hers.

  As for her own popularity, Mother remained resolutely indifferent. Told that she had been listed in the Gallup Poll among the top twenty most admired women in America, her response was: “I don’t know why.” That brought all possibilities of an interview to a dead stop.

  Mother’s opinion of the White House’s tenants did not improve much when we finally elected a Democrat president in 1976. Jimmy Carter was Harry Truman’s opposite in so many ways, it was hard even to think of him in the same political party. Mother was a little hurt (and I, my father’s daughter, steamed) by the way the Carters ignored her except for a few perfunctory birthday messages for their first three and a half years in the White House.

  Only when Mr. Carter found himself lagging in the polls as he began his run for re-election against Ronald Reagan did he and his wife suddenly discover Bess Truman and start writing her unctuous letters. For a final touch of pure gall, Mr. Carter decided to kick off his campaign in Independence, in an attempt to identify himself with Harry Truman’s come-from-behind style. He visited Mother, but he did not get anything that remotely suggested an endorsement. All he was able to say when he left the house was “Mrs. Truman asked me to point out that she has a heart full of love for the people of this country.”

  Mother demonstrated the sincerity of this statement in her own unique way. She became deeply interested in a proposition that John Snyder, Dad’s secretary of the treasury, brought to Independence in 1978. He and other former members of the administration wanted to create a memorial to Dad. But they knew he disliked having a street or a building named after him. So they came up with the idea of creating a Truman Scholarship Program that would educate young men and women for government service.

  Mother gave the idea instant approval. It echoed, on a far more ambitious scale, the suggestion Dad had sent to Louise and Earl Stewart when their son was killed. Bess Wallace had yearned to go to college just as much as Harry Truman, so it was, really, a perfect memorial for both of them. Mr. Snyder, Clark Clifford, and others went to work on Congress, and before another year had passed, the legislators had voted $30 million to set up the fund. Mr. Snyder functioned as the first chairman and kept Mother well informed about the progress of the program. She read a sampling of the applications each year and loved to hear about the enthusiasm and gratitude of the winners.

  As her arthritis worsened. Mother’s world contracted. She could no longer travel and could only leave the house in a wheelchair. We found a satisfactory housekeeper for her, a practical nurse named Valerie La Mere, who took her to the library and for an occasional shopping expedition. On these outings, Mother disliked being treated like a sacred relic or venerable personage. She always insisted on getting in line at the library and checking out her books like everyone else.

  One day, she discovered she did not have her card. The librarian grandly said it did not matter. “Yes, it does,” Mother snapped. “I’m no different from anyone else. If I don’t have a card, I can’t take out these books.” The librarian finally persuaded her to let him check them out on his card.

  If you ask ordinary citizens of Independence what they remember about Mother, they will invariably cite her thoughtfulness. When her hairdresser Dons Miller’s mother became ill, Mother called every day to ask for her. “If anyone was in trouble or sick, she wanted to do something for them,” Doris says. When Doris’ married daughter had a baby shower, Mother came with a gift. The older Mother grew, the more democratic with a small “d” she became.

  Mother also retained a strong sense of who she was, from a historical point of view. In the late seventies, a Fourth of July parade approached the house. Mother was sitting on the porch in her wheelchair. As the flag went past, Mother slowly, painfully rose to her feet. She knew what that flag meant to Dad. It meant the same to her.

  Most of the time, Mother cherished her memories. She read and reread Dad’s thirty-eighth anniversary letter. She corresponded with Christine Wallace about the happy days of the past (and firmly avoided all mention of the unhappy days.) “There are so many good times and fun things to remember,” Christine wrote, in one of her nicest letters. She recalled the bull sessions she and I and Freddy used to have with Mother during the 1930s on the nights we arrived home from Washington. She remembered (and I did too, with tears in my eyes) Mother sitting on the step up to her bedroom talking about FDR and Eleanor and Huey Long and Cactus Jack Garner. She joked about the backyard croquet games, my back yard shows with the Henhouse Hicks, the fun of peeking at Christmas gifts after midnight church, the silly rhymes and gifts at Christmas dinner.

  Chris asked Mother if she remembered the Christmas tree Freddy sent that looked like an oil derrick in its crate and left a black smudge on the living room ceiling. She reminded her of the kibitzing that went on every year when we decorated the tree. She even remembered my risking Grandmother’s wrath by eating cream cheese and olive sandwiches on the living room sofa. “It’s fun to think back and a bit sad but a nice sadness,” Chris concluded. “We are lucky to have all those good memories.” I think she was trying to tell Mother that without her, there would not have been such good memories.

  When Mother was not reminiscing, she read books - amazing numbers of them. They included biographies and popular novels. But more and more as she grew older, she turned to mysteries. I was already a devotee and hoping to become the writer of a few. Soon we were shipping each other tales of murder and mayhem by the box. We both loved intricate plots and interesting backgrounds.

  When I decided to set my stories in Washington, D.C., she could not have been more pleased. By the time my first novel, Murder in the White House, came out, her eyes had failed so badly, she could not read it herself. But she had one of her nurses read it to her. I did not expect -or get - extravagant praise. She just said it was a “good job.”

  One of the happiest things about Mother’s last years was the presence of her sister-in-law, May Wallace, who lived only a few dozen feet away in her house on Van Horne Street. She visited Mother frequently and was a cheerful, attentive link to the past. On Mother’s ninety-sixth birthday, in 1981, May was the spirit behind a festive party.

  Then, in all too quick succession came those hazards of extreme old age, a fall and a stroke, which left Mother unable to communicate with those around her. She slowly slipped away over the next twelve months, in spite of frequent trips to the hospital for treatment. My one consolation - and I think Mother’s, too - was that death came to her at home in her first-floor bedroom, in the house she had loved so long and so well.

  Simplicity was the keynote of Mother’s funeral, even more than Dad’s. Only 150 people were invited to the small Epi
scopal Church where she and Dad were married. The mourners included her few living Independence friends and many of the maids and nurses who had cared for her. But history could not be excluded from this personal world. I invited the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, and a former First Lady of whom Mother was fond, Betty Ford. A third, Rosalynn Carter, arrived, uninvited. The photographers begged me for permission to take their picture as they sat together in the front pew.

  I said no, at first. I had issued an edict banning all photographers from the service. I knew it was what Mother would have wanted. But my husband, ever a good newspaperman, persuaded me to let them take the picture, for history’s sake.

  Mother was buried beside Dad in the courtyard of the library. The only flowers were a blanket of orange-yellow talisman roses, her favorites. On her tombstone, according to Dad’s order, has been cut her name, date of birth and death - and one final line: “First Lady, the United States of America, April 12, 1945 - January 20, 1953.”

  In a way, that says it all. But I could not help thinking of two last things. One was a comment Dad made to Mother during a visit to the library a few years before he died. He took her into the courtyard and pointed to the gravesite. “We’re going to be buried out here,” he said. “I like the idea because I may just want to get up some day and stroll into my office. And I can hear you saying, “Harry - you oughtn’t!”

  The final thought is the last line of the last letter Mary Paxton Keeley wrote to Mother before age silenced their ninety years of loving friendship. “No one could take your place in my life.”

  So many others could pay that same tribute to the sustaining power of Bess Wallace Truman’s love. Harry Truman. Madge Gates Wallace and her three sons and their wives. Friends as diverse as Arry Calhoun and Louise Stewart. Last, but by no means least - Margaret Truman Daniel.

  Published by New Word City LLC, 2014

  www.NewWordCity.com

  © Margaret Truman