Bess Truman (52 page)

This only added urgency to Dad’s search for a Democratic candidate. His number one choice was Adlai Stevenson, the popular governor of Illinois. In his four years as chief executive of that pivotal state, he had built a distinguished record. He was a moderate, acceptable to the party’s conservatives and liberals. Dad invited Mr. Stevenson to Blair House for a talk on January 22, 1952. Personally, they hit it off well. The governor listened to Dad’s sermon on the importance of keeping the presidency in Democratic hands and said he was deeply impressed by the offer and awed by the responsibility.

Dad thought this was an acceptance. Several days later, he discovered Mr. Stevenson thought he had said no. Listening to reports of this confusion - and noting Dad’s growing irritation with the Eisenhower candidacy, Mother became more and more alarmed. She could see the whole scenario heading straight to a renomination in July. She sat down one night with Dad in his study and told him that she could not survive another four years in the presidency. She did not think he could do it either, but she was speaking for herself, first.

That warning shook Dad to the depths of his soul. A few weeks later, he convened a meeting of his top aides, to which he invited Chief Justice Vinson and a few other close friends. One by one, he asked them whether he should run again. Each said no. With a candor that he always encouraged from his friends and his staff, they told him they were worried about his growing exhaustion. If he ran and won, which they were certain he could do, he would be seventy-three by the time he left office.

Perhaps Dad was hoping that Poppa Vin might be moved by this dramatic scene to change his mind. If so, it did not work. The chief justice only concurred with the rest of the room that Harry Truman should not run again.

This informal poll did not mean the issue was decided, by any means. Like all presidents, Dad often ignored or overruled the advice of his cabinet and staff. He really believed that sign on his desk, “The buck stops here.” Only he could decide, finally, what was best for the nation.

A few days later, Matt Connelly, his appointment's secretary, heard his decision and why. Matt had just come from a party given by Les Biffle, the secretary of the Senate, one of the men who had talked Dad into becoming vice president in 1944. Mr. Biffle still saw himself as a president maker. He and everyone else at the party denounced Adlai Stevenson’s reluctance to run and dismissed him as a candidate. They all said Harry Truman was their only hope, the only man who could beat General Eisenhower.

Back at the White House, Matt found Dad still in his office, working late as usual. Matt told him what they were saying at the Biffle party. Dad listened, growing more and more upset. “Matt,” he asked, “Do you think the old man will have to run again?”

Matt’s normally cheerful Irish-American face grew somber. With Charlie Ross gone, he was closer to the Trumans than any other member of the staff He pointed to a portrait of Bess on the wall to the left. “Would you do that to her?” he asked.

Dad looked at the portrait, and at the photograph of Mother on his desk, the one he had carried through France in World War I. Slowly, sadly, he nodded. “You know if anything happened to her, what would happen to me?”

Matt nodded. He knew.

“All right,” Dad said. “That settles it.”

In mid-March, Dad went to Key West for another vacation. Mother did not go with him. She had an important job to do - supervising the final preparations for the reopening of the renovated White House. She had kept in close touch with the Fine Arts Commission that redecorated the downstairs rooms. In her files are reports on their progress, four-or five-inches thick. Upstairs, she worked with decorators from B. Altman’s on our private quarters.

Late in March, Bess gave the women reporters a tour of the house. She was rewarded for her courtesy with some tough questions on the topic that was absorbing everyone in Washington. “Would you like to spend four more years here?” one of the reporters asked.

“You’re not going to get a yes or no out of me on that one,” Bess said.

“Could you stand it if you had to?”

“I stood it for seven years,” Bess said.

Mother was good at keeping secrets.

Dad returned from Key West looking much more like his old self. Mother greeted him at the airport with the news that the White House was ready for his inspection. Naturally, the former builder of county courthouses and hospitals wanted to see it immediately. They were greeted at the front door by the staff. Mr. Crim, the head usher, gave Dad a gold key. Mother was amused to discover it opened nothing.

The president followed the First Lady through the gleaming East Room, Green Room, Blue Room, Red Room, and State Dining Room and pronounced them all magnificent. Mother went off to preside at a Salvation Army dinner, and Dad continued his inspection for most of the evening. One might wonder if regaining this now really palatial mansion might have given Harry Truman second thoughts about his decision. But raising that question would only prove you did not know Harry Truman well.

On March 29, every Democratic VIP in the country crammed into the Washington Armory for the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner. Dad was the principal speaker. On the dais, he sat next to Alice Acheson, the secretary of state’s wife. On the way to the dinner, Alice had asked her husband if he thought the president might say something about running again in his speech. “Not at all,” replied Mr. Acheson in his most autocratic tone, one of the many reasons why he was a superb secretary of state. Mrs. Acheson, properly subdued, dropped the subject.

After dessert, Dad took out the binder containing his speech. He opened it to the last page and showed it to Mrs. Acheson. The final paragraph read: “I shall not be a candidate for reelection. I have served my country long, and I think efficiently and honestly. I shall not accept a renomination. I do not feel that it is my duty to spend another four years in the White House.”

“You, Bess and I are the only ones here who know that,” Dad said.

Mrs. Acheson wondered if he ought to reconsider one last time. She asked Dad if she could tell the secretary of state, who might want to try to talk him out of it. Dad shook his head. His mind was made up and not even the eloquence of the most brilliant man in his cabinet could change it now.

Dad gave a magnificent speech that night. He summed up the achievements of the Democratic Party at home and abroad. It was a great record. Under his leadership, the United States had restored the strength of the free world and met the challenge of Communist aggression. He scorched the Republican isolationists and red-baiters who were undermining our bipartisan foreign policy and summed up the Democratic Party’s record of service to the farmer, the worker, and world peace.

Finally, he paused. “Whoever the Democrats nominate for president this year, he will have that record to run upon,” he said. Then he read his statement, announcing his decision not to seek another term. General Vaughan had his eye on Mother while the words spread shock and dismay through the assembled Democrats. “She looked,” the general said, “the way you do when you draw four aces.”

The reporters rushed to Governor Stevenson’s table to ask him if he was a candidate. They should have talked to Bess Wallace Truman. For the first and only time during her eight years as First Lady, she might have given them an interview. I can almost see the head on the story:

BESS TRUMAN SAYS SHE IS THE HAPPIEST WOMAN IN WASHINGTON

Back in the restored White House, Bess found herself working harder than ever. Several major state visits, which had been put off so that the foreign guests could enjoy the $5 million worth of splendor that the Trumans had created for future presidents, now became realities.

First to arrive was Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and her husband, Prince Bernhard. Mother was especially eager to greet the royal couple, who had been most hospitable to me on my tour of Europe in 1951. When I got home, I had strongly recommended inviting them. I suspected they and the Trumans would hit it off well, and I was right. Mother and the queen became instant friends. They were both down-to-earth, no-nonsense women. In fact, the queen gave Congress the kind of address that Bess would have given them if she had ever been granted the opportunity.

Dad was proud of his ability to talk to people like a Dutch uncle. Queen Juliana gave the isolationists and red-baiters the business, like a Dutch aunt. She told Congress that the United States was the leader of the free world whether they liked it or not, and it was up to them to face that responsibility.

Mother sat in the gallery, beaming.

The next important guest to arrive - not on a state visit basis, of course - was Eleanor Roosevelt. She came to Washington to report to Dad on a trip she had just made to the Middle East. The Trumans took her on a tour of the White House. She especially liked the way Mother had redecorated the battered old sun porch on the third floor. With a new tile floor and rattan furniture, it was a great place to relax, and it had a marvelous view of the city. Best of all, it was practically invisible from the street.

Mrs. Roosevelt was also full of admiration for another item Mother had added to the family rooms: closets. No longer could the maids drive the First Lady crazy by putting her clothes away on the third floor before she could decide whether she wanted to wear them again.

Official state dinners and luncheons now marched in a virtual procession through the State Dining Room. A diplomatic reception produced 1,500 hands to shake. To make it even more wearing, the new White House air-conditioning system failed.

Dad, meanwhile, was up to his neck in another crisis, the steel strike of 1952. Although our young men were still dying in Korea, the patriots in the executive offices of the mills were unable to put their country ahead of a quick buck. The result was a shutdown that threatened to create dangerous shortages of ammunition and weapons. Dad was outraged and ordered the federal government to seize the mills.

Before taking this step, he had conferred with Chief Justice Fred Vinson, who had assured him that the move was legal, and the Supreme Court would support him. When the case went to the court, the Big Judge turned out to be unable to persuade the rest of the Justices to agree with him. Dad was humiliated, and thenceforth I began to take a dim view of the Vinsons. I thought both Mother and Dad were too susceptible to their flattery. I never succeeded in changing their minds about them.

The net effect of this national spasm was another outpouring of vitriol against Dad. He was called a Caesar, a Hitler, a Mussolini, a power-mad bully. Worse, from Mother’s point of view, the steel crisis, which included press conferences, a TV address to the nation, and endless meetings with advisers and lawyers from the Justice Department, produced the scariest bout of presidential exhaustion yet. Dad actually fell asleep in a chair while resting at Blair House, an unprecedented event. He put off signing important papers because he was too “shaky.” For Mother, this reaction only confirmed the wisdom of her opposition to another four years in the White House. After seven and a half years of crises. Dad was close to burnout.

Instead of urging a retreat to Key West, Mother decided to issue an edict: no more night work. After dinner, the President of the United States would
not
go back to his office. Dad obeyed the order, most of the time.

When he managed to forget the harassments of the Oval Office, Dad resumed one of his favorite pastimes - teasing “Miss Lizzie.” It was always a sign that things were going well between him and Mother. One of his better moments came on Good Friday, when Mother and I went to morning services at the Washington Cathedral. We returned to find Dad waiting to have lunch with us. Mother went on at some length about the beauty of the ritual at the Cathedral, the excellent music. “And what are you two good Episcopalians going to have for lunch on Good Friday?” Dad asked.

At that moment, almost as if he had stage-managed it, lunch was served: hamburger. I laughed, and Mother looked sheepish. She had approved the menu, earlier in the week, without giving much thought to it.

P.S. We ate it.

Around this time, another trip to church produced some amusing dialogue and some serious thoughts about religion in one of Dad’s diary jottings. His opinions on this subject had not changed much from the days when he wrote his first letters to Bess Wallace.

Early in June, Mother had a White House reception that meant more to her than any of the state dinners or diplomatic fol-de-rol. She invited 1,450 wounded veterans to the new White House. She marshaled a contingent of VIP’s, including the president, the cabinet members and their wives, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, and a squad of generals and admirals to shake hands with them. Dad went back to work in a determined mood. He told Ethel Noland in a letter: “I spent the rest of the day discussing ways and means to keep the country and the world off the skids as a result of the awful [Supreme] court decision. But we’ll make it.”

Shortly thereafter, I took off for another tour of Europe, this time with my best friend, Drucie Snyder Horton (Treasury Secretary John Snyder’s daughter). Drucie was married and the mother of a daughter, but I persuaded her to leave both husband and child for six weeks of high living. I don’t think Mother quite approved. No power on earth could tear her away from me during the early years of my existence. But she resigned herself to the deplorable habits of the younger generation and let us go without any particularly devastating comments.

Mother came up to New York to see us off. We had tea at the Carlyle Hotel the day before we sailed. Drucie and I were in the highest imaginable spirits. We swigged our tea as if it were champagne. “Marg! Drucie!” Mother exclaimed, appalled at the way we were picking up our teacups. “Surely your mother, Drucie, taught you how a lady drinks tea. I know I’ve tried to teach this one,” she said, gesturing to me.

“Try to pick up that cup with one finger,” I said.

Mother tried - and failed. The cup weighed at least a pound. I think this was the day she gave up trying to make a lady out of me (and Drucie, whom she frequently treated as a second daughter). It was bad enough that I never listened to her anymore. Even technology was against her.

Not long after I arrived in Europe, Mother requested me to refute a recurring rumor that she was the daughter of one Robert Wallace, who was still living in Ireland. I was on my way to Ireland, and she ordered me to “settle [it] once and for all” at a press conference in Dublin. Her father’s name, she told me, was “David Willock Wallace and he was born in Independence, Missouri.” She was “sick and tired” of the way the story kept popping up.

It saddened me that Mother felt she had to tell me my grandfather’s name. It is an indication of how seldom he was mentioned at 219 North Delaware Street. Now that I understand how Mother coped with this burden, I can see this calm, almost offhand message as another example of her courage. In Ireland, I did as I was told, and David Willock Wallace’s real story remained where it belonged during Mother’s lifetime - buried.

In London, I got an amusing letter from Mother, again demonstrating her marvelous ability to get even with Dad. Remember the Key West fishing expeditions? Writing on July 4, she serenely informed me that “Fred Vinson and Dad and I are going to the baseball game this afternoon. Double-header! I haven’t seen one in years. ‘Mamma’ Vinson said she wouldn’t sit on a hard seat that long.” How do you like that for sweet revenge? For teasing her about missing a baseball game the previous summer, she planned to make the President of the United States sit through two games, knowing that he would prefer to be almost anywhere else.

Unfortunately, it rained early in the second game. The First Couple stuck it out for an hour and finally went back to the White House. Undaunted, Mother demanded and got a presidential escort to a night game on July 5.

These were straws in the wind, you might say, except that there is precious little wind in humid Washington during the summer, when Congress is seldom in session. Along with dutifully continuing her First Lady chores, Mother quietly began working into her schedule a lot of things that she wanted to do. Old Independence friends, such as Helen Souter and Arry Ellen Mayer Calhoun, were invited for weekends of reminiscence and gossip.

Dad also decided to enjoy himself a little in the closing months of his presidency. You will recall that he turned down with great regret an invitation to attend a reunion of the Thirty-fifth Division shortly after the assassination attempt in 1950. In June 1952, he accepted another invitation and flew to Springfield, Missouri, for a delightful celebration, which brought him and a future President of the United States together. Here is the story in Dad’s own words.

I would not want to have been within earshot if someone with a crystal ball had told Dad he was applauding a future Republican president. In those days, Ronald Reagan was a Democrat.

Later in July, Dad and Mother flew to Chicago for the Democratic Convention. It is interesting how many conflicting emotions Mother had when that city was mentioned. It was the first stop on her honeymoon and the place where, in 1944, her presidential tribulations began. Now she could think - with some justification - that things had come full circle, as she attended a Chicago convention that did not nominate Harry Truman for anything. Instead, she watched Dad as he performed like the master politician that he was, maneuvering his influence around the convention to win the nomination for Adlai Stevenson.

When Dad arrived in Chicago, the convention had recessed. Senator Estes Kefauver, whom Dad preferred to call “Cowfever,” had some 360 votes, and Governor Stevenson had about 330. The rest of the votes were being held by favorite sons. Without Dad’s intervention, there was a good chance that Kefauver, a man with no loyalty to anyone, but himself, would have gotten the nomination. Dad ordered Averell Harriman of New York and Joseph Dever, the governor of Massachusetts to release their delegations. They obeyed, and Mr. Stevenson was promptly nominated. That was the beginning, not the end, of the Trumans’ tribulations.

Dad never really warmed to Adlai Stevenson, although he tried hard to like and understand him. Mother liked him. She almost always liked born gentlemen, men with courtly manners and debonair wit. But she agreed with the politician she had married that Mr. Stevenson behaved deplorably as a presidential candidate.

By playing Hamlet until the last moment, he forfeited the opportunity to build him up as the Democratic Party’s wholehearted choice. In the campaign that followed his nomination, he betrayed a lack of judgment that dismayed Mother and infuriated Dad. Bess wanted to see her man get the credit that was coming to him for his eight grueling years in the White House. Instead, Adlai Stevenson decided he had to run
against
Harry Truman’s record. He was intimidated by Republican outcries about the mess in Washington, McCarthy’s red-baiting, and the protracted struggle in Korea, which we were winning on our terms.