Harry Truman (28 page)

Around the same time, the senators were equally aroused by the discovery that Marshal Stalin seemed to think so little of the already scheduled conference at San Francisco, to set up the United Nations, that he was not even sending his foreign minister, V. M. Molotov, to head the Russian delegation.

On April 3, 1945, the Senate voted forty-six to twenty-nine to reject the compulsory manpower bill, in spite of all the pleas and politicking by the White House, the army, the navy, and dozens of other high administration officials on its behalf. In succeeding days, the Senate sounded like it might even reject a perfectly reasonable treaty with Mexico on water rights the two nations share on the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers. But perhaps the best proof of how low the Roosevelt Administration had sunk in the Senate’s estimate was the vote on April 10 on an amendment to the Lend-Lease Act, proposed by Senator Taft of Ohio. It called for compulsory cancelation or drastic readjustment of lend-lease contracts, as soon as the war ended. It was nothing less than a direct slap in the President’s face. The vote was thirty-nine to thirty-nine, and my father was given his first and only chance to cast a tie-breaking vote as vice president. “On this amendment,” he said, “the Yeas are thirty-nine and the Nays are thirty-nine. The chair votes No. The amendment is not agreed to.”

Thus, he rescued President Roosevelt from humiliation. But the closeness of the vote was a humiliation in itself. Grimly, my father resolved to see the President as soon as possible and work out a program to revitalize his relationship with the Senate. By now, this concern had pretty well obscured his worries about President Roosevelt’s health. Perhaps, unconsciously, Dad preferred to worry about the political situation because he could do something about that. There was nothing he could do about the other worry, and he has a habit of dismissing ineffectual thoughts from his mind.

By this time, President Roosevelt had departed for a projected three-week vacation at Warm Springs, Georgia. He had assured my father not long before he left that a good rest there would completely restore him to his old vigorous self. The President was deluding himself. We know now that no one - including President Roosevelt himself - was aware of how sick he was. George Elsey, who later became one of Dad’s top aides and was at this time working in the White House map room, says everyone in the White House was concerned about President Roosevelt’s health for several years. But his doctor, Rear Admiral Ross T. Mclntire, deliberately deceived the President about his true condition. This conviction was shared by William D. Hassett, who was FDR’s correspondence secretary and also served Dad in that capacity. Perhaps the most heartbreaking conversation in the history of this tragic time was the talk Bill Hassett had with heart specialist Dr. Howard Bruenn about the President’s health, on March 30, 1945.

“He is slipping away from us and no earthly power can keep him here,” Bill said.

“Why do you think so?” Dr. Bruenn asked contentiously.

“I know you don’t want to make the admission and I have talked this way with no one else save one,” Bill replied. “To all the staff, to the family, and with the Boss himself I have maintained the bluff; but I am convinced that there is no help for him.”

On April 11, my father held a press conference for the Senate reporters. In the light of what was to happen the following day, his words were tinged with irony. Someone called him Mr. Vice President and he said, “Smile when you say that.” He kidded with the reporters over recent publicity about Senate absenteeism. Senators were now elaborately asking the vice president’s permission to attend committee meetings and make other necessary departures from the floor. “When they hold up two fingers and say they want to go to an appropriations committee, I tell them they can go,” Dad said. “When they hold up one finger, I tell them they can sit there and suffer.”

Then he grew serious. “It’s wonderful, this Senate,” he said. “It’s the greatest place on earth. That takes in a lot of territory, but I say it and I mean it. The grandest bunch of fellows you could ever find anywhere. And there isn’t one of ‘em who couldn’t do better in private business. I was sitting there today looking them over, and you know, there isn’t a one but what could make three times what he does here if he worked for some private corporation. And there isn’t one of us who would be anywhere else if he could.”

“It’s a good place for public service, isn’t it, Senator?” somebody asked.

“It’s the best place there is,” Dad said. With a grin, he added, “I did what I could. I did my best. I was getting along fine until I stuck my neck out too far and got too famous - and then they made me V.P. and now I can’t do anything.”

The words obviously reminded him of the political worries that were nagging at his mind. “No, sir,” he said, almost mournfully, “I can’t do anything.”

The events of the next fateful day have been told and retold in newspapers, magazines, and books. For us, the early hours were thoroughly routine. I rode to school with my father in his chauffeur-driven car, with the Secret Service man sitting beside the driver in the front seat. Dad spent most of the day in the Senate listening to more windy debate on the Mexican water treaty. He was so bored he began writing a letter to his mother, while he sat at his elevated desk, presiding. He was looking forward to a relaxed evening. Eddie McKim was in town, and at Dad’s suggestion, he was busy organizing a poker game in his suite at the Statler Hotel.

I was also looking forward to a pleasant evening. I had a date with a new boyfriend, and we were going to stop by a birthday party for my close friend and next door neighbor, Annette Davis, before going on to dinner and the theater. The Senate finally adjourned at 4:56 p.m., with absolutely nothing decided on the Mexican water treaty. Outside a misty rain was falling, typical April weather for Washington, D.C. This worried my father a little because he was planning to fly to Providence, Rhode Island, the following morning, to address the Rhode Island Democrats at their Jefferson Day dinner.

In no hurry, since he was not planning to eat dinner at home that night, my father sauntered into his “gold-plated” Capitol office. There he was told Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn had called, asking if he would stop by his office for a few minutes to talk over some bills on which the House and Senate were in disagreement. Dad dutifully headed for Sam’s office. He then planned to dash over to his Senate Office Building quarters, sign the day’s mail, and depart for Eddie McKim’s room at the Statler and an evening of friendly poker. He told General Vaughan to phone Eddie and tell him they would be a little late, but they would definitely get there.

Down the dark marble corridors my father strolled to Sam Rayburn’s “Board of Education,” as insiders called the Speaker’s private office, where he maintained the tradition of his mentor, Cactus Jack Garner, of “striking a blow for liberty.” Waiting for Dad, along with the Speaker, was Lew Deschler, the parliamentarian of the House of Representatives, and James M. Barnes, a White House legislative assistant. After the draggy afternoon Dad had spent in the Senate, he was more than ready to join Sam in a liquid blow for liberty. As the Speaker mixed the bourbon with the right amount of water, he casually told Dad that Steve Early, the White House press secretary, had left a message, asking my father to return the call immediately. He did so without a moment’s hesitation.

In a strained voice, Steve Early said, “Please come right over as quickly and as quietly as you can.”

Apologizing to Sam Rayburn, my father walked over to his Senate office by unfrequented underground corridors. There he seized his hat and told one of his secretaries he was going to the White House. Although some people have found it hard to believe, he was still unaware of what had happened. Not even the urgency in Steve Early’s voice was able to penetrate Dad’s rigid resolve
not
to think about the President’s health.

Four days later, when he wrote a long letter to his mother and sister Mary about these harrowing minutes, he said: “I thought that the President had come to Washington to attend the funeral of the Episcopal Bishop Atwood, for whom he was an honorary pallbearer, and who was his good friend. I thought that maybe he wanted me to do some special piece of liaison work with the Congress and had sent for me to see him after the funeral and before he went back to Warm Springs.”

My father’s walk through the underground corridors to his Senate office had taken his Secret Service detail completely by surprise. They now had no idea where he was. With no time to look for them, he went downstairs and into the street, where he found his car and chauffeur waiting for him. “We got to the White House in almost nothing flat,” Dad told his mother. It was 5:25 p.m. when his black limousine swung through the northwest gate and up the long semicircle to the front entrance of the White House. Two ushers were waiting for him, and they led him to an elevator which carried him up to Mrs. Roosevelt’s second-floor study. Steve Early and Anna Roosevelt and her husband, Colonel John Boettiger, were there. Tragedy was visible in their stricken faces. Gently, sadly, Mrs. Roosevelt placed her hand on my father’s shoulder and said, “Harry, the President is dead.”

For over an hour, while he wrote his letter to his mother at his Senate desk and strolled down to Sam Rayburn’s office, my father had been the President, without knowing it. Roosevelt had died in Warm Springs at 4:35.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Dad asked.

Mrs. Roosevelt shook her head. “Is there anything we can do for you?” she asked. “For you are the one in trouble now.”

Dad’s first reaction was a tremendous surge of sympathy and grief. My father had disagreed with some of President Roosevelt’s policies, but the disagreements were minor. His admiration for the man as a political leader, as the creator of the modern Democratic Party, was immense. No matter what office Dad held, he would have been grieved by the President’s death. Now, in the presence of Mrs. Roosevelt’s calm courage, and the awful knowledge of what the news meant to him personally, grief and awe and shock combined to create emotions of terrible intensity.

Yet, within minutes, my father began making decisions. Here, in a passage which he omitted from the April 16 letter to his mother, part of which he published in his memoirs, he tells the events of the next hour:

I think these crisp words convey, better than anything I could write, the image of a man who was, in spite of his grief, taking charge as a national leader.

My father personally called Mother and me from the President’s office in the west wing of the White House. In a party mood, I started to tease him about not coming home to dinner, grandly informing him
I
was going out. Miraculously, Dad did not lose his temper. He simply told me in a voice of steel to put Mother on the line.

I went back into my bedroom to finish dressing. I was vaguely aware Mother had hung up rather abruptly. It wasn’t like her and Dad to have such brief conversations. Suddenly Mother was standing in the door of my bedroom with tears streaming down her face. My Grandmother Wallace, who shared the bedroom with me, gasped, when Mother, in a choked voice, told us President Roosevelt was dead.

The next two hours were lived in a kind of daze. Things were seen, thought, felt, and heard with a strange mixture of confusion and clarity. It was rather like going under or coming out of anesthesia, or recovering from a blow on the head. I felt totally dazed, but certain things, sometimes important details, sometimes minor ones, leaped into focus with almost blinding clarity. I remember calling my boyfriend, Marvin Braverman, and telling him why I couldn’t keep our date, and his voice echoing the news back to me over the wire: “Dead!” I remember our doorbell ringing. I answered it in my slip - I was changing from my party dress - and found myself talking to a woman reporter from the Associated Press. I slammed the door in her face. Minutes later, Secret Service men arrived to inform us there was a big crowd gathering outside the apartment building. We went out the back door to avoid them, but some of the smart curiosity seekers were waiting for us there, along with numerous photographers. Flashbulbs exploded all around us, and for a moment I felt very angry. But Mother calmly ignored them. She steered me into the back seat of the car, and we headed for the White House.