Harry Truman (47 page)

The tremendous pressure Dad was under at this time can be seen in this letter he wrote to his sister:

The device of calling a special session captured the initiative from Taft and his fellow negative thinkers. Internationalist Republicans, such as Arthur Vandenberg in the Senate and Charles Eaton in the House, rallied to Dad’s support. His leadership won almost unbelievable unanimity from the nation’s press. The sheer courage of his performance inspired his old friend Charlie Ross to write one of the most wonderful letters my father ever received. Charlie had come to work at Dad’s request, with a certain feeling of pity for the accidental President. On Christmas Day 1947, Charlie told Dad what thirty months with Harry S. Truman had taught him:

The Russian reaction to the Marshall Plan was savage. Throughout Europe, Stalin sent orders to his Communist leaders to redouble their efforts to seize power before the plan could begin its restorative work. The possibility of civil war in Italy and France was discussed in my father’s office. B-29s had to be rushed to Greece to support the central government. The Italian government, grappling with a severe food shortage, appealed desperately for immediate shipment of all available supplies. Then in February 1948, while Congress was still debating the Marshall Plan, the government of Czechoslovakia was toppled by a Communist coup. Leaders who looked to the West, such as Jan Masaryk, were murdered or imprisoned.

In London in December 1947, Secretary of State Marshall had tried one last time to reach agreement on Germany. The Russians sang their old song about reparations, dredging up the $10 billion figure my father had absolutely ruled out at the Potsdam Conference. They followed this up with a barrage of charges, accusing America, France, and Britain of every sort of treachery in Germany. General Marshall calmly informed Molotov he considered further discussion useless and began meeting with Britain and France to plan the merger of their zones in Germany and the creation of the West German federal government. Ominously, early in March, the Russian-controlled press in Eastern Germany began warning West Germans not to cooperate with the Americans because the “unavoidable withdrawal of the Allies which will come about very suddenly in the near future” would leave them in a very exposed position. From Berlin, General Lucius Clay flashed a warning that war “may come with dramatic suddenness.”

At the center of things, my father, of course, was grimly aware of what seemed to be coming. From Key West, on March 3, 1948, he wrote me one of his most extraordinary letters:

He then recounted his career from the 1940 election to his election as vice president, emphasizing the seeming inevitability of it all, how he won in 1940 against all odds, and was forced to take the vice presidency against his will:

War was obviously very close. On March 17, 1948, my father went before Congress with another special message. This time he did not mince words or hesitate to name names. He bluntly said: “The Soviet Union and its agents have destroyed the independence and democratic character of a whole series of nations in Eastern and Central Europe.” He condemned “this ruthless course of action” and deplored “the tragic death of the Republic of Czechoslovakia.” He called for the immediate passage of the Marshall Plan, the adoption of universal training, and the temporary revival of the draft. Although he did not state the dreadful statistics, he told Congress the ominous truth when he said, “Our armed forces lack the necessary men to maintain their authorized strength.” Later the same day, he flew to New York and addressed the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick. There he spelled out for the nation what he had told me in his letter on March 3:

This was the spirit in which my father stood firm at Berlin, the spirit that created the Berlin airlift and sustained 2 million people who had chosen in free elections to overwhelmingly reject communism. A man of peace who had seen war, Dad was ready to go to the limit of his strength and patience in pursuit of peace. But he was not prepared to pay the price the Communists were asking - surrender. He made that clear to the Russians - and he made it equally clear to those Americans who were clustering around Henry Wallace, denouncing the Marshall Plan, and Harry S. Truman. I think his words still have relevance today: “We must not fall victim to the insidious propaganda that peace can be obtained solely by wanting peace. This theory is advanced in the hope that it will deceive our people and that we will then permit our strength to dwindle because of the false belief that all is well in the world.”

WHILE COPING WITH these literally world-shaking problems, Dad had to bear the burden of two more personal worries, one very serious, and the other definitely unserious, to almost everybody but him, Mother, and me. On February 14, 1947, Mamma Truman broke her hip. On March 15, I launched my career as a singer. The two events are intertwined, and that is why I shall try to tell both stories simultaneously.

Dad constantly worried and fretted about his daughter, the would-be singer, in New York. When he wasn’t doing that, he lamented my absence at the White House. “Margie will probably go up to New York sometime next week to continue her voice lessons and we’ll be lonesome again,” he wrote to his mother and sister on January 17, 1947. “But she wants to do it and she wants to do it without exploiting the White House. And I’ll have to agree to it I suppose, although I’d rather she’d stay at home. But I don’t want her to be a Washington socialite and she doesn’t want to be.”

Those were among the truest words Dad has ever written. Actually, he was pleased I wanted to have a career. It was largely the complications of being the President’s daughter that disturbed him. On January 30, he wrote more philosophically to his mother and sister:

He urged me to get plenty of both. “I hope your work is getting results,” he wrote on February 6:

When Mamma Truman fell in her bedroom and broke her hip, Dad immediately rushed his personal physician, Dr. Wallace Graham, to her side, and the following day flew to Grandview himself in the
Sacred Cow.
But Mamma Truman was by no means at death’s door, as he feared. She was as alert and spunky as ever. General Vaughan, who was with Dad, made the mistake of scolding her: “You’re giving us more trouble than all the Republicans,” he said.

“I have no time for any smart remarks from you,” she snapped. “I saw that picture of you last week - wasting time putting wreaths on the Lincoln Memorial.”

Dad was so encouraged by this and other evidence of his mother’s strength that he returned to Washington the following day. I came down to celebrate my twenty-third birthday with him on February 17, and he took me to see
Pinafore.
At the end of the show, thanks to some careful planning on the part of the White House, the whole cast burst into “Happy Birthday.” Dad beamed. To be able to spring these nice surprises on people was one of the few compensations he received for his ordeal in the White House.

Back to New York I went, to my labors in the musical salt mines. I was starting to feel very discouraged about my future. The world of concert music seemed as impenetrable as ever. Then, on February 26, I got my first break. Carl Krueger, conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, invited me to sing over a nationwide radio hookup on Sunday, March 9. I accepted and went to work at a frantic pace, practicing in Town Hall and Carnegie Hall to accustom my voice to large areas.

On March 2, two days before I was to leave for Detroit, I came down with my favorite disease - a sore throat. I decided to ignore it. The following day I wrote in my diary, “I am going on that train tomorrow if it kills me or I have double pneumonia.” By the time I checked into the Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, after a seemingly endless ride in an unheated train, my throat was practically closed. Dr. Krueger, if he had been more interested in me and less in the publicity I could generate, would have sent me home. My top tones had vanished. But he assured me my voice was fine. The next day, I had to spend hours posing with Dr. Krueger for photographers and sit through an interminable dinner at the Detroit Club. I began to have very strange sensations in my chest. The following morning I could hardly breathe.

Dad was in Mexico during these three harrowing days - I had turned down his pleas to make the trip with him to accept Dr. Krueger’s invitation - but Mother was in the White House, and someone - perhaps my voice coach, Mrs. Strickier - told her about my alarming decline. A few hours later, I was confronted by Dr. Graham, who took my pulse and temperature and told me I was not going to sing on Sunday. “You have bronchial pneumonia,” he informed me.

I tried to protest, but by now I could barely talk. I felt miserable, both physically and mentally. I was sure everyone would say I had panicked and collapsed before my big test. That night Dad arrived back from Mexico, and the
Sacred Cow
landed in Detroit the following morning to take the patient back to the White House.

There I spent four days inhaling Benzoin and imbibing penicillin. On the fourth day, I rose, and on the fifth announced my determination to return to Detroit. Everyone begged me to stay in bed another week, but my Truman contrariness was at high tide, and on Saturday, March 15, I arrived in Detroit accompanied by Dr. Graham and Reathel Odum, Mother’s secretary.

On March 13, in the same letter that he told me about the announcement of the Truman Doctrine, Dad included a pep talk for me:

The entire Truman Administration was glued to the radio, at 8:28 Eastern Standard Time, on March 16, 1947. By now, numerous other things had gone wrong. Dr. Graham had ordered sunlamp treatments for me at the White House and the Medical Corps attendant left me under the lamp too long. I got a very bad sunburn, which did nothing to help me relax. The zipper of my dress, a long-tailed blue chiffon with a many-layered billowing skirt, broke while I was putting it on, and Reathel had to sew me into it. I was singing in an empty auditorium, with only the orchestra for company. Unknown to me, Dr. Krueger had arranged for two dozen reporters and critics to sit in the back row, ignoring the fact that I was singing into a radio microphone, and the empty hall created acoustical problems that would make it very difficult for them to judge my voice. The announcer who introduced me yakked about who I was for several unnecessary minutes. Finally came the moment of truth. I sang “Cielito Lindo,” a Spanish folk song, “Charmante Oiseau,” an aria from Felician David’s “La Perle du Brasil,” and “The Last Rose of Summer.”

As soon as my performance was over, Dr. Krueger unleashed the photographers on me again, and I staggered back to the Book-Cadillac in Detroit, exhausted. Dad telephoned to tell me he thought I had been wonderful. But, of course, I knew he would have said that if I had croaked like a frog. I was more anxious to hear what the critics said. On the whole, they were very kind. Most of them found my voice quite acceptable and foresaw a promising future for me, with more training and experience. I was thrilled by praise from other singers, such as Robert Merrill, and by an offer from Hollywood to appear in a film named “Las Vegas,” for a fee of $10,000. I was wise enough to decline that one, however, without even bothering to ask Dad. I knew what he would say.

Best of all, the public seemed to like me. I received thousands of letters, which had me writing thank you notes and signing mail for the next several weeks.

On March 22
,
Dad wrote to his mother, giving her a good description of his feelings about my debut:

With me out of the way, Dad devoted most of his worries to his mother. She was not recovering as well as he wished or hoped from her fall. At ninety-four, bones heal very slowly, if at all. “I hope you’ll get someone to help you and that you’ll take good care of yourself,” Dad wrote to his sister. “I worry about both of you a lot - but what makes me more worried I can’t seem to do anything about it.”

I went back to New York, to launch a concert career, which now seemed a very real possibility. Mother joined me to consult on clothes. On May 5, I signed contracts for appearances in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. I spent a week of intensive practice with my accompanist, Mrs. Carlton Shaw, and another week working on publicity pictures and press releases. Dad, of course, was following all this very carefully. In between worrying about the Russians and the Eightieth Congress, he worried about whether I would survive my travels around the country without another case of pneumonia, and if I managed this and became a success, whether I might develop into a prima donna. On May 14, he wrote me: “The best of luck, your dad’s praying for you. Wish I could go along and smooth all the rough spots - but I can’t and in a career you must learn to overcome the obstacles without blowing up. Always be nice to all the people who can’t talk back to you. I can’t stand a man or woman who bawls out underlings to satisfy an ego.”

I was packing for my appearance in Pittsburgh when Mother telephoned me with shattering news. Mamma Truman was on the point of death. Dad had flown to Independence. He did not want me to change my plans because it might be a false alarm. In Pittsburgh, on the morning of May 19, came another phone call, telling me Mamma Truman was not expected to live through the day. That made singing out of the question. I canceled my appearance and took a plane for Kansas City. My concert manager was absolutely wonderful about this decision and told me not to worry about all the defunct tickets I had just created. I spent five days with Dad, while he spent every available moment at Mamma Truman’s bedside. She was terribly weak, but her mind was still amazingly clear. She brightened when she saw me, and that made the tangle of canceled concerts worthwhile.

Dad signed the Greek-Turkish Aid Act in his Muehlebach Hotel office on May 22, after it had finally cleared the Senate. The doctors had given Mamma Truman up two days before this date, but she declined to cooperate. On the twenty-fourth, she awoke early in the morning and asked for a slice of watermelon. Dr. Graham said she could have anything she wanted. Half the Democrats in Missouri were soon looking for watermelon, which was out of season. One was found and rushed to Grandview. Mamma Truman ate most of it, and the following day she was talking politics, while the doctors watched and listened, dumbfounded.

“Is Taft going to be nominated next year?” she asked Dad.

“He might be,” Dad said.

Mamma Truman thought about this for a few moments. Senator Taft was her most unfavorite Republican, and that is saying a lot. “Harry, are you going to run?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Mamma.”

Mamma Truman frowned at the mere thought her son might pass up an opportunity to thrash Senator Taft. “Don’t you think it’s about time you made up your mind?” she asked him.

On May 29, Mamma Truman was so improved that Dad and Mother and I flew back to Washington. Early in June, we took a trip to Canada, but Dad kept in close touch with Grandview by mail and telephone. “Tell Mamma to ‘behave’ herself,” he wrote on July 10. A few days later, his sister Mary sent him very disappointing news. Mamma Truman’s broken bone was not healing, and the doctors were now saying she would probably never get out of bed again. On July 25, Dad wrote to Aunt Mary: “It is certainly too bad after all the effort and work you put forth for her that Mamma can’t get up. But it has been a great fight and we almost won it. Anyway we know that everything possible was done.”