Bess Truman (32 page)

Dad was telling Mother, with that sly final paragraph, that he was hoping she might get over her reluctance to become the First Lady.

What Dad left out of that letter is almost as significant as what he put into it. He did not say a word to Bess about President Roosevelt’s appalling physical condition. The Pacific inspection trip had exhausted him. His speech was slow and halting, like a phonograph record played at the wrong speed. His hands shook so badly he could not get the cream into his coffee. His skin was ashen, his lips colorless. His mind remained keen, but his body was obviously close to disintegration. He did not even try to pretend that it was a temporary decline. When Dad told him that he was thinking of using an airplane to campaign, Mr. Roosevelt shook his head. “One of us has to stay alive,” he said.

The campaign picked up steam, and Bess began to participate in it. While I spent a fun-filled week in Columbia, Missouri as the guest of the Pi Beta Phi Chapter at the university, Mother joined Dad for a speech he was making to the American Legion Convention in Chicago. “You should have seen your mother getting off the train in front of about a half dozen photographers,” Dad wrote to me. “She stood up exceptionally well,” They paid a visit to Eugene and Helen Souter, who had been so helpful during the convention. “I’m going to speak at 11 a.m. and your ma and Helen are going to listen - maybe,” Dad wrote. Obviously, Mother had not entirely overcome her reluctance.

At the end of September, we closed the house in Independence and went back to Washington, taking Grandmother with us. Christine Wallace had all she could do, with her difficult pregnancy, to keep house for her own family. I went back to George Washington University, and Mother stayed out of sight at 4701 Connecticut Avenue.

On the pretext that the war demanded most of the president’s attention, FDR did not campaign heavily. But in his few appearances he went out of his way to refute rumors about his failing health. Bess, no better informed on this point than the rest of the country, was impressed by newspaper stories of Roosevelt’s jaunty ride through New York City in a cold autumn rain with the top of his touring car down.

Meanwhile, Senator Truman toured the country aboard a two-car train. His schedule was brutal; he frequently did not have time to eat his meals. Even his habit of a daily letter to Bess went by the boards. “I suppose you’ll be off me for life,” he wrote from Spokane, Washington, in late October. The following day he was apologizing for failing to telephone from Seattle. “They simply had me so full of appointments. . . . I couldn’t even eat my dinner,” he wrote. “They seem to think I’m cast iron and I am in a campaign, I guess.”

These letters may have soothed Bess’ feelings of neglect, but they did not contribute to her peace of mind. She began wondering if she and not Eleanor Roosevelt would be a widow before the end of the campaign.

Both Trumans were grateful for the elimination of another worry. The campaign was not as nasty as Dad feared it would be. In the final days, the Hearst press revived the old canard that Harry Truman had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He refuted it with eyewitness evidence and a demand for even a shred of proof - which was, of course, not forthcoming. Making light of it to Bess, he wrote: “Hugh [Fulton, counsel of the Truman Committee] says we have him [Hearst] for a million dollar libel suit. Be nice to tour South America at his expense, wouldn’t it?”

At the end of October, we went to New York and joined Dad for a joint speech with Henry Wallace before a huge crowd in Madison Square Garden. Back in Washington, D.C., we boarded the nominee’s special train and headed for Missouri by a route that might best be described as political. We wound through Pennsylvania, with Dad making about ten speeches a day, and then debarked for a spectacular motorcade through Pittsburgh. In Kansas City, we settled into a penthouse suite in the Muehlebach Hotel and regrouped for one more rally and speech in Independence.

Election night at the Muehlebach lacked the tension of previous Truman contests. Everyone was pretty sure the Democrats were going to win. Mother announced she was tired and went to bed early. I declined to join her, and she was loath to issue orders to her twenty-year-old daughter in front of so many people. So I stayed up while Dad played the piano and kidded with his fellow politicians. I was too excited to notice at the time the way Mother was boycotting one of the biggest nights in Dad’s life. Her antipathy to a sojourn in the White House obviously remained intense.

For a while, Dewey startled everyone by running ahead, but his lead began to dwindle rapidly around midnight and by 3:45 a.m. he had conceded. Then the liquor really began to flow, and soon a lot of politicians were gaga. I was shocked. Dad got rid of the boozers and urged me not to say anything about them to Mother. I can see now that he was still worried about her negative feelings and was trying to avoid an argument.

In spite of his wife’s disapproval, Harry Truman enjoyed himself that night. He was tremendously proud of being the first Missouri politician elected to a national executive office. He also was proud of having made a major contribution to the future of the United States and the world. This was evident in the telegram he sent President Roosevelt:

I AM VERY HAPPY OVER THE OVERWHELMING ENDORSEMENT WHICH YOU RECEIVED. ISOLATIONISM IS DEAD. HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON.

For Dad, the euphoria of victory was soon followed by exhaustion. The full impact of his eighteen-hour-day campaign effort hit him. Mother (and I) struggled with an avalanche of congratulatory letters from old friends and acquaintances. After a few days, we all went back to Washington to meet President Roosevelt when he returned from Hyde Park on November 11.

It was another cold, rainy autumn day, and FDR again decided it was a chance to show there was nothing wrong with his health. He ordered the Secret Service men to take down the top of his Packard. Flanked by Dad and Henry Wallace, he rode up Pennsylvania Avenue while 300,000 soggy citizens cheered. Watching this performance, and fearing the worst about its effect on her exhausted husband, Bess could only conclude that the reports of Mr. Roosevelt’s imminent demise were greatly exaggerated.

At this point, she was still much more worried about Vice President-elect Truman. She saw that he would never get any rest in Washington, with everyone from hostess Evalyn Walsh McLean to the Ambassador from Honduras putting him at the top of their guest lists. She decreed that he would have to get out of town, pronto, and he agreed with her. He fled to French Lick, Indiana, for some intensive resting and restorative treatments at the spa there. But he insisted on breaking this badly needed vacation to come to Kansas City to be on hand when his sister Mary received a new title from the Eastern Star. She had made this women’s branch of the Masons her career.

On Thanksgiving Day, Bess wrote to Dad’s cousin, Ethel Noland, describing in the frankest terms what she thought of all this. “Harry was a wreck after a week here so we simply dumped him on the train for French Lick and he is feeling much better already.” She cautioned Ethel not to tell anyone where Dad was, “unless it is broadcast,” and then issued her opinion of the visit to Kansas City. “He will be in K.C. on the 29th. Some silly Eastern Star performance. He has no business breaking into the treatments he is taking.”

Bess did not let her absent husband keep her away from that year’s Army-Navy game. We went with Colonel Harry Vaughan and almost froze to death. But Mother loved every minute of it. I vowed that she would not get me to another game without a detailed weather forecast from navy or army intelligence.

After his visit to Kansas City for Mary Truman’s Eastern Star ceremony, Dad segued south for more rest and relaxation, and we all regrouped in Independence for Christmas. Mother and I spent most of our time in Kansas City frantically shopping for dresses to wear to the inauguration. I only had to buy one or two, but Mother had to acquire a wardrobe to survive the round of parties that were scheduled.

These started on December 30 with a tremendous bash at Friendship, Evalyn Walsh McLean’s estate. In spite of having denounced her circle as parasites, Dad went and allowed himself to be displayed, because Mother wanted to go. She liked Evalyn’s kooky, unorthodox personality and admired the way she had tried to help Washington’s poor during the Depression, but she had no illusions about her fondness for publicity. “A few headlines and she is on the job,” Bess told her mother.

A glimpse of the Trumans’ schedule emerges from a letter Dad wrote his mother on January 13. He gave her a list of the receptions, dinners, and meetings he and Mother had to attend between January 18 and the 21. “Some of ‘em are at the same time and blocks apart and I’m supposed to be at all of them,” he wrote. Bess undoubtedly agreed with Dad’s advice to FDR, to use the war as an excuse and abandon the inauguration. “He should have boarded his automobile and driven to the Supreme Court and been sworn in and I should have taken the oath at a regular Senate session,” he wrote.

Instead, politics as usual had the Trumans swamped with demands for inaugural tickets from half the state of Missouri. Wallace and Truman relatives had priority, of course, but Bess could not hope to board them all in our five-room apartment. We took in Grandmother Wallace, naturally, and stowed a few more with cooperative neighbors, but most of the relatives were parked in hotels. Nevertheless, they all regarded our apartment as their headquarters and showed up expecting coffee and a sandwich at all hours. Between racing home to change for the next party and playing short-order cook, Bess was exhausted by the time January 20 finally arrived.

It turned out to be another awful day. It is creepy the way bad weather pursued FDR during the last year of his life. This time sleet mixed with rain on a cutting wind. For warmth I had planned to wear a new fur scarf. Mother took my school coat out of the closet. “Put this on,” she said. “And no arguments.” I went into a colossal sulk but Dad backed her up, and off we went to the religious ceremonies at St. John’s Church that began the inauguration.

President Roosevelt had decided to scale down the festivities out of respect for the men still fighting and dying in the Pacific and in Europe, and to conserve his own strength. Instead of taking the oath on the steps of the Capitol, he began his fourth term on the south portico of the White House.

Dad was sworn in first, by the departing vice president, Henry Wallace. Then FDR was helped from his wheelchair by his son James, in his marine uniform. Bess studied the president as he stood at the podium and was not reassured by what she saw. There were dark circles of exhaustion under his eyes. His skin had the grayish tinge that many people had already noticed.

On the other hand, Bess had seen Harry Truman in more than a few exhausted states, and he had recovered his vitality after a decent rest. She was more impressed by the way the president insisted on defying the weather again, to demonstrate his good health. He stood coatless and hatless in the freezing wind to take the oath and give a brief speech.

Bess did not have much time to fear the worst, anyway. After the ceremony, FDR retreated to his bedroom. Bess had to join Eleanor Roosevelt in trying to cope with 1,805 damp, frozen VIP’s who had stood in the slush on the White House lawn for the ceremony. All those hands had to be shaken before everyone lined up for a buffet lunch. This first horde had scarcely departed when a second wave of 678 appeared for a tea. Dad left Mother and Mrs. Roosevelt to deal with these minor-league VIP’s. All in all, it was an exhausting day for a woman only a month away from her sixtieth birthday.

Two days after the inauguration, FDR sailed off to Yalta to confer with Stalin and Churchill. The war was going well. In Europe, the western Allies had beaten back Hitler’s last desperate gamble in the Battle of the Bulge and were now across the Rhine and smashing their way into the heart of Germany. The Russians were pounding into the collapsing Reich from the east. In the Pacific, the Philippines were close to liberation, and B-29’s were battering Japan from newly captured bases in the Mariana Islands.

For Bess, the possibility of an early victory had a personal dimension. She presumed it would take much of the crushing weight of responsibility from President Roosevelt’s shoulders, which meant that there was a good chance that he would live considerably longer than the pessimists were predicting.

While the president dickered with Stalin and Churchill at Yalta, the vice president was not exactly idle. Before FDR left, he handed Dad one of the messiest jobs ever. He had fired Jesse Jones, his secretary of commerce and the darling of the Senate’s conservatives, and appointed Henry Wallace in his place. It was up to Dad to get the Senate’s consent to this highly political move. What made it truly explosive was the secretary of commerce’s control of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which loaned billions of dollars each year to large and small businesses to fuel the war effort. That made the secretary of commerce one of the most powerful men in the U.S. government.