Bess Truman (59 page)

BOOK: Bess Truman

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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 Episcopal 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.

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