Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure - Matthew Algeo [16]
“Up to this time, I had not had much luck at living like the plain ordinary citizen I had hoped to become on leaving the White House,” Harry wrote. “I thought that this holiday would give me a chance to do so at last.”
When Harry’s friends learned what he was up to, they were flabbergasted. “They organized a regular filibuster,” Harry remembered, “trying to talk me out of the trip.” But Harry could not be dissuaded. “I am kind of stubborn,” he explained, “and since no one could give me what I thought was a sensible reason why we should not go, we went.”
When Secret Service Director U. E. Baughman heard about the trip, a chill must have gone down his spine. It was one thing for the ex-president to drive himself to work. It was quite another for him to drive halfway across the country and back.
On September 13, 1899, a sixty-nine-year-old real estate agent named Henry Bliss stepped from a streetcar at 74th Street and Central Park West in New York City and was promptly flattened by an electric-powered taxi-cab. Bliss suffered massive head and chest injuries and died the next morning, becoming the first person killed in a motor vehicle accident in the United States.
Twenty-five more people would die in motor vehicle accidents before the end of 1899, and the number grew exponentially in the following years: 1,174 in 1909, 10,896 in 1919, 29,592 in 1929. In 1953, the one-millionth traffic fatality was recorded. That year, 36,190 people were killed in motor vehicle accidents in the United States. The fatality rate—the number of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled—was 6.647. That was half the rate in 1937, but still considerably higher than today’s rate of less than 1.5.
Driving was dangerous because the cars were big but the safety features were not. For all its newfangled gadgets, Harry’s new forty-three-hundred-pound Chrysler didn’t even have seat belts. Major American automakers believed consumers would never pay for something so frivolous and wouldn’t equip their cars with seat belts until 1955, when Ford began offering them as an option on some models. That innovation was the brainchild of a young Ford executive named Robert McNamara—the future secretary of defense.
There were other factors involved as well: poor roads, lax enforcement of motor laws, a virtual lack of vehicle inspections, few if any driver education programs, the absence of speed limits on some roads. The problem was not unrecognized. Newspapers were filled with gruesome photographs depicting the aftermaths of violent collisions. As president, Truman himself had railed against “what amounts to murder on the road.” But the federal government was slow to respond. The predecessor of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would not be created until 1966. A year later, automakers were finally required by law to install seat belts as standard equipment.
So perhaps the greatest danger the Trumans would face on their trip would be the simple act of driving. It made U. E. Baughman wish the Secret Service could protect ex-presidents. But Congress wasn’t even willing to give them a pension, much less bodyguards. All Baughman could do was the same thing Harry’s friends would do: hope for the best.
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3
Hannibal, Missouri,
June 19, 1953
On Friday, June 19, 1953, Harry skipped his morning constitutional and devoted himself to packing. He and Bess planned to hit the road that morning—and they would not travel light. Harry would fill the New Yorker with eleven suitcases before he was finished, the luggage spilling out of the trunk and onto the backseat. Most people hate packing, but Harry Truman, true to his obsessive nature, relished the task. “He prided himself on being an expert packer,” his daughter, Margaret, remembered, “and he was.”
Around 7:15, Harry and Bess climbed into the big black car. Harry slowly backed it through the narrow gate at the end of the driveway and onto Van Horn Road (soon to be renamed Truman Road).