Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure - Matthew Algeo [2]
In the following pages, I have included stories from my travels if, in my estimation, they help illuminate my account of the Trumans’ trip. I have also included a few stories from my travels simply because I find them interesting or amusing. For this I beg your indulgence.
Like Harry, I crossed paths with ordinary Americans everywhere I went. None but a very few refused my requests for help. Many have become my friends. I have used their real names. For reasons of privacy, however, some surnames are omitted.
Also like Harry, my travels took me to the upper reaches of society. I stayed in some of the country’s most exclusive hotels. I met a former president of the United States. I even made my own appearance on the Today show.
Most important, by retracing his trip with Bess, I discovered a Harry Truman not often found in the pages of history books. A Harry Truman who drove too fast. A Harry Truman who was a pretty good tipper. A Harry Truman who loved fruit. I mean, he really loved fruit. And Bess might have loved it even more.
But enough with the preface already. Let’s hit the road with Harry and Bess!
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1
Washington, D.C.,
Inauguration Day, 1953
On January 20, 1953—his last day in the White House—Harry Truman awoke at five-thirty, as usual. He skipped his customary morning walk and, after breakfast, attended to the final business of his presidency. His last official act was the signing of a letter to James A. Campbell, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the federal civil service system. (The system was instituted after one of Truman’s unlucky predecessors, James Garfield, was assassinated by Charles Guiteau, the proverbial “disappointed office seeker.”) In the letter, Truman decried what he called “recent reckless attacks” on civil servants, referring to Republican charges that the federal bureaucracy was infested with communists.
At 8:45, the president began saying good-bye to the White House staff, bounding from room to room, shaking hands with every stenographer, cook, maid, doorman, secretary, mailroom clerk, and telephone operator. The good-byes were heartfelt. Few presidents were as beloved by the White House help. Truman remembered their birthdays. He called them when they were sick. “He has been a wonderful guy to work for,” one unidentified White House employee told a reporter that day. “You just wanted to do things for him.”
Around eleven o’clock, Truman retired to the Red Room. An eighteenth-century French clock on the mantelpiece loudly ticked off the seconds as Truman and his wife, Bess, waited for his successor to arrive. The Trumans had invited Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower to join them inside the White House for coffee before riding to the inauguration. It was a tradition that stretched back nearly 150 years, to 1809, when Madison called on Jefferson. It wasn’t always convivial or comfortable, particularly when the presidents were from different parties, but it symbolized, palpably, the peaceful and democratic transfer of power.
Awaiting Eisenhower, Truman’s emotions must have been mixed. The two men had once been cordial, even friendly. Truman had admired Eisenhower, the general who’d done so much to win the war that Truman had unexpectedly inherited as commander in chief. When Eisenhower announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination early in 1952, Truman was effusive, notwithstanding Ike’s party affiliation. Eisenhower was “a grand man,” Truman told reporters soon after Ike’s announcement. “I am just as fond of General Eisenhower as I can be.”
But the presidential campaign had soured their relationship. At a campaign stop in Wisconsin, Eisenhower had redacted from his speech a tribute to General George Marshall, who had served Truman as secretary of state and, later, as secretary of defense. Marshall, who would win the Nobel Peace Prize later that year, was a favorite target of Senator