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By Root 355 0

wearing a white silk dress with brown velvet trim, was asked if she and her parents planned to do any sightseeing in Washington. “Why go sightseeing in a place where you have lived nineteen years?” she said. “It hasn’t changed that much since January, has it?” She also denied rumors that Harry and Bess would do some house hunting when they visited her the following week in New York. “They are not going to live in New York or Long Island,” she said. “They are going back to Missouri—that’s home.” Margaret also denied reports of a new romantic interest. “No,” she sighed. “I am still looking.”

Also at the tea was another former first lady, Edith Bolling Wilson, the widow of Woodrow Wilson. It was a rare public appearance for Mrs. Wilson, who was eighty. When someone asked her what first ladies talked about when they got together, she just laughed and shook her head. (Besides Mmes. Truman and Wilson, two other former first ladies were alive at the time, Grace Coolidge and Eleanor Roosevelt.)

That night, Harry “reconvened” his old cabinet for a fancy dinner in a ballroom at the Mayflower. Seated at the head of a horseshoe-shaped table decorated with wildflowers and fruit-filled epergnes, it must have occurred to the former president that he was less well off than any of his subordinates, most of whom had moved on to lucrative careers in the private sector. Dean Acheson, Agriculture Secretary Charles Brannan, Interior Secretary Oscar L. Chapman, and Attorney General James McGranery had all joined high-profile law firms in Washington. Defense Secretary Robert Lovett was a partner at the investment bank Brown Brothers Harriman. Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder was a vice president at the automaker Willys-Overland. Labor Secretary Maurice J. Tobin was a prosperous businessman in Massachusetts.

Dean Acheson gave the toast that night, and it was long remembered by those in attendance as one of the best tributes to Truman—or to anyone, for that matter—they had ever heard. Acheson began by recalling how he’d unexpectedly bumped into his old boss on the street the day before. “At that moment,” he said, “I knew how the Korean prisoners felt when the guards opened the stockade gates.”

Acheson continued,

Mr. President, we are reliably informed that among the Mohammedans the faithful turn to the East when they pray. In Washington the faithful turn to the West. And so your return is to us a very real answer to prayer….

President Truman’s fundamental purpose and burning passion has been to serve his country and his fellow citizens. This devoted love of the United States has been the only rival which Mrs. Truman has had….

The greatest of all commanders never ask more of their troops than they are willing to give themselves…. The president has never asked any of us to do what he would not do. When the time came to fight, he threw everything into it, himself included. And what we all knew was that, however hot the fire was in front, there would never be a shot in the back. Quite the contrary! He stood by us through thick and thin, always eager to attribute successes to us and accept for himself the full responsibility for failure….

It is for reasons such as these that this visit of yours brings us such happiness. These visits of yours must be regular affairs, for we all badly need the refreshment and inspiration that they bring us.

To you, Mr. President, and to your enduring health and happiness, we join in a final toast.

While I was in Washington, another former president returned to the capital—sort of. Jimmy Carter held a book signing at the Books-A-Million in a strip mall in McLean, Virginia, between a wine store and an Advance Auto Parts, and about ten miles west of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The ex-presidential book signing is a ritual begun by Harry Truman. In a hotel ballroom in Kansas City on November 2, 1955, Harry autographed four thousand copies of his memoirs. According to his publisher, it was the first time an ex-president had “agreed to sit down and sign copies of his book.” Not that Harry was crazy about the idea.