Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure - Matthew Algeo [80]
After lunch, Harry took a nap while America’s future homemakers stalked the corridors of the Deshler in search of him. The hotel stationed two security guards outside his room to keep the girls at bay.
Bess, meanwhile, went down to the beauty salon in the lobby to get her hair done. While the salon manager, Mary Love, washed Bess’s hair and put it into pin curls, the two women, perhaps mindful of the future homemakers in their midst, discussed the merits of careers for young women. Bess doubted whether it was worth the trouble for women to pursue careers outside the home. “You have to work so hard to get to the top,” she said.
Soon Bess had her hair up and was sitting under a big, dome-shaped dryer, reading The House of Moreys, a new book by the British novelist Phyllis Bentley. Here, alone, under the dryer, reading, Bess looked perfectly content. A half hour later she emerged, looking, the Columbus Dispatch said, “rested and stylish.” “Small curls covered her head,” the paper reported. “A fluffy bang topped her forehead.” Mary Love described the cut as a poodle, made popular by Mary Martin in the musical South Pacific. Bess, however, noted that she had been wearing her hair like that since long before Mary Martin appeared on Broadway. She said she kept it looking nice by washing it once a week—unlike Martin, who had to wash hers every night.
The Trumans had dinner in their room that night and went to bed early. They checked out of the Deshler around nine the next morning, amid more pandemonium in the lobby. Harry said he’d had a “wonderful” time in Columbus—though he’d never even left the hotel. “Everyone here has treated us marvelously.” Then he turned to Bess and said, “Missy, let’s go.”
They climbed into the New Yorker, which was parked under a canopy in front of the hotel. Harry turned the ignition and put it in gear. The car bucked twice, “like a Missouri mule,” according to one report. Then it stalled. A roar went up from the crowd that had gathered to send them off. A little embarrassed, Harry restarted the car and pulled away. He honked the horn twice as a final good-bye and headed west on Broad Street, leaving in his wake hundreds of future homemakers squealing in delight.
Membership in the Future Homemakers of America peaked at more than five hundred thousand in 1965, when the group merged with the New Homemakers of America, whose members attended black schools in the South. As the times changed, so did the FHA. In 1973 it began to admit boys, and its mission gradually expanded to encompass “personal growth and leadership development.” In Teen Times, the organization’s quarterly magazine, articles like “Glamour for Gray Days” and “Milestones to Marriage” gave way to pieces about teen pregnancy and alcoholism.
In 1999, after much debate, the organization changed its name to Family, Career and Community Leaders of America—the FCCLA. The change was prompted by concerns that the old name “conjured up images of stay-at-home housewives who cook pot roast and darn socks.” Today the FCCLA focuses on “character development, creative and critical thinking, interpersonal communications, practical knowledge, and career preparation.” In 2007 the group had nearly 230,000 members, 23 percent of whom are male.
Just as the FHA has changed, so, too, have Americans’ attitudes toward prospective spouses. Recent surveys have found that both men and women now look for partners who are “intelligent” and “attractive.”
About seventy miles west of Columbus, near Dayton, the Trumans passed Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. They didn’t stop at the time, but, were they to make the trip today, they most certainly would, for the base now houses Harry’s presidential