Bess Truman (34 page)

For a moment, Bess was engulfed by tears. She could not think or see. She put down the telephone and groped her way down the hall to my bedroom, where her mother was chatting with me about my date. Grandmother Wallace always wanted to know the background, the personality, of my beaus.

We both looked up at Bess as she appeared in the doorway. She was crying so hard she could not speak. I rushed to her and put my arm around her. “Mother, what’s the matter, what is it?” I asked.

“President Roosevelt is dead,” she gasped, through her tears.

“Dead?” I echoed. I simply could not believe it. FDR had been president for most of my life. I found it even harder to believe what it meant. My father was now the president of the United States.

The sight of me standing there wide-eyed in my new party dress and dancing slippers and white gloves - an outfit so wildly inappropriate to the occasion - seemed to restore Bess’ self-control. “You’d better change your clothes,” she said. “Pick out something dark. A car will be here in a few minutes to take us to the White House.”

Bess rushed to her room to dress. She paused long enough to call Mrs. Davis, mother of my friend Annette, and ask her if she would come over to our apartment and look after her mother. I managed to locate a brown suit, and we were ready when the Secret Service men arrived. They took us out through a rear entrance to avoid a crowd that was gathering outside the apartment. But a lot of shrewd newsmen anticipated this move, and dozens of flashbulbs exploded in our faces as we emerged into the rainy dusk. Bess ignored them and steered me into the car.

At the White House, Bess asked if she could see Mrs. Roosevelt. This thoughtful gesture showed how thoroughly that strong will had regained control of her turbulent Wallace emotions. It would have been understandable if a woman who had just received such stunning news had simply reeled to her husband’s side and awaited orders. But Bess demonstrated in what might be called her first official act as the new president’s wife her ability to find her own distinct role.

I think that Mrs. Roosevelt appreciated our visit. She was with her daughter, Anna. Both were grave but composed. Bess expressed our deep sympathy and sorrow. She meant every word of it. Although Mother had been critical of President Roosevelt’s political tactics, she had been charmed by him when they met face to face. Mrs. Roosevelt thanked her and said: “I just told Harry I am ready to do anything I can to help. That of course applies to you, too.” Bess thanked her, and we hurried down to the Cabinet Room, where cabinet members and congressional leaders had assembled to see the new president sworn in.

If ever I have felt the awesome dimensions of history, it was in that room, that night. It was not a large room. It was dominated by the huge, odd-shaped table at which Mr. Roosevelt had conferred with his cabinet members. That night, the barren table and its cordon of empty leather-upholstered chairs seem to be making a silent statement about the dead president. Everyone in the room was standing. Faces were universally funereal. I recognized some of them - Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn, House Majority Leader John McCormack, Secretary of State Edward Stettinius (one of nine cabinet members present). There were only three women - Mother and I and Frances Perkins, the secretary of labor. Oddly, although we were in the midst of the greatest war in history, there were only two men in uniform, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, FDR’s White House chief of staff, and General Philip B. Fleming, who had served Mr. Roosevelt as Public Works Administrator.

We gathered at the front of the room before a mantelpiece surmounted by a portrait of Woodrow Wilson. A fitting touch, I realize now. Wilson was the president whose idealistic war messages had inspired Harry Truman to join the army and begin his rendezvous with history. Dad was in profile, facing Harlan Stone, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I remember glancing at Mother as Dad raised his hand to take the oath of office. Her eyes were red from weeping. But her face was calm, her lips firm. I find that amazing, now. If the scene was dreamlike to me, who had more or less grown up in Washington, D.C., it must have seemed incredible to Bess, remembering the night in 1910 when she had invited that shy but strangely self-confident young farmer into her living room on North Delaware Street.

Dad picked up the small red-edged Bible in his left hand. It was the only Bible the White House aides had been able to find after a frantic search. Beneath his thumb, he held a small piece of paper on which the presidential oath had been typed. Chief Justice Stone began: “I Harry Shippe Truman . . .”

Where Stone got the idea that Dad’s middle name was Shippe no one has ever found out. Dad calmly corrected him, “I, Harry S. Truman, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

“So help you God,” added Stone, revealing his own deep emotion. These words are not part of the official oath, but they were added spontaneously by George Washington when he took his first oath as president.

“So help me God,” Dad said, and solemnly raised the Bible to his lips.

This, too, was something George Washington had done. The time on the clock beneath Woodrow Wilson’s picture was 7:09 p.m.

Dad turned and kissed Mother and me. He explained that he had decided to call a cabinet meeting and sent us home. While we returned to 4701 Connecticut Avenue with an escort of Secret Service men, Dad told the cabinet members that he intended to continue FDR’s domestic and foreign policies. But he also warned them that he intended to be “President in my own right.” He urged them to be frank and forthright in expressing opinions, but they should understand that he was going to make the final decisions.

At our apartment, Mother and I discovered the Davises had brought along the cake and a lot of the food from Annette’s party, including a turkey. Bess and I nibbled haphazardly at the cake and other goodies. Dad arrived home about 9:30 p.m. He did not say much to us. I realize now that he did not feel he could talk freely with the Davises in the apartment. When he remarked that he had nothing to eat since noon, Mrs. Davis made him a turkey sandwich. That was the extent of the Truman dining for the evening.

Dad retreated to the bedroom and telephoned his mother. Mamma Truman had heard the news. With Vivian’s help, she was fending off dozens of phone calls from reporters. Dad told her he was going to be busy for the next few days. But he would write her as soon as possible and tell her everything. Mamma Truman, ninety-two, was perfectly calm. “Be good, Harry,” she said. “But be game, too.”

Dad next called his friend John Snyder, who was at a monetary conference in Mexico City. He told him that he felt like he “had just been struck by a bolt of lightning.” Mr. Snyder was planning to leave government service for a job at St. Louis’ biggest bank. Dad told him this was out of the question now. He needed friends like him in his administration. He asked him to become the Federal Loan Administrator, a job loaded with political dynamite.

The new president went to bed and was asleep in five minutes. Much later in the night, he awoke to find Bess sobbing beside him. He tried to comfort her, but there was little he could do or say. He knew she was weeping over the loss of her happy senatorial years and for the eighty-two surprisingly happy vice presidential days. She feared the worst for me, her brother Fred, and other members of the family who were liable to be unbalanced by having a relative who was president.

But it was the politics of the situation that she dreaded the most. It would have been bad enough for Harry Truman to have inherited the presidency from Franklin Roosevelt a year or two after the war. To come into office now, when our armies were on the brink of victory, when the president was revered as a triumphant, charismatic leader, was the worst possible time.

Even more unnerving was the knowledge that FDR had continued until the hour of his death to keep most of the secrets of his presidency in his head. Mother’s feelings on this point were summed up in the first thing she said to John Snyder, when she saw him the following day. “This is going to put a terrific load on Harry. Roosevelt has told him nothing.”

Exhausted and depressed, Bess sometimes wondered if she would survive during the next few days. President Roosevelt’s funeral, on Saturday, April 14, 1945, was the major item on her agenda. That was a physically wearing ordeal - and emotionally trying, too. Bess grieved for the dead president along with her fellow Americans. But when she looked out at the tear-stained faces in the crowd jamming Lafayette Square in front of the White House as she and I arrived for the service, she found herself wondering if these people would accept her husband as president.

It was a hot, muggy day, and the East Room of the White House had flowers covering every inch of the four walls. Their overpowering scent seemed to devour what little oxygen there was left over from the dozens of government officials and foreign dignitaries in attendance. The service seemed to last for an eternity, although it was in reality only about an hour. That evening, Mother and I joined Dad aboard the seventeen-car train that took FDR’s body to Hyde Park.

Mother sent me to bed and sat up with the new president as he labored on a vitally important speech that he was to give to Congress on Monday. It was an eerie journey. All along the right of way, flares illuminated the faces of tens of thousands of Americans who gathered for a last tribute to Franklin D. Roosevelt. I doubt if Bess or her husband got more than two or three hours sleep that night. With nothing to do but sleep, I found it impossible.

After the touching funeral service at Hyde Park, we returned to Washington. With Mother’s strong approval, Dad had told Mrs. Roosevelt that she could stay in the White House as long as she felt it was necessary. Both Trumans thought we would continue to live in our Connecticut Avenue apartment. Within twenty-four hours of FDR’s death, it became obvious that they were wrong. The Secret Service found the place a security nightmare, and the other tenants in the building rapidly grew weary of having their identities checked and their parcels examined every time they came home.

Dad decided we would move to Blair House, just across the street from the White House. It was a lovely old Washington residence, donated to the government by the Blair family, a powerful political clan since the days of Andrew Jackson. Bess instantly fell in love with the place. It was full of early American and French antiques, Aubusson rugs, crystal chandeliers, and about two dozen sets of exquisite china. We moved into this refuge on Monday, April 16, 1945.

On that same day, Dad gave a highly successful speech to a joint session of Congress and the nation. Mother and I sat in the gallery, listening and applauding. I have always loved Dad’s closing words.

Behind the scenes, Dad was making it clear that he meant it when he said he intended to be president in his own right. He spent long hours with Mr. Roosevelt’s top aides, getting a grasp on both domestic and foreign problems as seen from the White House. One of the first men he summoned to the Oval Office was Jimmy Byrnes. Few men had been closer to Mr. Roosevelt. As head of the Office of War Mobilization, Mr. Byrnes had wielded vast domestic power. Moreover, he had gone to Yalta with FDR.

After talking with Mr. Byrnes, Dad decided to make his first cabinet change. He asked him to become his secretary of state. As Dad recalled it later, Mr. Byrnes “practically jumped down my throat” to accept the job. Dad had another reason besides Mr. Byrnes’ intimate knowledge of Roosevelt policy. Under the law as it then existed, Mr. Byrnes as secretary of state would be next in line to succeed him as president. Dad felt strongly that the president should be an elected official, not an appointed one. Mr. Byrnes had been a senator from South Carolina for many years before going to the White House. The incumbent secretary, Edward Stettinius, on the other hand, had never been elected to anything.

This appointment was Dad’s first mistake - another example of his otherwise admirable tendency to expect and hope for the best in people and events. Mr. Byrnes was still seething over FDR’s failure to back him for the vice presidency in Chicago. He thought he should be president and immediately started acting as if he had the job. One of his first moves was to present Dad with a complete speech, written by him and his staff, to make to the joint session of Congress. He read the entire opus aloud to Dad in the Oval Office and left, satisfied that he had turned Harry Truman into his mouthpiece. Dad threw the speech in the wastebasket ten seconds after Mr. Byrnes departed. Too late, he realized Mr. Byrnes was going to be a giant headache.