Truman Harry S. - Harry Truman

WE WERE IN the sitting room of the presidential car, the Ferdinand Magellan, racing across Kansas by night. The date was September 19, 1948, and my father, Harry S. Truman, was seated opposite me, reading a speech that he would make the following day in Denver. My mother sat beside me, reading a murder mystery.

It was a typical Truman family evening, unchanged by the unique circumstances surrounding it. We were hurtling into the climax of the wildest presidential campaign of the century. My father was fighting for his political life, and for something even more important - his political self-respect as a man and President. Yet the atmosphere in the Ferdinand Magellan was calm, tranquil to the point of serenity.

We had left Independence, Missouri, earlier in the day, and made a whistle-stop visit to Junction City, Kansas, at 11:05 p.m. As we roared across the immense prairie of western Kansas toward the Rockies, the engineer let the throttle out all the way. Dad was scheduled to speak at noon the following day in Denver, and it was to be broadcast over a national radio hookup. Maybe someone had told the engineer to take no chances on arriving late. At any rate, from the sound of the spinning metal wheels alone, I could tell that we were traveling at an unusual speed.

Then I noticed that Dads eyes rose from the page he was reading, and he stared for a moment at the wall just above my head. This was very unusual. One of the most remarkable things about my father is his power of concentration. He has always been able to read a book or a memorandum with the radio or the phonograph playing, while my mother and I conducted a first-class family argument. I am convinced that the world could be coming to an end, but he would not look up until he got to the bottom of the page he was reading.

My mother went into the dining room to discuss the menus with Mitchell, the steward who ran the car. Dad let his speech fall into his lap and stared almost grimly at the wall above my head. Take a look at that thing, he said.

I twisted my neck, remembering that there was a speedometer up there to tell us how fast the train was going. At first I could not believe what I saw. We were hitting 105 miles an hour.

Like most twenty-four-year-olds, I considered myself indestructible, so this discovery only excited me. Wow, I said, and rushed to the window to stare out at the black blur of landscape whizzing by.

I glanced back at my father and saw something very close to disgust on his face. I had obviously missed his point. Do you know what would happen if that engineer had to make a sudden stop?

Only then did I remember that the Ferdinand Magellan weighed 285,000 pounds - as much as the biggest engine on the line. It had been built for President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, and its base was solid concrete, reinforced by a section of steel track embedded in it. It also carried three inches of armor plate, and the windows were bulletproof. The goal was the safety of the President of the United States. But it made for problems on the right of way.

If he had to stop suddenly, Dad said in the same calm, matter-of-fact voice, we would mash those sixteen cars between us and the engine into junk.

He heard the car door opening and quickly added, Dont say a word to your mother. I dont want her to get upset.

The person coming through turned out to be not Mother but Charlie Ross, the White House press secretary. He wanted to find out what the President thought of the latest draft of tomorrows major speech. The President said he thought it was fine. Then, almost casually, he said, Charlie, send someone to tell that engineer theres no need to get us to Denver at this rate of speed. Eighty miles an hour is good enough for me.

This calm, quiet, but authoritative way of dealing with a situation that would have agitated an average person was typical of the man I am writing about in this book, the man who was both my father and President of the United States. In our home, he rarely raised his voice, never used profane or even harsh language, and made a point of avoiding arguments. My mother and I love to argue, and one of the great frustrations of our life as a family has been my fathers constant refusal to join us in our favorite sport. I am not, of course, claiming that Dad never lost his temper, or never used salty language when talking man to man. When the circumstances warranted it, he could match his sparks against the greatest temper-losers in White House history, including his hero, Andrew Jackson. But it was very, very seldom that he thought circumstances warranted it. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he preferred to play the calm peacemakers role.

Charlie Ross, who had gone through school with him from the third grade to the last year of high school, often marveled at the modesty that characterized Dads style in the day-to-day operations of the White House. He hated to use the buzzers on his desk to summon a man peremptorily; he preferred to go to the aides office. When he did summon a man, he would usually greet him at the door of the Oval Room office. More often than not, the purpose of the call was to get his opinion on one of the many problems confronting the nation. This constant consideration for others, the total lack of egotism with which Dad conducted the affairs of the White House was the real source of the enormous loyalty he generated in those around him.

To understand Harry S. Truman, it is necessary to realize the importance of humility in his thinking. To him, humility meant never blowing his own horn, never claiming credit in public for what he did or said, above all never claiming that he was better, smarter, or tougher than other people. But this practice of humility never meant that Dad downgraded his worth or accomplishments in his own mind.

Let me give an example of what I mean. When Dad visited Bermuda in 1946, he was shown a Masonic Register which George Washington had purportedly signed. Some enterprising tourist had ripped out the page and made off with the autograph. The Bermudians asked Dad to sign the register, and he was happy to oblige. I dont suppose anyone will ever want that signature, he wrote to his mother.

That was his humility speaking. But when the 1948 campaign was beginning, he wrote to his sister and told her that he deserved to be re-elected because most of the decisions he had made were right. This was the other side of his mind - that calm objectivity which included an amazing ability to stand back and look at himself, even talk about himself as if he were another person. But only in private, in the intimacy of the family circle. He would never dream of making such a statement in public.

I only wish I could get the public to appreciate the Harry Truman I know, Charlie Ross used to say.

In the fall of 1948, those words had special poignancy. Harry S. Truman was conducting a campaign for the presidency, which most of the nations political experts considered a waste of time. The Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey, seemed to be so far ahead that one of the nations leading pollsters, Elmo Roper, announced in September that further polling was a waste of time and money. Political leaders ranging from James Roosevelt in California to William ODwyer in New York had publicly urged the President not to run. On the left, Henry Wallace was leading the Progressive party on a platform that would hand much of the world over to Joseph Stalin & Company. On the right, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina had led the Dixiecrats out of the Democratic Party, in the hope that the South would forget who had surrendered to whom at Appomattox. The Republican candidate was so confident of victory that he barely bothered to mention my fathers name in his lofty paeans to unity. President Truman, said Connecticuts Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce, is a gone goose.