Harry Truman Page 24

  Burton K. Wheeler of Montana rose to agree emphatically, and several other statesmen added wordy, senatorial-style affirmations. It looked as if Chairman Mason might be impeached before the luncheon began.

  With suitable solemnity, Mason yielded. “You’re right and I apologize,” he said. “Therefore, I shall ask the vice president to come up and sit here next to me.”

  Whereupon Billy Richardson arose, walked up the room, and sat down next to Mason. The vice president of the United States, who had cooked up the whole intricate joke, sat there laughing. It was Dad’s way of saying nothing had changed between him and his old friends.

  To underscore this point, he declined to take over the swanky “gold plated” vice president’s office in the Capitol and remained in his familiar four rooms in the Senate Office Building. He knew nothing offended a politician more than the feeling someone in a higher office was getting a swelled head or putting on the dog. But things beyond the world of personal relationships had changed and as the weeks passed Dad got several blunt reminders of this fact.

  One day he was sitting in the small office the vice president has at his disposal in the Capitol. It is just off the Senate floor. My father noticed a young man sitting outside his office. He had been there most of the day. “Who is that young fellow who’s been out there, does he want to see me?” Dad asked Harry Vaughan, who had recently returned from Australia.

  “No, he doesn’t want to see you,” said General Vaughan.

  “Who is he?”

  “Secret Service.”

  “Well, what the hell is this?” Dad said. “When did this happen?”

  “It started a day or two ago.”

  “Bring him in,” Dad said. “I ought to meet him.”

  He shook hands with the young man, George Drescher, destined to be in charge of the White House Secret Service detail. “I don’t see much sense in this but if you fellows are detailed to do it, I’ll give you all the cooperation I can,” he said.

  Thereafter, a Secret Service man rode to work with him each day in the front seat of his official car.

  The Secret Service guard, a very good idea, originated with General Vaughan. My father had made him his military aide - the first in the history of the vice presidency. Looking over Dad’s security arrangements and knowing President Roosevelt’s precarious health, General Vaughan was appalled. He went to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau and said, “Mr. Secretary, it seems a little bit incongruous to me to have seventy-five or a hundred people guarding the President and absolutely no one guarding the vice president.”

  Morgenthau agreed and detailed three men. This was the beginning of our long, often hectic, but never unfriendly relationship with the Secret Service, probably the finest, most dedicated group of men I have ever met.

  Another more alarming reminder of his role in the government hit my father on February 20. A rumor swept the Capitol that President Roosevelt had died. He was en route home from Yalta aboard the USS Quincy at this time. Badly shaken, Dad called the White House and learned there had, indeed, been a death in the presidential party - Major General Edwin M. “Pa” Watson, the President’s appointments secretary, had died at sea. With a sigh of relief, Dad went back to being “a political eunuch,” as he playfully called the vice presidency at times.

  Occasionally we took a trip with Dad when he had a weekend speaking engagement. One of these expeditions brought us to New York, where he wrote a rather interesting letter to his mother and sister Mary on the stationery of the old Sherry Netherland Hotel.

  Dear Mamma & Mary:

  Well we got our business transacted yesterday, and went to a show last night - “The Barretts of Wimpole St.” about the Brownings. It’s just about as interesting and entertaining as is Browning’s poetry. All the tall brows and so-called “intellectuals” do much “ohing” and “ahing” about it and Margaret wanted to see it. I’d rather have gone to an opera or Oklahoma, or even a prize fight would have been more entertaining to me. But I brought Marg and Bess up here to see what they wished to see and I had a good time seeing them enjoy the show and watching the antics of the rest of the crowd. The place was full and we sat in the second row. Naturally got pointed out as the visiting fireman and had a kind of reception between acts and afterwards. They send a couple of secret servicemen along with me nowadays to see I don’t misbehave or do what I choose. But I guess it’s necessary.

  Another trip my father took around this time had a more melancholy purpose. On January 26, Tom Pendergast died in Kansas City. More than a few people wondered what Harry Truman would do. He was vice president of the United States now, and Tom Pendergast was an ex-convict. Dad did not hesitate for even five seconds. He flew to the funeral. “He was always my friend and I have always been his,” Dad said. He was recalling those lines he had written when he was county judge, asking himself who was closer to heaven, the Boss or the hypocrites who condemned him on Sunday and did business with him on Monday. The sad truth about Tom Pendergast, who many thought was still worth millions, was revealed when his estate was audited. After heavy debts were subtracted, there was barely $13,000 left to his heirs. Dad’s presence at the funeral meant a great deal to Pendergast’s family, and that is all Dad cared about.

  Although my father tried not to think about President Roosevelt’s health, there were times when he could not avoid the unpleasant truth that the President was continuing to decline. On his return from Yalta, he reported to the Congress on his historic meeting with Prime Minister Churchill and Marshal Stalin. The President spoke seated in his wheelchair in the well of the House of Representatives. He looked terribly weary, and his speech was lifeless and rambling. Worse, he told Congress nothing about the Yalta agreements that they did not know already from reading the newspapers.

  Not even my father could bring himself to comment favorably on the President’s Yalta speech. He had to resort to sarcasm, when some friendly reporters caught him in the hall just after the joint session of Congress adjourned.

  “What did you think of the speech, Senator?” they asked, using the title Dad still preferred.

  “One of the greatest ever given,” he replied and then joined the reporters in hearty laughter.

  A few weeks later my father joined the President at the head table for the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents Association. Like everyone else, he was appalled by how bad Roosevelt looked and even more alarmed by his dazed, vacant manner.

  After President Roosevelt’s return from Yalta, my father had a chance to see him only twice, on March 8 and March 19 at the White House. On neither visit did they discuss anything significant. The President continued to make no effort to bring Dad into the inner circle of the administration. This worried him deeply. But he was more concerned by the continued deterioration of the President’s relations with Congress. The brawl over Wallace had reawakened many old animosities, and the President’s insistence on a “work or fight” bill - which would have empowered the government to draft workers - also outraged many senators on both sides of the aisle. A grim example of the Senate’s hostility was the overwhelming rejection of liberal Democrat Aubrey Williams for the relatively minor post of Rural Electrification administrator. My father had done his best for Williams, but he, poor man, took the brunt of the pent-up resentment many senators still felt about being forced to vote for Henry Wallace as Secretary of Commerce.

  In spite of denunciations by scores of senators, the administration still insisted on a compulsory manpower bill. Other senators seethed over the President’s refusal to take them into his confidence about Yalta and his seeming lack of interest in the way the Russians were installing a Communist government in Poland. Arthur Vandenberg, leader of the internationalistic Republicans, fulminated against what was happening in Poland. But not a word was spoken from the White House to reassure him.

  On March 30, 1945, the Senate was thrown into turmoil when one of those “other little things” the President had vaguely referred to in
his speech on Yalta was suddenly revealed. Britain had been promised six votes in the forthcoming United Nations, and Russia and the United States were supposed to get three each. Numerous senators denounced the idea, among them Senator Vandenberg, who was the key to Republican cooperation on a peace treaty and the Senate approval of the United Nations. My father was horrified by the clumsy handling of such a delicate issue. He was convinced America must not commit the blunder that wrecked the peace after World War I - a blunder that was in large part caused by President Wilson’s poor relations with the Senate.

  Around the same time, the senators were equally aroused by the discovery that Marshal Stalin seemed to think so little of the already scheduled conference at San Francisco, to set up the United Nations, that he was not even sending his foreign minister, V. M. Molotov, to head the Russian delegation.

  On April 3, 1945, the Senate voted forty-six to twenty-nine to reject the compulsory manpower bill, in spite of all the pleas and politicking by the White House, the army, the navy, and dozens of other high administration officials on its behalf. In succeeding days, the Senate sounded like it might even reject a perfectly reasonable treaty with Mexico on water rights the two nations share on the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers. But perhaps the best proof of how low the Roosevelt Administration had sunk in the Senate’s estimate was the vote on April 10 on an amendment to the Lend-Lease Act, proposed by Senator Taft of Ohio. It called for compulsory cancelation or drastic readjustment of lend-lease contracts, as soon as the war ended. It was nothing less than a direct slap in the President’s face. The vote was thirty-nine to thirty-nine, and my father was given his first and only chance to cast a tie-breaking vote as vice president. “On this amendment,” he said, “the Yeas are thirty-nine and the Nays are thirty-nine. The chair votes No. The amendment is not agreed to.”

  Thus, he rescued President Roosevelt from humiliation. But the closeness of the vote was a humiliation in itself. Grimly, my father resolved to see the President as soon as possible and work out a program to revitalize his relationship with the Senate. By now, this concern had pretty well obscured his worries about President Roosevelt’s health. Perhaps, unconsciously, Dad preferred to worry about the political situation because he could do something about that. There was nothing he could do about the other worry, and he has a habit of dismissing ineffectual thoughts from his mind.

  By this time, President Roosevelt had departed for a projected three-week vacation at Warm Springs, Georgia. He had assured my father not long before he left that a good rest there would completely restore him to his old vigorous self. The President was deluding himself. We know now that no one - including President Roosevelt himself - was aware of how sick he was. George Elsey, who later became one of Dad’s top aides and was at this time working in the White House map room, says everyone in the White House was concerned about President Roosevelt’s health for several years. But his doctor, Rear Admiral Ross T. Mclntire, deliberately deceived the President about his true condition. This conviction was shared by William D. Hassett, who was FDR’s correspondence secretary and also served Dad in that capacity. Perhaps the most heartbreaking conversation in the history of this tragic time was the talk Bill Hassett had with heart specialist Dr. Howard Bruenn about the President’s health, on March 30, 1945.

  “He is slipping away from us and no earthly power can keep him here,” Bill said.

  “Why do you think so?” Dr. Bruenn asked contentiously.

  “I know you don’t want to make the admission and I have talked this way with no one else save one,” Bill replied. “To all the staff, to the family, and with the Boss himself I have maintained the bluff; but I am convinced that there is no help for him.”

  On April 11, my father held a press conference for the Senate reporters. In the light of what was to happen the following day, his words were tinged with irony. Someone called him Mr. Vice President and he said, “Smile when you say that.” He kidded with the reporters over recent publicity about Senate absenteeism. Senators were now elaborately asking the vice president’s permission to attend committee meetings and make other necessary departures from the floor. “When they hold up two fingers and say they want to go to an appropriations committee, I tell them they can go,” Dad said. “When they hold up one finger, I tell them they can sit there and suffer.”

  Then he grew serious. “It’s wonderful, this Senate,” he said. “It’s the greatest place on earth. That takes in a lot of territory, but I say it and I mean it. The grandest bunch of fellows you could ever find anywhere. And there isn’t one of ‘em who couldn’t do better in private business. I was sitting there today looking them over, and you know, there isn’t a one but what could make three times what he does here if he worked for some private corporation. And there isn’t one of us who would be anywhere else if he could.”

  “It’s a good place for public service, isn’t it, Senator?” somebody asked.

  “It’s the best place there is,” Dad said. With a grin, he added, “I did what I could. I did my best. I was getting along fine until I stuck my neck out too far and got too famous - and then they made me V.P. and now I can’t do anything.”

  The words obviously reminded him of the political worries that were nagging at his mind. “No, sir,” he said, almost mournfully, “I can’t do anything.”

  The events of the next fateful day have been told and retold in newspapers, magazines, and books. For us, the early hours were thoroughly routine. I rode to school with my father in his chauffeur-driven car, with the Secret Service man sitting beside the driver in the front seat. Dad spent most of the day in the Senate listening to more windy debate on the Mexican water treaty. He was so bored he began writing a letter to his mother, while he sat at his elevated desk, presiding. He was looking forward to a relaxed evening. Eddie McKim was in town, and at Dad’s suggestion, he was busy organizing a poker game in his suite at the Statler Hotel.

  I was also looking forward to a pleasant evening. I had a date with a new boyfriend, and we were going to stop by a birthday party for my close friend and next door neighbor, Annette Davis, before going on to dinner and the theater. The Senate finally adjourned at 4:56 p.m., with absolutely nothing decided on the Mexican water treaty. Outside a misty rain was falling, typical April weather for Washington, D.C. This worried my father a little because he was planning to fly to Providence, Rhode Island, the following morning, to address the Rhode Island Democrats at their Jefferson Day dinner.

  In no hurry, since he was not planning to eat dinner at home that night, my father sauntered into his “gold-plated” Capitol office. There he was told Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn had called, asking if he would stop by his office for a few minutes to talk over some bills on which the House and Senate were in disagreement. Dad dutifully headed for Sam’s office. He then planned to dash over to his Senate Office Building quarters, sign the day’s mail, and depart for Eddie McKim’s room at the Statler and an evening of friendly poker. He told General Vaughan to phone Eddie and tell him they would be a little late, but they would definitely get there.

  Down the dark marble corridors my father strolled to Sam Rayburn’s “Board of Education,” as insiders called the Speaker’s private office, where he maintained the tradition of his mentor, Cactus Jack Garner, of “striking a blow for liberty.” Waiting for Dad, along with the Speaker, was Lew Deschler, the parliamentarian of the House of Representatives, and James M. Barnes, a White House legislative assistant. After the draggy afternoon Dad had spent in the Senate, he was more than ready to join Sam in a liquid blow for liberty. As the Speaker mixed the bourbon with the right amount of water, he casually told Dad that Steve Early, the White House press secretary, had left a message, asking my father to return the call immediately. He did so without a moment’s hesitation.

  In a strained voice, Steve Early said, “Please come right over as quickly and as quietly as you can.”

  Apologizing to Sam Rayburn, my father walked over to his Senate office by unfreque
nted underground corridors. There he seized his hat and told one of his secretaries he was going to the White House. Although some people have found it hard to believe, he was still unaware of what had happened. Not even the urgency in Steve Early’s voice was able to penetrate Dad’s rigid resolve not to think about the President’s health.

  Four days later, when he wrote a long letter to his mother and sister Mary about these harrowing minutes, he said: “I thought that the President had come to Washington to attend the funeral of the Episcopal Bishop Atwood, for whom he was an honorary pallbearer, and who was his good friend. I thought that maybe he wanted me to do some special piece of liaison work with the Congress and had sent for me to see him after the funeral and before he went back to Warm Springs.”

  My father’s walk through the underground corridors to his Senate office had taken his Secret Service detail completely by surprise. They now had no idea where he was. With no time to look for them, he went downstairs and into the street, where he found his car and chauffeur waiting for him. “We got to the White House in almost nothing flat,” Dad told his mother. It was 5:25 p.m. when his black limousine swung through the northwest gate and up the long semicircle to the front entrance of the White House. Two ushers were waiting for him, and they led him to an elevator which carried him up to Mrs. Roosevelt’s second-floor study. Steve Early and Anna Roosevelt and her husband, Colonel John Boettiger, were there. Tragedy was visible in their stricken faces. Gently, sadly, Mrs. Roosevelt placed her hand on my father’s shoulder and said, “Harry, the President is dead.”

  For over an hour, while he wrote his letter to his mother at his Senate desk and strolled down to Sam Rayburn’s office, my father had been the President, without knowing it. Roosevelt had died in Warm Springs at 4:35.