Bess Truman Read online

  It was a warm day, and most of the windows and the front door of Blair House were open. Only a lightly latched screen door stood between intruders and the interior of the building. Of course, the idea of intruders never entered anyone’s head. Pedestrians were allowed to stroll along the sidewalk only a few feet from the door. There were guards on duty in sentry boxes on the east and west ends of the yellow brick and stucco building. But no one, including the president and First Lady, had the slightest sense of danger from this proximity to the public.

  At a few minutes after 2:00 p.m., Mother left Grandmother Wallace and entered her second-floor bedroom to begin dressing for the trip to Arlington. An incredible series of blasts suddenly erupted from the street below her windows. In two minutes, there were no less than twenty-seven staccato explosions. Mother rushed to the window and looked down on a shocking sight.

  One of the guards, Leslie Coffelt, was writhing on the ground in a death agony. Another guard was lying in the gutter clutching a shattered leg. Two other men in shabby civilian clothes were lying on the sidewalk, bleeding profusely. There was blood everywhere.

  Mother fled into Dad’s bedroom crying: “Harry, someone’s shooting our policemen!”

  Dad dashed to the window and stuck out his head to get a good look at the carnage. “Get back, get back,” the surviving guards and Secret Service men on the street implored him. They did not know what was going to happen next. Dad retreated to the door of his room and peered out. A husky Secret Service man was crouched at the head of the stairs with a submachine gun pointing at the front door.

  Dad did not mention that to Mother. He calmed her down and told her to go back and finish dressing. He would find out what had happened and tell her on the way to Arlington. He soon learned that he and Mother had come alarmingly close to being killed. Two Puerto Rican nationalist fanatics, Oscar Collazo and Victor Torresola, had noticed Blair House’s easy access from the street and tried to shoot their way into the building. They failed largely because Collazo’s gun had jammed when he pulled the trigger, giving the guard he was trying to murder time to draw his own gun and return his fire.

  Torresola had gunned down guards Coffelt and Joseph E. Downs in the west booth. But the mortally wounded Coffelt put a bullet through Torresola’s brain as he raced toward the door. Collazo was stopped on the steps by a hail of bullets from other policemen and Secret Service agents and toppled to the sidewalk with three bullets in him; none were fatal wounds.

  Mother was shaken by this senseless act of violence. It seemed to confirm all the intimations of disaster she had sensed when Dad became president. She was particularly anxious to make sure her mother did not hear about it. She issued orders to Vietta Garr, who was still with us as Grandmother’s companion, to say nothing to her and passed similar commands to the Blair House staff. With her iron self-control, Mother was able to join Dad and drive to the ceremony in Arlington as if nothing had happened. There, as Dad airily dismissed their brush with death with the comment, “Presidents have to expect such things,” Mother thought of me in Portland. She rushed back to Blair House and telephoned me at my hotel. She knew I had spent the afternoon in seclusion as most singers do before a concert. Thereafter, however, Mother’s usually strong sense of reality deserted her.

  “I just want you to know everyone’s all right,” she said.

  “Why shouldn’t everyone be all right?” I asked. “Is there anything wrong with Dad?”

  “He’s fine. He’s perfectly fine,” Mother said. “I’ll talk to you later tonight, after your performance.”

  It was an indication of how shaken Mother was that she did not seem to realize that people read newspapers and listened to the radio in Portland, and it was virtually impossible for me to get from the hotel to the concert hall without someone telling me what had happened. Reathel Odum, Mother’s ex-secretary, who was traveling with me, conferred with my manager, and they jointly decided to tell me what had happened. They did not want a local reporter to undo me with a question seconds before I went on stage. Once I was reassured that Dad was all right, I relaxed and sang without the slightest nervousness.

  For Mother, the assassination attempt cast a shadow of anxiety over the remaining months of Dad’s presidency. No longer could she justify her occasional defiance of the Secret Service, lest Dad be encouraged to do the same thing. Having survived about 50,000 high explosive shells in World War I, he was totally fatalistic about the danger. He discussed this attitude and other aspects of the assassination attempt in a letter to his cousin, Ethel Noland: “I’m really a prisoner now. I’m like the “600” and the cannon, only mine are guards and they are trying to keep me out of the “mouth of hell.” Everybody is much more worried and jittery than I am. I’ve always thought that if I could get my hands on a would-be assassin he’d never try it again. But I guess that’s impossible. The grand guards who were hurt in the attempt on me didn’t have a fair chance. The one who was killed was just cold bloodedly murdered before he could do anything. But his assassin did not live but a couple of minutes - one of the S.S. men put a bullet in one ear and it came out the other. . . . I was the only calm one in the house. You see I’ve been shot at by experts and unless your name’s on the bullet you needn’t be afraid - and that of course you can’t find out, so why worry.”

  For a professional worrier like Mother, this was no reassurance. She dismissed Dad’s complaints when the Secret Service decreed a temporary ban on his morning walks and insisted on taking him from Blair House to the White House in a heavily guarded car, which picked him up in the back alley. She had to depart and return in the same furtive fashion, which she disliked as much as he did.

  The assassination attempt may have had something to do with her decision not to go home with him on November 5 for a two-and-a-half-day visit to dedicate a Liberty Bell replica, given to Independence by the people of Annecy-le-Vieux, France. A small army of Secret Service men and Kansas City police followed Dad everywhere, even when he had dinner with Frank and Natalie Wallace. Mother decided in advance that she could not stand it and stayed in Washington.

  There, Blair House became a mansion under siege. After November 1, 1950, pedestrians were no longer permitted to walk past it. The number of guards was increased. Even the streetcar platform was removed from the avenue in front of the house to make sure that a would-be assassin could not mingle with a crowd of people waiting there. All these precautions only reminded Mother of that day of carnage and terror.

  There were numerous other threats on Dad’s life, which he did not mention to Mother or me. Early in 1951, he explained to his cousin, Ralph Truman, why he could not attend the reunion of the Thirty-fifth Division. Stressing that it was “completely confidential,” Dad wrote: “The Secret Service have received more than the usual number of threats to rub me out at the reunion. You know I never worry about those things. . . . But some good fellow who has three or four kids may be killed - to keep me from that fate.”

  Almost all these threats were stirred by the hate-filled diatribes of Joe McCarthy and his Republican friends. The mentally unbalanced found it a perfect focus for their paranoia to believe that the president and his secretary of state were Communist agents.

  Unfortunately, a dismaying number of voters were influenced by McCarthy’s linkage of Communist aggression in Korea with his baseless charges of subversion at home. General MacArthur did not help matters when, on the eve of the elections, he demanded permission to bomb the bridges over the Yalu River to stop the Communist Chinese from crossing them. The general once more did not seem to be able to grasp that this would give them the pretext to intervene in massive force. By maneuvering the president into issuing a refusal, the general made Harry Truman look weak and indecisive and convinced most of Dad’s staff that MacArthur was working with the Republicans.

  The November elections were an unnerving blow to Dad’s hope of leaving behind him in 1952 a bipartisan foreign policy that would guarantee a peaceful world. Although the Dem
ocrats did not lose control of Congress, the top leadership in the House and Senate was defeated. Scott Lucas, the Senate Majority Leader, lost in Illinois; Francis M. Myers, the Democratic whip, lost in Pennsylvania. That enabled the Republicans to crow that the voters had repudiated not just these men, but the president.

  Even more painful was the success of the professional red-baiters. Richard Nixon won a Senate seat in California by claiming that his opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, was “pink right down to her underwear.” Everett Dirksen defeated Scott Lucas by talking about “young men coming back in wooden boxes,” killed by Communists. Senator Millard Tydings was crushed in Maryland by a barrage of innuendos and outright lies, such as a faked picture of him with Communist leader Earl Browder. Joe McCarthy had vowed to get Tydings and Lucas, and his success was certain to intimidate Democrats in both houses and encourage Republicans to imitate the “unmitigated liar,” as Dad called him.

  Seldom in their thirty-one years of marriage had Bess seen Harry Truman so downhearted. He blamed himself for not keeping the pressure on McCarthy. As usual, he had put the national interest, coping with the Korean War, ahead of politics. Now that conflict was spiraling out of control, after seeming to be on the brink of victory only a few weeks earlier. More and more reports of Red Chinese intervention flowed into the Pentagon and over to the White House. Then the reports suddenly ceased. The Chinese disappeared.

  In Korea, General MacArthur decided the Chinese were bluffing. He ordered a “final offensive,” which would bring the soldiers “home by Christmas.” Ignoring cautionary warnings from the joint Chiefs of Staff, he sent his soldiers north to the Yalu River border between North Korea and Red China. On November 28, 300,000 Chinese troops struck the United Nations Army with overwhelming force and sent it reeling into chaotic retreat. Suddenly, Dad was faced with the possibility of a military and political catastrophe of terrifying proportions.

  On top of this nightmare came a terrible media snafu. At a press conference on November 30, instead of concentrating on Harry Truman’s historic declaration that the United States would not abandon Korea in the face of this Chinese sneak attack, the reporters seized on his answer to a question about the possible use of the atom bomb and distorted it into a frenzy of headlines that Dad was about to use nuclear weapons to end the war.

  As always, when the press twisted Dad’s words and intentions, Mother was upset. Another person close to the president was even more upset: Charlie Ross. As press secretary, he felt responsible for avoiding such upheavals. Usually, Charlie sensed trouble from the way reporters were pushing a line of questioning and asked the president to restate and clarify his replies at the end of a press conference. This story got away from Charlie for a good reason. He and everyone else on the White House staff were operating in a daze of exhaustion. Ever since the Chinese attack, the lights in the west wing never went out, and sleep was snatched on couches and jammed-together chairs.

  I was far away from this turmoil, purple pinning it from concert hall to concert hall on a tour that had begun on October 1, when the news from Korea had been sensationally good. The tour was scheduled to end with a concert in Constitution Hall on December 5, 1950. Dad spent most of the day conferring with British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who had rushed to Washington for a conference when he read the misleading headlines about the atomic bomb. Dad was in the process of turning this impolitic visit into a useful discussion of how to deal with the Chinese in Korea.

  At the end of the afternoon, Dad gave Charlie Ross a summary of his talk with Mr. Attlee for release to the press. Charlie planned to brief the reporters, have dinner, and join Dad and Mother at Constitution Hall for my concert. Dad left for Blair House, and Charlie handled the briefing in his usual smooth style. The TV reporters asked him if he would repeat himself for their cameras, and he wearily agreed. As they set up their equipment on his desk, Charlie joked with his secretary about his TV style. Suddenly he slumped in his chair. Dr. Graham, the White House doctor, was frantically summoned, but by the time he got there, Charlie was dead. His tired, damaged heart had failed.

  Dr. Graham called Dad. He walked into Mother’s bedroom with tears streaming down his face and said: “Charlie Ross just dropped dead at his desk.” Mother wept as well. She was not a crying type ordinarily, but there were so many memories storming through her mind and heart. She remembered that blithe and brilliant editor of The Gleam, in 1901. She saw him strolling down Delaware Street, holding Mary Paxton’s hand. She did not know, then, the unique pain the news would stir in Mary’s heart. (That night, Mary later told her, she awoke hearing Charlie calling her name.) Mother also thought of the pain it would cause Charlie’s wife, Florence, and his two sons.

  The Trumans’ tears were brief. Sheer necessity required self-control. Mother raised the most urgent question. Should they tell me? She decided on the same approach she had taken to the attempted assassination. She persuaded Dad that it would be better to wait until after the concert.

  Here, again, I think Mother’s instinct to protect me, as she had tried all her life to protect and support her brothers and everyone else whom she cared about, led her to make a mistake. It would have been better to have told me that Charlie had died. I might have decided to make a statement about him before I sang. I could have announced that I was dedicating this performance to his memory. I might have changed my repertoire for the evening.

  Instead, by presidential order, I was surrounded by a wall of Secret Service agents and aides who kept the press at bay and me in ignorance. Mother and Dad and their guest, Prime Minister Attlee, went to Constitution Hall and enjoyed my performance. So, as far as I could tell, did the rest of the audience, if their generous applause proved anything. Afterward, Dad was effusive, even for him. He hugged me and said he had never heard me sing better. I can see now that watching me perform was his only happy moment in a devastating week.

  The next morning Dad was up at dawn, as usual. He opened The Washington Post and read a horrendous review of my performance by their critic, Paul Hume. Without saying a word to me or Mother, who would have stopped him, he dashed off a note to Mr. Hume that told him in Trumanesque language what he thought of him. Among other picturesque suggestions, he said Mr. Hume sounded like “an eight ulcer man on a four ulcer job with all four ulcers working.” Dad had one of the White House servants mail it for him, thus circumventing his staff, who also tried to persuade him to think over such letters before he sent them.

  Mr. Hume promptly released the letter to the press, and the hullabaloo temporarily knocked the Korean War off the front pages. Mother was upset. She always hated to see Dad blow up in public. But this time, knowing all the circumstances, she could not bring herself to reprimand him.

  Dad never regretted that letter. He insisted that he had a right to be two people – the President of the United States and Harry S. Truman, father of Margaret, husband of Bess Wallace. “It was Harry Truman, the human being who wrote that letter,” he said.

  A memorandum he wrote a few days later gives an even better picture of his state of mind.

  Margie held a concert here in D.C. on Dec. 5th. It was a good one. She was well accompanied by a young pianist name of Allison, whose father is a Baptist preacher in Augusta, Georgia. Young Allison played two pieces after the intermission, one of which was the great A Flat Chopin Waltz Opus 42. He did it as well as it could be done and I’ve heard Paderewski, Moritz Rosenthal and Joseph Lhevinne play it.

  A frustrated critic on The Washington Post wrote a lousy review. The only thing, General Marshall said, he didn’t criticize was the varnish on the piano. He put my “baby” as low as he could and he made the young accompanist look like a dub.

  It upset me, and I wrote him what I thought of him. I told him he is lower than Pegler and that was intended to be an insult worse than a reflection on his ancestry. I would never reflect on a man’s mother because mothers are not to be attacked although mine has [been].

  Well I’ve had a grand tim
e this day. I’ve been accused of putting my “baby” who is the “apple of my eye” in a bad position. I don’t think that is so. She doesn’t either, thank the Almighty.

  In addition to personal matters I’ve had conference after conference on the jittery situation facing the country. Attlee, Formosa, Communist China, Chiang Kai-shek, Japan, Germany, France, India, etc. I’ve worked for peace for five years and six months and it looks like World War III is here.

  I hope not - but we must meet whatever comes - and we will.

  A few weeks later, Dad wrote another interesting letter about my singing career. It gives the reader a glimpse of how much thought he and Mother had given to being parents in the White House.

  My dear Miss Heggie:

  I have just read your story in the Woman’s Home Companion – “What Makes Margaret Sing?”

  It is lovely. Thank you from my heart. The vast majority of our people can never understand what a terrible handicap it is to a lovely girl to have her father the President of the United States.

  Stuffed shirt critics and vicious political opponents of mine sometimes try to take it out on Margie. It’s her dad they are after, and Margie understands. You have come more nearly stating the situation in its true light than anyone who has made the attempt.

  I hope sometimes you’ll make a study of the families of the Presidents. It is most interesting. Martha Washington and her children and what happened to them. Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison, the wife of Andrew Jackson and how she was hounded to her grave. Mrs. Lincoln, the most mistreated of all the White House First Ladies except Mrs. Cleveland, the first Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and the Wilson daughters, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Mrs. Coolidge and Herbert Hoover’s sons. Of course, we are too close to Franklin Roosevelt and his daughter and sons to evaluate what the White House did to them.

  You’ve made a contribution to history that will help some Ph.D. in the future to evaluate all these families I’ve mentioned.