Bess Truman Page 53

  “Khrushchev?” I suggested, not serious.

  “No. Ike.”

  It seems that ex-President Eisenhower wanted some advice on setting up his library and was wondering if ex-President Truman was ready to negotiate a truce. Mother urged Dad to say yes, and when Ike came to Kansas City to help rededicate the World War I Liberty Memorial on Armistice Day, 1961, he visited Dad in his office at the library and the two of them jointly agreed to bury their political hatchets. It was a good thing they did, because only a week later Sam Rayburn died, and they sat side by side in the front pew for the service.

  Bess remained far more interested in her grandchildren. Her letters to Mary Paxton Keeley filled her in on their development and when she last saw them, whether in New York, or Bermuda, or Florida. Politics were never mentioned. But there were a lot of comparisons of their mutual woes with arthritis. Both had developed this disease. Both lived up to Mary’s motto that the only way to meet trouble was to take it standing. Mary kept on working, turning out books about Missouri and more historical dramas. None reached Broadway, but several had successful Missouri productions. She also turned part-time painter, creating an historical mural for Calvary Episcopal Church in Columbia. Bess cheered this new creativity. She called the mural “the most interesting thing you have ever done.”

  Each Christmas, Bess and Mary continued their sixty-year tradition of exchanging Christmas presents. Mary usually gave Mother books, but sometimes - another tradition of their youth - she gave her something she had made herself. A handmade dish towel inspired one of Mother’s liveliest lines. She said she could not think of a better present, because these days, it was hard to find a dish towel “you can’t throw a dog through.” That made me wonder what in the world they were really up to in those supposedly sedate 1890s.

  Another custom Bess and Mary began in their old age was sending each other flowers. They did it at all times of the year, but most of the gifts were in the winter, when their spirits needed lifting. “I found your amaryllis here when I got home,” Bess wrote when she returned from Key West in 1960. “It’s been years since we had one. Mother was always interested in them. I can hardly wait for it to bloom.” A few years before, Bess sent Mary a rose in December. She remarked that it was not much of a present because she would have to wait until spring for it to bloom. But it was a special flower, named for Mrs. George Marshall, “one of the most delightful persons I have ever known.”

  Both women needed this kind of spiritual sustenance. Mary’s son Pax became a department store executive and moved to a distant state. She was lonely in Columbia, even though she was feted and fussed over as the oldest living graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. Mother tried to be philosophic about my becoming a confirmed New Yorker, but she missed me and yearned to see her grandchildren more often. “It’s too bad we have to be so far from our only children,” she wrote to Mary. “But maybe it’s better for them!” That was one strong-willed mother talking frankly to another one if I have ever seen it.

  In the early sixties, death cut a swath through both the Paxtons and the Wallaces. Several of Mary’s Independence relatives died. But Mother had far heavier blows. Frank Wallace had been ailing for some time with a combination of ills. His health had never been robust. Bess tried hard to keep up his morale. She took him for rides in the car and was always sending him goodies Vietta had baked. Suddenly, in the spring of 1960, it was Natalie Wallace who was ill. She underwent surgery for cancer and died three weeks later. Frank simply could not handle the loss. He died ten weeks after her, on August 13, 1960.

  In the spring of 1963, Mother’s younger brother, George, died a slow, painful death from lung cancer. From Mother’s point of view, 1963 was not a good year. In January, Dad started complaining about strange pains in his abdomen. Bess insisted on a checkup, and the doctors discovered an intestinal hernia. It was a serious operation for a man of seventy-nine, and he took a long time to recover.

  In November 1963, came a political shock of awful proportions, President Kennedy’s assassination. Having come so close to that fate himself, Dad was terribly shaken by it. For the first time in his life, he was unable to face reporters, who naturally wanted his reaction to the tragedy. He took to his bed and let Mother handle the questions.

  For Mother and Dad the assassination was especially painful because they had grown fond of the young president and his wife. The Kennedys had invited the Trumans (and Clifton and me) to the White House for a weekend in 1962, and we had had a wonderful time. Jack made a witty speech about how the Kennedy administration should really be called the third Truman administration because he had so many ex-Trumanites on his staff. Mother was enthusiastic about Jackie’s redecoration of the White House. But it was more than this brief friendship that made the assassination so painful for Mother and Dad. Those who have lived in the White House are united by a special bond that all but defies explanation to outsiders.

  Jack Kennedy’s tragic death brought the Secret Service back into the Trumans’ lives. Suddenly jittery about the safety of ex-presidents, Congress appropriated money for lifetime protection. Mother reacted as if they had just told her she was going to have to spend four more years in the White House. Conveniently forgetting the several nuts who had appeared on our doorstep with loaded guns, she insisted that she and Dad did not need protection in Independence. Clifton and I protested in vain. She refused to allow the Secret Service men on the property. The next thing we knew, Dad was reading the bill and found a clause in it permitting the ex-president to refuse the protection.

  The situation was at an impasse when the telephone rang one night. “Bess,” said a familiar Texas voice, “this is Lyndon.” With the infinite number of things on his mind, the president found the time to call and cajole Mother into letting the Secret Service return. I will always be grateful to him for that act of thoughtfulness. Mother had to admit she, too, was impressed. She finally agreed to let the Secret Service guard Dad during the day, while he was working in the library, and traveling to and from 219 North Delaware. But she still would not let them into the house, or even onto the property.

  Then came an incident that made Mother realize the Secret Service could be useful. On October 13, 1964, in the middle of his eightieth year, Dad slipped and fell in the bathroom on the second floor. He struck the edge of the tub, fracturing two ribs. The fall also broke his eyeglasses, which cut his eyebrow and forehead. A maid found him and called the police and an ambulance. If Mother had allowed the Secret Service to install “panic transmitters” - small beepers the size of cigarette packs - in the house, much time could have been saved.

  The period of that fall and Dad’s slow recuperation from it was another difficult time. In 1965, when Mary Paxton had a show of her paintings and photographs in Columbia, Mother wrote that they could not come. “We can’t drive that far anymore.” In March 1967, when she and Dad flew to Key West to spend two weeks with the Daniel tribe, she remarked that it was the first time they had left Independence in more than two years. “It’s the longest I have stayed home since 1934,” Mother said. It was clear that she did not like being so housebound. For all her intense loyalty to 219 North Delaware Street, part of her heart had been transplanted to Washington, D.C., and points north, east, south, and west. If she had her way, she would have spent at least half her time traveling.

  I kept her interested during these years by giving birth to two more sons, Harrison Gates Daniel and Thomas Washington Daniel. Mother was baffled by my predilection for a large family. When I told her Thomas was on the way, she remarked, “Well, you’re not a Catholic, so I can only conclude you’re careless.”

  That was one of my last encounters with Mother’s hard side. She doted on all four boys when they visited her. She let them call her “Gammy” without a murmur of protest and did not seem to care what they did to her precious house as they careened through it. She beamed while they fought mock battles in the living room, making twice as much noise as I
ever dared to make at my most obstreperous. Gammy could also be depended on for a steady supply of Vietta’s brownies at all hours of the day, with a cautionary “Don’t tell your mother.”

  Politics remained a part of the Trumans’ lives, along with grandparenting. During Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, he visited Dad and Mother in Independence six times. Mother was particularly pleased by his tribute to Dad when he signed the Medicare Bill at the Truman Library in 1965. The president said it was the culmination of a twenty-year effort to guarantee every American decent health care that Harry Truman had begun in 1945.

  Later, Mr. Johnson came seeking Dad’s support for his policies in Vietnam. Dad gave him a general statement, which praised the patriotism of the men fighting there far more than the policy of the president who had sent them. He did not agree with the way Mr. Johnson was fighting the war, and he became more and more disillusioned with his presidential leadership.

  Although Dad and Mother remained fond of Mr. Johnson personally, they were both disappointed with his decision not to seek another term in 1968, which gave the war protesters a chance to crow that they had driven him out of office. They thought he should have taken his case to the people and let them decide as Dad had done in 1948.

  The election of Richard Nixon was another shock. Even more surprising was a cautious query from Washington asking if the Trumans would tolerate a visit from the new president in early 1969. That special bond that links the residents of the White House prevailed over old animosities, and the Trumans’ answer was yes. The Nixons called and stayed twenty minutes. The two men discussed foreign policy, while Mother showed Pat Nixon through the house. They then adjourned to the Truman Library, where Mr. Nixon gave Dad the Steinway piano that had been on the second floor of the White House when we arrived in 1945.

  Mr. Nixon was impressed by Dad’s insights into the problems the country was facing at home and abroad. “He’s up on everything,” he said as Nixon left. The same was true of Mother. When I wrote that she was more interested in her grandchildren, I was referring to emotional intensity. She also remained in close touch with the country’s travails in Vietnam and the unrest at home. Like Dad, she read three or four newspapers a day.

  In the spring of 1972, not long after Mr. Nixon had mined Haiphong Harbor to force the North Vietnamese to agree to a peace treaty, Mother asked a visitor what he thought of it. The visitor said he thought it was a good idea. Mother nodded emphatically. “If he’d been president,” she said, gesturing to Dad on the other side of the room, “we’d have it done it six years ago.”

  During these years, Dad’s health slowly deteriorated. He began having attacks of vertigo that forced him to give up his morning walks. Arthritis in the hips and knees made it difficult for him to negotiate the stairs. On November 22, 1972, Bess wrote to Mary Paxton Keeley to thank her for another gift of amaryllis. “Harry is not at all well,” she remarked at the close of the letter. “I have excellent help with him but I still have many things to do.”

  On December 5, doctors decided to bring Dad to Research Hospital to see if they could clear up some alarming congestion in his lungs. He rallied remarkably at first, but his eighty-eight-year-old heart could not stand the strain. Episodes of “cardiac instability,” as the doctors called it, brought him near death several times. Mother spent almost all her time at the hospital, and I spent a lot of my time on planes between New York and Kansas City.

  In mid-December, as Mother sat with Dad, a familiar voice called “Bess - Bess -” from the doorway of the room.

  It was Mary Paxton Keeley. At the age of eighty-seven, she had come all the way from Columbia to be with Mother at this saddest hour of her life. She had used her reporter’s savvy and moxie to get past the Secret Service. “Your visit to the hospital did me a lot of good,” Mother wrote, some weeks later. Then, underlining every word, she added: “I’m glad you talked the Secret Service man into letting you by.” Her private war with the Secret Service never ended.

  As December drew to a close, I became as worried about Mother as I was about Dad. She rapidly was reaching the point of total exhaustion. As usual, she did not take my advice when I urged her to go home for at least one night and get some real sleep. She even spent Christmas Eve at the hospital. Finally, on Christmas night, I persuaded her to come home with me. Dad had slipped into a coma, and there was nothing we could do to help him.

  At 7:52 the next morning, Dr. Graham called to tell us Dad had died. For a long time, I felt guilty about persuading Mother to come home. She wanted to be with him even though he was no longer conscious. But it seemed, like many decisions made under stress, the right one at the time.

  Mother and I were touched by the enormous outpouring of grief and affection from all parts of the nation. Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Ladybird, and President Nixon and Mrs. Nixon came to the house to offer Mother their sympathy. Radio and television stations devoted hours to Dad’s achievements, and newspapers seemed to have nothing else in them. But it was the response of the average Americans that Mother found most affecting. A deluge of telegrams and telephone calls poured into the Truman Library. Most touching to Mother were the thousands of Missourians who stood in line for as long as six hours to pay their respects to Dad when his body was brought to the library on December 27.

  The army had planned an elaborate five-day state funeral for Harry S. Truman. It called for bringing Dad’s body to Washington to lie in state in the rotunda of the Capitol and then returning him to Missouri for burial. Clifton and I decided this would be a terrible ordeal for Mother. It also conflicted with her wishes. “Keep it simple, simple,” she told us.

  As our representative at a conference with the army, Clifton worked out a two-day ceremony, which would take place entirely in Independence. This enabled his fellow Missourians to express their affection for Dad while Mother was able to remain in seclusion for a day and regain a little strength.

  Mother helped me prepare the guest list for the funeral service on December 28. The list was limited to 250 - the capacity of the Truman Library’s auditorium. Along with famous friends, such as Hubert Humphrey and Clark Clifford, there were old Independence friends and people who had worked for the Trumans - the painter, the gardener, the maid, Dad’s barber.

  Typical of Mother’s attitude was her response to a family friend who was traveling with his four children when our invitation reached him. He asked the army to reserve rooms for the children at the Muehlebach Hotel, adding that he understood that they could not come to the service. “Of course, they can,” Mother said and allotted them four seats.

  Mother and I were good soldiers. We remained dry-eyed during the service in the auditorium. Only when we went into the library courtyard for the burial and Battery D of the 129th Field Artillery, Dad’s old outfit, fired a twenty-one-gun salute with six howitzers did I notice tears glistening in Mother’s eyes.

  Those booming guns were reminding Bess of the first time Harry Truman had responded to history’s challenge. She was hearing him tell her, in a moment of presidential anguish: “I wish I never went to war in the first place!” She was remembering other tears, shed in the living room or on the porch of 219 North Delaware in that first wartime summer while a distressed soldier whispered how sorry he was to cause her pain. She was remembering that same soldier, wearing a cocky grin, bounding up the steps of that old house in 1919 to give her an exultant kiss. She was remembering so many things that I could never share in my daughter’s grief.

  Finally, the guns stopped firing. The army band stopped playing. The commanding general removed the flag from Dad’s casket and carefully folded it and presented it to Mother. She handed it to me. A soldier stepped forward and laid a blanket of red carnations, Dad’s favorite flower, on the casket. It was Bess Wallace’s last gift to Harry S. Truman.

  My first concern, after we had recovered from the early stages of grief, was where Mother should live. I suggested moving to New York, where she could have a small apartment near me and
Clifton and enjoy her grandchildren. She vetoed the idea. Now that she was free to go anywhere she chose, she decided to stay at 219 North Delaware Street. The house had become more than a refuge to her now. It was a kind of shrine to her life with Dad and with her mother and brothers. They were all around her there in memory, and she did not want to leave them.

  On her desk in her upstairs bedroom, Mother placed that anniversary letter Dad had written her in 1957, summarizing thirty-eight years of their marriage. She often sat down and read it before coming downstairs in the morning. Although she missed him acutely, she reached out to other friends who needed comforting. Chief among these was Mary Paxton Keeley, who had suffered a horrendous blow several months before Dad died. Her only son, Pax, had developed a kidney disorder exactly like the one that had killed his father. He became angry with his mother for never telling him how his father had died. In her eagerness to think of him only as a Paxton, Mary had practically blotted Edmund Keeley out of her memory.

  Pax had both kidneys removed and was put on a dialysis machine to await a kidney implant when a donor made one available. Alas, he developed complications and died before they could find one. “My tear glands have dried up,” Mary told Bess. “I could not even cry when Pax died. [She had done so much weeping already.] I wanted to when they blew taps.”

  They set each other examples of womanly courage in these lonely years. Mary told Bess she blessed her father “for making me fearless.” In a lively discussion of women’s lib, Mary remembered how all the boys wanted to be firemen when they were growing up. Now women were taking tests to be firemen. One had just flunked because she could not lift a l00-pound bag. Mary thought this sort of feminism was pretty silly and wondered if they would try out for longshoreman next. “I was born liberated,” she wrote.