CSPAN/FIRST LADIES BESS TRUMAN

JUNE 9, 2014

11:34 a.m. ET

SUSAN SWAIN, HOST: President Harry Truman liked to refer to his wife, Bess, as the boss. Family

was her number-one priority. She had little to say to the media, destroyed many of her letters, and

spent a good part of her White House years home in Missouri. Bess Truman served as first lady on

her own terms.

Good evening, and welcome to C-SPAN's continuing series, "First Ladies: Influence and Image.”

Tonight, the story of the wife of the 33rd president of the United States, Bess Truman.

Here to tell us more about her are two guests. We're very pleased to welcome back to our set Bill

Seale, who is a White House historian. His latest book is called "The Imperial Season," coming out

on November 12th. A little plug for you there, Bill.

WILLIAM SEALE, AUTHOR: Yes, thank you.

SWAIN: Nicole Anslover is a history professor and the author of a biography of Harry Truman

called "The Coming of the Cold War.” Thanks for being here. Nice to meet you.

NICOLE ANSLOVER, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY: Thank you.

SWAIN: Well, where we left off last week was the death of Franklin Roosevelt. April 12, 1945, the

call comes in to Harry Truman. Where is he? Then he gets the message that he's needed.

ANSLOVER: He's having a drink with his cronies, as he was often want to do. He thought a lot of

politics was accomplished by relaxing and having a somewhat more cordial atmosphere. And he

received a phone call, and he said he just knew. And the story goes that he ran to get to his car and get

to the White House.

SWAIN: He was sworn in two hours later at the White House itself.

SEALE: Yes. Yeah, Mrs. Roosevelt was at a luncheon at the Sulgrave Club, and they went and got

her and didn't tell her anything. Steve Early told her when she got to the White House, the press

secretary. But, you know, it wasn't a surprise to anyone in the White House at all. They knew

Roosevelt was going.

SWAIN: But no one suspected so quickly.

SEALE: I think it was an issue of when.

SWAIN: Eighty-two days.

SEALE: Of when, because he looked horrible, you know, on the last campaign, and he had spoken to

the Congress sitting down. And he was ashen. And his Inaugural Address for the fourth term had to

be given from the White House. He was stood -- he was stood up on the north porch -- south portico.

What am I saying? And the audience was out front. I mean, it was not really a surprise to anyone. I

don't know why it was a surprise to President Truman.

SWAIN: Well, two hours later, as we said, in the Cabinet Room at the White House, Harry Truman,

joined by his family, took the oath of office delivered by Chief Justice Harlan Stone. How surprised

was the nation? Did they knew who Harry Truman was?

ANSLOVER: No. I mean, they knew he was the vice president. They knew his name. He had gotten

some acclaim for his Truman Committee. He was a very admired senator within Washington. The

general public, who's Harry Truman? Even his own mother was nervous for him.

SWAIN: And what about Bess Truman? Where was she and how did she get to the White House so

quickly and what do we know of her reaction?

SEALE: She's with him there, I guess, in the apartment. I don't know. But, you know, Roosevelt -- it

wasn't he didn't admire Truman. He approved him for vice president and thought it was a good idea.

So as, you know, Nicole says, it was in Washington. He was well-known, but he wasn't a household

word, and Roosevelt had been in for 13 years, you know? He was just a fixture, like a king or

something, and the very idea of his declining, you know, most people didn't really understand that he

couldn't walk.

ANSLOVER: Right, he had kept that very well hidden.

SWAIN: So the Trumans are now the first couple. As you said, the Roosevelts had been in the White

House for 13 years. That's the longest stretch any president's ever been in the White House. How did

the transition happen there?

SEALE: Fourteen van-loads of furniture were taken out of Roosevelt things. Because of his

condition and also Mrs. Roosevelt's nature, as you saw in the last show, they liked to have everything

around them all the time. They were table people. And they had tables in front of things, and all his

things were in easy reach, so there were just thousands of things, pictures, all sorts of things. And

imagine what the Trumans faced when they went in there with these squares on the wall where

pictures had been and the carpets taken up and the floors that jiggled like that. The transition was they

only -- they had a little apartment in town and they took the piano from it. That's all they moved.

SWAIN: Did they go immediately to the White House or did they spend some time at Blair House?

SEALE: No, no.

ANSLOVER: No. Well, the Trumans thought they could stay in their apartment until they moved

into the White House. They offered Mrs. Roosevelt as much time as she needed. She took about two

weeks, I think. But by then, the Trumans realized that security-wise they could not stay in their

apartment, so they were living in Blair House. And I love the story that, as Eleanor Roosevelt

watched them pack up the last of her belongings, she went across the street to Blair House to say

goodbye to the Trumans and she warned Bess, watch out for the rates, because she and one of her

female friends had seen a rat run across the terrace recently.

SEALE: Of course, the White House was full of rats, and now she was -- I think it was Roosevelt...

ANSLOVER: Right, so that was the Trumans' introduction to their new home. Bess and Margaret

went over to take a tour, and they were appalled.

SWAIN: So she was thrust into the job. Whatever Harry Truman's aspirations may or may not be,

she was thrust into the job of first lady. Did she have any guidance from the outgoing first lady?

ANSLOVER: Well, her first problem was that Eleanor Roosevelt had probably -- meaning well -- set

up a press conference for Bess, because Eleanor had established the tradition, as you talked about last

week, about press conferences. And Bess Truman went to the secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, and

said, do I have to do that? Is it okay to set my own tone? And she was assured that she could do what

she wanted. She put a lot of thought into it. And at the last minute, she decided that that was not

something she was going to do and she never did hold a press conference.

SEALE: And she sent Edith Helm.

ANSLOVER: Yes.

SEALE: Edith Helm was the old-time White House social secretary, went there with Mrs. Woodrow

Wilson II. It was the second, right?

ANSLOVER: Correct.

SEALE: With Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and stayed through -- all through the Roosevelts, all through

everything. She was Admiral Helm's wife and lived -- commuted a limousine from Leesburg

everyday and she knew everything to do. She knew where the bodies were buried. She knew

everything, and she handled the press conference.

SWAIN: So the other thing we should establish early on is that the Trumans got their support from

one another.

ANSLOVER: They were a partnership 100 percent.

SWAIN: Bess, Harry, and daughter, Margaret.

ANSLOVER: Yes.

SWAIN: And, in fact, ushers who worked in the White House described them as the closest-knit

family that they had seen over the years.

SEALE: Yes.

SWAIN: Now, can you talk a little bit about what you know about how they interrelated with one

another and how they supported one another?

SEALE: Well, they remind me a lot of the Carters. They were together a lot and they liked to listen

to music and they liked to read things, discuss things, and just enjoyed being together. And they were

-- Margaret and the president were musical. And so they liked to listen to records and stuff like that,

the same way the Carters did. And it was very much the same thing, I think. It's just intimate,

personal upstairs, how they lived.

SWAIN: Well, we're going to, as we do in this program, then go back in time and tell you a bit of the

biography of this woman who came to serve as first lady. Before we do that, let me tell you how you

can be involved in the program. If you've been watching our series, you know one of the things that

makes us special and interesting are your comments. And there's three ways you can do that. One is

by phone. We'll put the phone numbers on the screen and you can dial in throughout the program with

your question or comment. You can also tweet us, @firstladies is our Twitter handle. And we have a

conversation already underway at the C-SPAN Facebook page, and you'll see a photograph of the

Trumans, and you could post a question there, and we'll try to work in as many of those as we can.

So thanks for your participation, and ask us some good questions today, because there are two good

guests at the table.

Well, one thing you should know is that their house, which is in...

ANSLOVER: Independence.

SWAIN: Independence, Missouri, how far is that away from a major city?

ANSLOVER: Ten miles from Kansas City.

SEALE: Kansas City.

SWAIN: And it is a national site, and it's run by the National Park Service. It has been closed to

cameras for more than 30 years as a policy. You're looking at pictures of it on the screen. But the Park

Service was willing to open it up to C-SPAN for this series, also with the encouragement of the

Trumans' grandson, Clifton Truman Daniel. And throughout this program, you will see inside some

tours given by Mr. Daniel that helps us understand the people that his grandparents were.

Let's begin with a tour of the home in Independence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLIFTON TRUMAN DANIEL, GRANDCHILD: We are on the back porch of my grandparents'

home in Independence, Missouri. This is the way we came in. This is the way family came into the

house, through the kitchen door. Came into the kitchen, and the first place I always headed was back

here to the pantry. And I don't see the tin, but there was always a tin in here on one of the shelves of --

a nice round tin filled with brownies. And I always made sure that that tin was in here before I went

anywhere else in the house.

So once I'd made sure that the brownies were in the tin, the next stop had to be my grandfather's

study, because whenever you came into the house -- he didn't meet us at the airport as he got older,

but once you came into the house, you had to stop here and say hi to Grandpa. And this is where you

found him most of the time, as he was getting older and I was getting older. If I wanted to talk to

Grandpa, that's where I looked, because he was always reading.

And my grandmother and my mother sat in those chairs and often read in there with him. And

apparently my grandmother and my mother always used to start fights, and my grandfather would

read down to the end of the page, mark his place with his finger, and look up and try to decide

whether or not the fight was escalating to the point that he needed to get out of the room. And if he

decided that everything was okay, he would go to the next page and read down and then check again.

Sometimes he left; sometimes he stayed.

And this is the formal dining room. This is where we ate the evening meal every day. We had

breakfast in the kitchen, a sandwich or something for lunch, but this is where we ate all formal dinner

meals, was in this dining room. And my grandmother sat at -- that end of the table was where she sat,

closest to the kitchen, I think.

So if we go through here, we're in the center of the house in the foyer. And you'll notice that the

biggest portrait in the house is that of my late mother, Margaret Truman Daniel. She was their only

child and only conceived after my grandmother suffered two miscarriages. My grandmother was 39

when she was born.

So she was very precious to my grandparents. And they were very close little family unit. My

grandfather kind of spoiled her. My grandmother was more the disciplinarian, but the three of them

were very, very tight as a family, because she was their only child.

And if we go through this way, we are in the living room. And this chair was where my grandmother

-- later in her life, this is where she did her reading. After my grandfather passed away, this is often

where my grandmother sat, and she read murder mysteries. She loved murder mysteries. And she had

stacks of them on either side of the chair. She would have an in stack over here, books that she hadn't

read yet, and an out stack over here. And she would just read and put them down, and they would be

donated or put on the shelf. But this is where she spent a lot of her time.

She gave a lot of those cast off murder mysteries to my mother, who did the same thing, read with

stacks on either side of her chair, and Mom, of course, eventually became a mystery writer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: So you see the house in Independence, Missouri, that was the house that the Trumans lived

in throughout their married life, but let's go back even farther. How did they meet?

ANSLOVER: They met when they were about 5 years old in Sunday school. And I'm not sure

whether Bess distinctly remembers it, but Harry always spoke of the girl with the beautiful blue eyes

and the long golden curls, and he claims that he fell in love with her that day. And as far as he know,

he never did look at another woman.

SWAIN: So it was a lifelong love affair for the Trumans. And they had a very different lifestyle, very

different kind of backgrounds. Can you tell us a bit about the Wallace family that Elizabeth Wallace

came from, Bess Wallace came from, and what Harry Truman's early years were like?

SEALE: Well, her family owned a store in town and manufactured a flower of queen of the harvest

or queen of the...

ANSLOVER: Queen of the pantry.

SEALE: Queen of the pantry flower, and they were considered a little more upscale than the

Trumans, who farmed other people's land. There was a Truman farm, but, in fact, the land -- some of

the land they farmed was Mrs. Wallace's, Bess's mother. And so she -- there was that difference, and

that difference surfaced all during their lives and always did.

SWAIN: In what way?

SEALE: Well, let me read you this letter here, written while he was president, and June the 29th,

1949, they're living in the Blair House. And he's writing to Bess. "Thirty years I hoped to make you a

happy wife and a happy mother. Did I? I don't know. All I can say is I've tried. There is no one in the

world anyway who could look down on you or your daughter. There is no one in the world who could

look down on you or your daughter. That means much to me, but I've never cared for social position

or rank for myself, except to see that these dear to me -- those dear to me were not made to suffer for

my shortcomings."

This is the president of the United States still feeling that way, and it comes, wouldn't you say,

Nicole, it comes through his letters to her, almost an apology, a...

SWAIN: Never felt good enough, in other words?

ANSLOVER: Well, and I think part of that -- keep in mind, even when he writes this letter, her

mother is still living with them. That's her mother's house that they move into. They never have their

own marital home, and then her mother lives in Blair House or the White House with them a lot of the

time. And so it's thought that that was part of Bess Wallace's hesitation for accepting Harry Truman,

because her mother didn't approve.

SWAIN: And never really thought well of her son-in-law...

ANSLOVER: Not really.

SWAIN: ... even when he became president of the United States?

SEALE: No, apparently not. Apparently she never...

ANSLOVER: But he never said a negative word. Upon her death, he wrote a lovely piece in his

memoirs about, "I don't understand mother-in-law jokes, because I've had such a great one.” So it

wasn't acceptable.

SEALE: She died in the White House.

ANSLOVER: She did die in the White House.

SEALE: Because he sent a note to the chief usher, and he said, "Mother Wallace has died. Make

arrangements for us to return to Independence."

SWAIN: Well, we're going to return to Independence and learn a little bit more through their eyes of

the story of how Harry and Bess met.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLIFTON TRUMAN DANIEL: When my grandfather visited Independence, which is 26 miles from

where he lived at the time in Grandview -- this is in 1910 -- he often stayed across the street at the

Noland house, which is where his aunt and his two cousins lived.

And one afternoon, he was over there with his cousins, with the family, and his aunt brought in a cake

plate that my great-grandmother, Madge Wallace, Madge Gates Wallace, had -- he'd given her a cake,

and Mrs. Noland had cleaned the cake plate and was asking if anybody would take it back over. And

my grandfather moved with what my mother once described as something approaching the speed of

light and grabbed the cake plate and ran over here and rang the bell on the front door in the hope, of

course, that my grandmother would answer the door, and she did. And she invited him in. And that's

the beginning of their formal courtship in 1910.

They first met in Sunday school when my grandmother was 5 and my grandfather was 6. They were

Baptists. My grandfather's family were Baptists, but the Presbyterian Church, First Presbyterian

Church down the street here, had a very good Sunday school, and that's what my grandmother -- my

great-grandmother Truman was most interested in, was a good Sunday school.

So she took Grandpa over there one day to talk to the reverend. And as she was talking, Sunday

school was in session, and as my great-grandmother was talking to the reverend, my grandfather

noticed this little girl sitting in Sunday school class with what he described as beautiful blue eyes and

long golden curls. And he sort of fell in love with her right then and there and, as far as I know, as far

as anybody knows, never looked at another woman.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: And there's the story of the courtship through the grandson that is the progeny of it.

SEALE: Isn't that Midwestern architecture great?

SWAIN: The other thing that's interesting is that their courtship lasted many years.

SEALE: Yeah.

SWAIN: He had businesses. He went off to war. So how long did it take before they got married?

ANSLOVER: Well, he first kind of unofficially proposed in about 1913, after their courtship starts in

1910, and she didn't write him a letter back, but you can tell from his second letter to her, after he

says, "If I bought a ring, would you wear it on your left hand?” No answer, but she agrees to still be

friends with him. They keep courting, and then they get close to a formal engagement, and then

World War I intervenes. So that's why it's delayed even farther.

SWAIN: What was Harry Truman's role in World War I? How much danger was he in?

ANSLOVER: Great danger. He was in combat at the front, leading his men, so...

SWAIN: And writing to Bess all the time.

ANSLOVER: And writing to Bess and carrying her picture with him every day.

SEALE: It meant everything to him, his military service, and I think one has to realize that to see

how he ran the presidency. He was a no-nonsense organized man. Roosevelt was not. But he was.

Things ran this way. He got things in shape, and he stayed in the Reserves. And he enjoyed the

company of men. It wasn't that he sought out the company of women, but he got -- you know, he was

in the Masons. He was a Mason. He was a -- while he was president, went to Masonic events.

He then retained this interest in the military and military people. It had a profound effect on his life.

SWAIN: Well, it's time to begin bringing in our callers. We're going to start with Gary who's in

Independence, Missouri. So you grew up -- or you're living in the Trumans' home town. How has that

informed your opinion of them?

GARY (ph): Very highly of Truman. In fact, I live just a couple doors down from him, so

everywhere we look, we see Truman. And, you know, the more and more the years go by, I think just

as much as the American public would like to see somebody Truman back in the White House. They

really -- we really appreciate him, as well, here.

SWAIN: And do you have a question for our guests?

GARY (ph): I do. I know Bess had a very low profile or wanted a low profile being first lady, but I

was wondering how the press responded to her, especially on the heels of Eleanor being very visible

and open in her communication style. And did Harry have any concerns or desires for her to be out in

the public more?

ANSLOVER: Well, first of all, I'll take the first part of your question, if that's okay, about how the

press responded. At first, they were sort of clamoring to get more information and they were very

aggressive and calling her secretaries and asking where she was going to go and what she was going

to wear, and then -- it's not that Bess wouldn't speak to people. She would invite the newspaper

women, because in those days, largely women journalists covered the first ladies. She would invite

them over for things like teas or she would go to their luncheons, but she would insist on it all being

off the record.

So they did get to know Bess Truman a little bit, and they understood that she wasn't trying to do this

out of spite. She was just a private person and wished for a private family life.

SWAIN: I'm going to wait for the other question until we get just a little farther into the story,

because we've just gotten them married. So how were their early years? When he came back from

military service, did he go into the private sector or immediately into public life?

ANSLOVER: He runs a store in Kansas City for a while, a men's clothing store with his good friend,

Eddie Jacobson. And...

SWAIN: And then forever was referred to as the haberdasher?

ANSLOVER: Correct.

SEALE: Forever.

ANSLOVER: And that's where he gets into some debt, which he did insist on paying off, and he

eventually does pay it off. He's still involved in the family farm. He's trying to do all of these things to

make himself more. And he does become interested in public life at that time.

SWAIN: And they were living as a couple in the house we just saw with Mrs. Wallace?

ANSLOVER: Well, not just Mrs. Wallace, but her brothers and their wives, as well.

SWAIN: We missed a very important part of the story. What happened to Mr. Wallace?

ANSLOVER: Oh, Mr. Wallace committed suicide when Bess was 18. And in those days, huge

scandal. A great stigma on the family. Shattered her mother. And this really explains why Bess wants

to keep her family life private. She saw how this shattered her mother. She wants to shield her

mother, she wants to shield her brothers from having the press dig through her family history and

bring that up again.

SEALE: Well, it was a terrible thing for everyone. Nobody ever understood why he did it. She left

right after the funeral with the children for Colorado and lived there for a year and then came back

and moved into the house with her mother, with the children.

SWAIN: Steven is up next in Louisville. Hi, Steven.

STEVEN (ph): How are you doing this evening?

SWAIN: Good, thank you.

STEVEN (ph): Well, actually, I had a -- I was thinking of a few comments, but I know one of which

-- I know you were talking about the suicide of Bess's father in 1903, and it made me think of the

reason why her partnership with Harry Truman, like the gentleman was talking about before, it

seemed like they had more of an equal partnership, which is surely unusual in that day and time.

And I think the reason why was because she had realized that her parents' marriage, there was

something lacking in that. I think I had kind of recalled that she sort of -- Margaret Truman was

saying that she sort of went back and forth with that, Bess did over the years, and that that's sort of the

reason they had such a close partnership.

But I know something else. I don't know if you all discussed this or not. I know the Trumans were the

first to ever host the first integrated inauguration in -- inaugural ball in 1945. And I was just curious

about -- and when we were talking about women's rights, for instance -- if Bess -- what she thought

about feminism. Because I know that in the early '80s, Katie Lockham Heim, or something like that,

sent her an article on the feminist movement, and whether she would have been for the ERA, but also

Bess's opinions about civil rights for black people.

SWAIN: OK.

STEVEN (ph): I know her husband had often used derogatory terms, but he also was the one who

really set the course for the modern civil rights movement, with -- in 1948.

SWAIN: OK, thank you. Given us lots to worth with there. How about her views of feminism?

ANSLOVER: Bess certainly would not have called herself a feminist, but she did believe that her

marriage was a partnership. But she did once famously say that a politician's -- his wife's job was to

sit there, be quiet, and make sure her hat was on straight. But she would give him, as they would have

called it, the dickens if he didn't consult her on any major decision, including the Marshall Plan,

NATO, any of those things.

SWAIN: Well, here's a question from Holly Han, who asks, why did Harry call Bess the boss? It

seems to me he did what he wanted. Bess didn't want him to be Roosevelt's running mate, she writes,

and really didn't like being the first lady.

ANSLOVER: I wouldn't say that Harry did what he wanted.

SEALE: Just an affection.

ANSLOVER: It was a partnership.

SEALE: Kind of a joke, don't you think?

ANSLOVER: Right.

SEALE: But I wouldn't -- don't think we ought to think of partnerships in marriage as anything new

in that time. That goes back forever and ever and ever, so, I mean, that's...

SWAIN: As we've learned throughout this series.

SEALE: Well, we had. I mean, this is part of what marriage is all about. And Ms. Truman grew up,

well, 1903, her father died. She was 18, as Nicole said. And she was in a period of very strong

feminism. The suffragette movement started then. She obviously was in there, and there are different

layers, the feminism.

ANSLOVER: Absolutely. One of Bess's best friends was a well-known female journalist who went

on all sorts of adventures, and Bess cheered her on every step of the way. And she was very

supportive of Margaret having a career...

SEALE: Very, yeah.

ANSLOVER: So it's just different from other people's notions of feminism.

SWAIN: Do you know how she got the nickname, the boss?

ANSLOVER: Well, Harry started calling her that in the mid-1930s, we think, because she was very

organized with his Senate office. And she didn't mind the nickname until he introduced her during the

1948 campaign -- he introduced her as the boss and Margaret as the boss's boss. And the reason that

irritated Bess so much, she thought people were going to think Margaret was spoiled. So...

SWAIN: Now, there was a controversy when she worked in his Senate office, because he paid her a

salary. How did they handle that?

ANSLOVER: The same way they did, straightforward. They said, other people did it, Bess did the

work, this is just people trying to start problems. And they knew that people would try to start

problems.

SEALE: Yeah.

ANSLOVER: But it was an okay thing to do.

SWAIN: So their first time in the White House, Bess said to the media, "You don't really need to

know who I am. I'm not the president," decides not to have the press conferences. We have one of the

very few pieces of film available of Bess Truman as first lady, and this is a pretty famous one we're

going to show right now.

One of her first press events was the christening of airplanes, both an Army and a Navy airplane, at

National Airport, which is also interesting to see. We all fly there today, and you can see how really

open it was at that time. This event didn't exactly go as planned, and you'll see why. We're going to

watch next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BESS TRUMAN: It gives me great pleasure to christen these two hospital airplanes, whose purchase

has been made possible by war bonds subscribed and sold by the ladies of Congressional Club. In

setting forth these planes on their errands of mercy, we send with them our love and a sincere desire

that the comfort and solace derived from them by our fighting men will let them know that we stand

firmly behind them wherever they are.

TV ANNOUNCER: At the National Airport, ambulances with wings, one each for Navy and Army,

ready to be christened by Mrs. Harry S Truman, who with her daughter Margaret will do the honors

in her first public appearance. But Mrs. Truman is in for a surprise. By an oversight, the champagne

bottle, unlike this one, hasn't been properly prepared, etched to break the glass on impact, and glass

cutting is behind successful christenings like these. Now Mrs. Truman, unaware that her bottle is not

prepared...

(Sounds of Bottle Hitting Plane, Laughter)

Refusing to be rattled, the new first lady joins in the crowd's laughter. Let's see how her military aide

meets the crisis.

(Laughter)

But to the Navy, forewarned is fore-armed. Here, armed means a hammer. Watch it just under the

airplane's nose. And even the hammer misses on the first try. All's well that ends well. Despite the

stubborn bottle, Mrs. Truman sends off the hospital planes with her blessing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: Was not happy with that.

ANSLOVER: No, but then (inaudible) set her up. It was just a very unfortunate event.

SEALE: Her little speech was charming. It reminded me a little bit of the lilting one of Mrs.

Roosevelt. Maybe that went with the times.

SWAIN: But it did discourage her from doing more.

ANSLOVER: Absolutely. She doesn't want people to laugh at her.

SWAIN: So this was a formative event. This is not working for her.

SEALE: But she was no cultural backwater to Washington. She had been in Washington. She'd been

a senator's wife. She was active in the Congressional Club. She was active in things in town, and

when they got to the White House, she knew exactly what to do, and that bears discussion, too. They

were among the most formal entertainers the White House had ever had.

SWAIN: Next is a call from Susan in Berwick, Pennsylvania. Susan, you're on the air.

SUSAN (ph): Hello. I just want to...

SWAIN: Yes, we're listening Susan.

SUSAN (ph): OK, I just wanted to mention that I enjoy the series greatly. It's the best thing that's on

television.

SEALE: Well, thanks so much.

SUSAN (ph): Another thing I was -- a few years ago, I read a book by Margaret Truman about Bess.

And I was wondering, in the book, it had a lot of the letters and so forth. I was wondering if those are

still -- you know, put together, compiled in a book, or anything like that, or what other information

that we could read about Bess and Harry Truman, as well as Margaret.

SEALE: Was the book called "Dear Bess"?

SUSAN (ph): Oh, I believe -- I don't know. It was...

SEALE: They're letters from the president to Ms. Truman.

SUSAN (ph): No, no, it wasn't. This was written by Margaret herself.

ANSLOVER: By Margaret, where she uses those letters.

SUSAN (ph): It was like a diary.

ANSLOVER: Yes.

SUSAN (ph): It was almost like a diary. But it was very informative, because before that, before I

read that, I did not ever see anything in a library or anything about Bess Truman. Go ahead, dear.

ANSLOVER: There's not a lot of scholarly work certainly on Bess Truman. A lot of what we have

are the work by Margaret and then her grandson, who we saw in the video, compiled some letters.

But we use those letters -- they're in the Truman library in Independence, and they're available for

people to use to do research. And any book that you read on Harry Truman is going to talk about

those letters and use them as a reference. But, Bill, do you want to say why we don't have the letters

from Bess?

SEALE: Well, she burned them.

ANSLOVER: She threw them in the fire.

SEALE: Truman came upon here when she was doing this, and he said, "But don't do that. Think of

history.” She said, "I am.” She -- Mrs. Washington, Mrs. Harding, and Mrs. Truman are the three first

ladies who burned their letters, and what a loss it is.

ANSLOVER: We're fortunate that she didn't burn the letters from Harry, at least. She left us those.

But she did not want her words recorded. She was -- it was a partnership, but she was a silent partner.

SWAIN: Well, on that note, Mike Brennan asks you on -- it says, "A question for Dr. Anslover. I am

enjoying your book. How did the Bess-Harry dynamic inform his presidency?"

ANSLOVER: Greatly, because he asked her before he did pretty much anything -- there's a little bit

of controversy over whether he consulted her about dropping the atomic bomb, and the story has it

from some sources that he didn't consult Bess about that, but be sure that he consulted her about

everything else. So their dynamic was very important, and you can see his spirits got lower when she

was home in Missouri. And he just didn't function with quite as much vigor when Bess wasn't near.

So thanks for the question, Mike.

SEALE: Well, he was away at Potsdam when it was dropped, and she was in Independence. And I

don't know. It was such a scary thing. I mean, even Roosevelt, you know, trembled at the thought.

SWAIN: She spent quite a bit of time in Independence.

SEALE: An awful lot. She was gone a lot of the time.

SWAIN: Can you think of any other first ladies that spent so much time away from the White

House?

SEALE: No, I really can't.

ANSLOVER: No.

SEALE: But Washington had the season, you know? She was always there for the December to

spring or Lent season in Washington, where you had five or four official White House dinners, and

she presided over those with great panache, all good reviews.

SWAIN: We had a question earlier about how Harry Truman might have felt about his wife's

aversion to being in public. And I found one source on that, and it is Carl Anthony's book on first

ladies. And I wanted to read a little bit to you and to the audience about this and the reaction.

He writes, "Harry was becoming frustrated with Bess's refusal to play a public role. He was perhaps

the first president to take an active interest in the first ladyship's history, stating that Abigail Adams

would have made a better president than her husband and that Mary Lincoln was unjustly criticized.

He later wrote, 'I hope someday someone will take time to evaluate the true role of the wife of the

president and to assess the many burdens she has to bear and the contributions she makes."

Attempting to coax Bess into an active role, he wrote her several months before FDR died. Quote,

"The president told me that Mrs. R was a very timid woman who wouldn't go to political meetings or

make any speeches when he first ran for governor of New York. Then he said, now she talks all the

time.” It didn't work. Bess knew her first lady history, too. "I'm not the one elected," she snapped. "I

have nothing to say to the public.” Asked which predecessor she most identified with, Bess chose the

obscure and extremely private Elizabeth Monroe, who, of course, followed the legendary Dolley

Madison.

Do you have anything to add to that? Disagree with anything he said?

ANSLOVER: No, I don't disagree with that at all. I was looking at that letter myself the other day

because Harry was strongly hinting that he would like Bess to be a little bit more involved, and she

put her foot down. And it wasn't that she didn't want to be involved in his life or his decisions, she

just didn't need to do so publicly.

SEALE: Or the extra. She did what she had to do. She had the parties, the receptions for the military.

She did those kind of things. But the extras, Mrs. Roosevelt, you know, had a column and this one

had that -- she didn't -- she just wasn't going to do that. That was her life.

ANSLOVER: Right.

SEALE: And it -- maybe she was more of a feminist than any of them.

ANSLOVER: Perhaps. She wasn't going to do what she was told.

SEALE: Yeah.

SWAIN: Well, here's a different take. And this is from Margaret Truman. And she wrote, "More and

more, she began to feel that the presidency had virtually dissolved the political partnership that had

been at the heart of her relationship with her husband for so many years."

ANSLOVER: I like the way that Margaret Truman explains it, because she explains it, when Harry

was in the Senate, he had time to come home in the evening and talk things out with Bess, and they

could discuss it over their old-fashioneds, which they liked to have in the evening. But when he

became president, your decisions multiply rapidly, and it's not that he didn't want to consult her, he

did not have time to consult her on every little thing. And she grew frustrated at first, but...

SEALE: She missed it.

ANSLOVER: ... she came around.

SWAIN: Well, Harry Truman had a lot of momentous things to discuss and decisions to make. We

have just a few of the highlights of his first term in the White House, including, of course, V-E Day,

Victory in Europe Day, the end of World War II in Europe, and the Potsdam conference...

SEALE: Atomic bomb.

SWAIN: ... the dropping of the atomic bomb, and subsequently the end of World War II with Japan.

The CIA established, Israel officially recognized, as you, Bill Seale, mentioned earlier, the integration

of the military, and the Marshall Plan, some of the big decisions he had before him. You referenced

earlier that he did not share the atomic bomb decision.

ANSLOVER: There's a little bit of dispute about that. I don't think he probably had time to. Bess, we

think, knew about the creation of the atomic bomb, but whether he had time to get in touch with her

before giving the order, probably not. Like Bill said, he's not home. He's over meeting with Stalin

across the world.

SWAIN: Just another example of some of those letters that Harry wrote to Bess, you talked about

how lonely he was at the Potsdam conference in Berlin in 1945. Here's some of what he wrote to her

one time. "Dear Bess, it made me terribly homesick when I talked with you yesterday morning. Stalin

and Molotov are coming to see me at 11 o'clock this morning. I like Stalin. He's straightforward,

knows what he wants, and will compromise when he can't get it. If I come out of this one whole, there

will be nothing to worry over until the end of the Jap war. Kiss Margie. Lots of love to you."

What do we learn about Truman from that?

SEALE: A little bit of naivete at the beginning, yes. He had been taken into nothing by Roosevelt.

And you're talking about August, the Potsdam conference, and he was in -- in, what, in April?

ANSLOVER: He is in April. Potsdam is in July. And he drops the bomb in August.

SEALE: Uh-huh, August, so he...

ANSLOVER: It was a few months.

SEALE: Yeah, but he's still -- you know, he says to her later than this that he's trying to get the

departments in order to give them -- weeding out the people he doesn't want, bringing in new ones,

and then he will sit down and he will tell them exactly what he wants done. And that is how he

handled it.

ANSLOVER: It is. I think that letter, that's one other thing it tells us. He makes a straightforward

assessment of Stalin. I like him. He doesn't spend two pages going on and on about politics. But it

also shows us that even though this is one of his shorter letters, he's taking time to tell Bess what he's

discovered. He's filling her in on these important events. And he misses her.

SWAIN: I want to answer one question from Twitter. Denny asks, why does the Park Service not

open the Truman house to the public?

They do open the Truman house. You can go visit it. It hasn't been open to television cameras for

preservation purposes for that amount of time. So you can go if you want. I could go as a private

citizen and visit it, but we had permission to bring cameras in for the first time in a long time, and we

appreciate their help with that.

Early on in her term -- and let me preface this. I've got two different folks on Facebook who are

asking about the Trumans and their attitude toward race relations. Curt Herner writes, "One of my

favorite Harry and Bess stories" -- oh, no, that's the wrong one. That's about burning letters. Asking

about whether or not he integrated the military.

And then later on, a viewer writes, suggesting that the -- in several books about the Trumans, I've

read that Mrs. Truman and her mother, Mrs. Wallace, were very prejudiced against African-

Americans and Jews. She had an issue really early on in a DAR invitation that involved African-

American Congressman Adam Clayton Powell.

So with that as our launching pad for the subject of the Trumans and race, tell us what your

scholarship has led you to believe.

ANSLOVER: Well, Congressman Powell was upset because the Daughters of the American

Revolution had invited Bess to a tea and he was offended because they would not let African-

American musicians perform in Constitution Hall. And he thought that Bess Truman should refuse to

attend a tea by an organization who had that policy.

And Bess Truman wrote a public letter saying, I certainly don't approve of this sort of racial

prejudice, I don't believe that should be in the arts at all, but we cannot stop a private organization

from making their own policies. And she said, I've already accepted the invitation, so I'm not going to

back out now. And so she went. And Adam Clayton Powell responded by calling her the last lady of

the land, which did not go over well with the president.

SEALE: But the whole thing must have infuriated the president, because Marian Anderson, the

coloratura singer, the same thing had happened with -- Constitution Hall wouldn't take her. Of course,

now they'd taken James Brown and -- anyway, they wouldn't. And so it was performed at the Lincoln

Memorial.

They knew that. The Trumans knew that. Adam Clayton Powell knew that.

ANSLOVER: The issue should have been settled.

SEALE: I think the issue was to get in the newspapers mainly against the Trumans. And I'm sure the

president had some private words on that one.

ANSLOVER: Well, he never allowed Powell in the White House again.

SWAIN: So that was one incident. But what about their larger record on race relations and how

history should see that?

ANSLOVER: First of all, you have to put the Trumans in context of their times...

SEALE: Absolutely.

ANSLOVER: ... and where they grew up and understand that many people will talk about how

Truman used derogatory terms in his letters, and that's absolutely true, and that's certainly not okay.

But that's how people spoke at the time.

SEALE: That's how they talk.

ANSLOVER: And Harry Truman did a remarkable job at separating his public and private sphere,

because even though, you know, he also famously said that he didn't want Margaret to marry an

African-American, but at the same time, he desegregates the military, even though it's politically

unpopular. He does a lot for anti-lynching. He helps to establish Israel. So he's a man who, you know,

doesn't let his personal opinions affect his policy.

SEALE: He makes a pretty poor showing as a racist in his actions.

ANSLOVER: That's a good way to put it.

SEALE: But I think you've got to -- for that era, you've got to separate it. On your last show with Ms.

Roosevelt, when she referred to Japanese as "Japs," my Japanese friends don't like that term, but she

did during the war and no one thought a thing of it at the time. I guess the emperor did, if he heard it.

But they -- it's the way people talked.

ANSLOVER: Right.

SWAIN: Well, on this note, Archie Jackson asks us on Facebook, "Did Bess have anything to do

with Truman integrating the military? We often talk about the power of Roosevelt's wife, but never

about Truman's wife.” Do we know if she had any influence on that decision?

ANSLOVER: Oh, I don't think that she was probably pushing him to do it, but she certainly wouldn't

have objected to it in any way that I can see. She would have probably thought it was the right thing

to do. She had a great sympathy for servicemen. She was lonely when Harry was over in World War

I. She thought all servicemen should be treated equally.

SWAIN: Marty is watching us in Columbus, Ohio, and is on next. Hi, Marty.

MARTY (ph): Hi. I have a question. Actually, I went to visit the museum in Independence, Missouri,

but I wondered, after Mr. Truman died, did Bess live there by herself? Or did Margaret end up

moving in with her? And the other thing is, I also worked for Paul Tibbets for a while, who was

involved with the Enola Gay and dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. And, you know, he never really

wanted to talk about that too much and he never really liked what he had to do. He did it because he

had to do it. Did Truman kind of have the same feeling?

SEALE: Well, all I can say to that is, who wouldn't? You know, the thought of killing hundreds of

thousands of people, I don't think there's anything written about it. He had to stop the war. I mean, it

was a religious...

ANSLOVER: It was a military decision.

SEALE: Yeah.

ANSLOVER: And in my opinion, any president would have done the same thing, because no

president can defend losing more American lives.

SEALE: No, and it was not going to stop. I mean, it was just not going to stop, the Japanese part of

it.

ANSLOVER: Right.

SEALE: And that's how we would answer to that, I guess, to the caller.

ANSLOVER: There's a great clip. Harry Truman spent a lot of time in his library after he moved out

of the White House, and he would speak to group of schoolchildren, and that was often one of the

questions he was asked. Kids wanted to know and Truman would very forcefully defend his decision

to drop the atomic bomb and explain it to elementary schoolchildren.

SEALE: No one really blamed him for that as a personal thing.

ANSLOVER: Apparently not at the time, no.

SWAIN: Regina Crumkey on Twitter asks, "With Bess in Missouri, did she hold social functions and

galas?” You mentioned early on that they opened the -- of 1946 social season in Washington. This

was significant, because it had been ended during the war.

SEALE: Yes, there had been no formal entertaining at the White House during the war.

SWAIN: Now, this doesn't seem like it would be in the Trumans' personal style to like all of this

falderal.

SEALE: President Truman -- and one of the most interesting things about him to me is -- he

identified the president, like his private life, is something different from him and something bigger

than him that he was representing. And he -- nobody had better insult the office in his president.

So when the social season was revived after all these years, they were sticklers for having it exactly as

it had been just -- I mean, black tie, black tie, evening clothes, and all that. And these dinners, the

chief usher, Mr. West, in his memoir says the White House had never been so formal and so devoted

to diplomatic precedent as it was under the Trumans. Everything was done exactly as they -- it had

been really before the Roosevelts.

SWAIN: But ironically, they only got one social season, because...

SEALE: Yeah, they only got one, because they had to move to the -- they did entertain at the

Mayflower from time to time. But they had to move out, you know. And...

SWAIN: And we'll tell the story of their major renovation. Almost every president we've talked

about and first lady has done some renovation. Nothing like the Trumans, and we'll tell that story a

little bit later.

But one thing that they did do to the White House, I believe, in the first term was the addition of the

balcony.

SEALE: Yes.

SWAIN: And that it's today always referred to as the Truman balcony. Tell us about the concept of it

and how hard it was for that to get through here.

SEALE: It was done basically for spite. He had had a West Wing prepared that held a big staff.

Roosevelt's staff was just stuffed in there, even though Roosevelt had doubled the West Wing. So

Truman wanted to build down 17th Street a long addition to a large auditorium for press conferences.

Well, it passed through Congress, and then the Congress rescinded it, and he was as mad as he could

be. And the reason Congress did, they said he was defacing the White House.

Well, so he got in his head to build a porch on the south side of the White House where there was no

upstairs access to a porch of anything. And he did it on his own, and he took it out of the household

budget. He didn't ask Congress or anyone. He did get an important architect he respected, Williams

Adams Delano, who was around the White House a lot, and they built that balcony. And it is the

Truman balcony, because that's what he did.

SWAIN: And once finished, how did they use it?

SEALE: Oh, they used it all the time like a patio. And practically every president after that wrote him

a letter saying the one thing I'm glad you did to this house is add the Truman balcony, because it was

so great. They liked to sit on it.

SWAIN: Access it off of their private space?

SEALE: Off of the Oval Room, they now call the Yellow Oval Room upstairs, kind of a parlor thing.

SWAIN: And what's the view from there?

SEALE: Oh, it's stunning, absolutely magnificent, with the -- you know, the Jefferson Memorial

ahead that Roosevelt built and then the Washington Monument, which should be where the Jefferson

Memorial is, over here. And Washington is just at your feet with its height limitations, you know, and

it's just a carpet. It's a beautiful, beautiful view. The film footage of -- when you do the Fords, of the

Fords during the centennial, shows the -- showing the view from that is just beautiful, with Queen

Elizabeth there and everything.

SWAIN: What can you tell the audience about the Trumans' private life in the White House,

especially during their first term, especially with all these momentous things going on?

ANSLOVER: Well, they certainly didn't get much time to relax. It's very busy. And as we've talked

about, Bess does spend a lot of time traveling back and forth to Independence. Now, that's not just her

being spiteful. She still feels that she has to be the caretaker for her mother, who suffers...

SEALE: Two mothers.

ANSLOVER: Two mothers. Truman's mother is still alive during his early years of the White House.

They have family business to take care of. When they are in the White House together, they would do

the same things that they did at home. They read. They enjoy an evening cocktail. They liked to listen

to music. And they chat with Margaret.

You're talking about the Truman balcony and how they used it, they used it the same way they used

their porch in Independence, as a time to spend time together.

SWAIN: Now, one of the things we often talk about is this -- first lady on their image and how they

might have influenced, and we're seeing this more and more as the years progress, American style and

culture. Was Bess Truman known for that?

ANSLOVER: Well, she certainly didn't dress poorly or unfashionably. I don't think she was mocked

for her fashion sense. Today, I mean, Jackie Kennedy really sets the tone, and so when we look at the

first ladies that come before her, we don't think about them having this wonderful fashion sense.

But Bess was a stylish lady. And her high school friends always spoke about how she knew the latest

fashions, and she took pride in her appearance, and she liked to go shopping, just like many women.

SEALE: Remember what Truman said about her? She looks just like a woman her age ought to look.

ANSLOVER: Yes, he thought she was appropriate and sensible, and Margaret thought so, too.

SWAIN: We are going to visit the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, and learn

more about Bess Truman's style.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAMMY WILLIAMS, ARCHIVIST, TRUMAN PRESIDENTIAL MUSEUM AND LIBRARY:

We're at the Harry S Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. And we're going into one of our

collection storage spaces, where we have artifacts and hats and clothes, jewelry related to Mrs.

Truman's time in the White House.

Bess always had an excellent sense of style. Even when she was a young woman, one of her friends

noted that she always wore more stylish clothes or wore clothes more stylishly than many of her

friends did. This is a hat that was made by one of Bess Truman's favorite designers in Washington,

D.C. Her name was Madam Agasta (ph). It's got brown egret feather on it. It's made of brown wool

felt. She wore this hat when Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Phillip, came to the United

States in October of 1951.

And that's one of the nice things about working here in the library, is that we have a lot of artifacts

and photos and documents, and you can put the whole thing together and tell all of the story all

together, which goes along with one of the hats that we have over here. This is a hat that we didn't

originally know very much about. We had no idea what event she might have worn it at, and it's quite

a hat.

In the process of going through Mrs. Truman's papers, we located a letter that she had written. This is

a handwritten draft of a letter that she would have given to her secretary to type. She says, "I am

simply delighted with my hat!" I love that part. She says, "It's the most attractive one I have seen all

spring, and I am happy it is mine.” She says, "I wore it at one of the most important occasions, when

Queen Juliana was here, the day she presented the Carillon to the nation and had many pleasant things

said about it."

And so when we read that letter, we realized we have photos of that event so we can look back at that

event and know what hat she wore. And we looked through the photos and found one, a good one of

her where you can see what she's wearing, and then we took the photo down and compared it to some

of the hats in our collection and, lo and behold, realized we had this hat. So, once again, it's nice to

connect the document to the photo to the artifact and be able to tell that whole story all together.

Another interesting part of Bess is that she was a very private person. And this is a dress that kind of

demonstrates that fact. This is a dress that she wore in 1952 to the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner.

That was the dinner where President Truman officially announced to the people that he was not going

to run for president in 1952. He had the opportunity to do that, but he chose not to.

And so it was an important event for Bess. It signaled she wasn't going to be living in Washington,

D.C., after 1953. She was going to get to come home to Independence. And we have a number of

photos of her wearing this dress.

We didn't originally have this dress. Bess donated this dress to her church bazaar, and someone at the

bazaar bought it, realized what it was, and then turned around and donated it to the library. But that

kind of signals to people how Bess felt about her time in the White House, not that she didn't

necessarily like it, but it wasn't something that defined her, something that was really important to

her, and she could just give things away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SEALE: Two days -- that dinner was two days after they moved back into the White House. And

speaking of clothing, the president was a natty, natty sort of Adolphe Menjou dresser. I mean, he was

pure Palm Beach.

SWAIN: Well, that was the haberdasher, right?

SEALE: Yes.

ANSLOVER: Oh, yes.

SEALE: He had gorgeous taste in clothes, modern, very modern and kind of young.

SWAIN: And was a trim man, wore them well.

SEALE: He was a trim man. He was in shape, and he, you know, walked like a madman. I mean, the

-- his whole military, whatever they call it, and he wore double-colored shoes and really good-looking

everything, pressed and just fine. He was very aware of clothes himself.

ANSLOVER: I think natty is an excellent word to describe it.

SWAIN: On Twitter, T4Vista asked, "Did the first lady have many women friends?"

ANSLOVER: Absolutely. One of Bess's probably highlights of her early days in the White House,

she invited in 1946 her entire bridge club from Independence to come out and spend a long weekend.

And this is the type of thing -- Bess was doing it for herself and for her friends to have a good time,

but it was the sort of thing that played very well in the press, too, because her women friends were so

excited to be there, and she showed them the town. She took them out to lunches and to musicals and

shopping, and they so enjoyed the White House. Bess's women friends were very, very dear to her,

and she kept many of her friendships throughout her entire life.

SWAIN: Here's Pat in Fenton, Mississippi. You're on the air.

PAT (ph): Fenton, Michigan.

SWAIN: Ah, hi, Fenton, Michigan. Sorry. Wrong part of the...

SEALE: They didn't sound very Mississippi.

SWAIN: Yeah, doesn't sound Mississippi.

PAT (ph): We had the pleasure of going to Independence and touring the house, and they had you go

in through the backdoor, just like the family, and seeing the presidential library, which we really

enjoyed. But my question is about the Trumans' financial circumstances.

When you mentioned that Bess worked in his Senate office and it was quite controversial that she was

paid, perhaps they needed the money, and certainly the president was the reason that Congress has

established a pension for retiring presidents. And I wonder if their financial circumstances might have

led them not to do as much entertaining and so forth as previous presidents who had their own

budgets.

ANSLOVER: Absolutely, financial reasons were why he does put Bess on the payroll. Margaret

Truman always described her mother as a penny-pincher, but Margaret also admitted it was a good

thing she did. The finances were often very tight. And it was somewhat ironic for Truman's second

term, no one had expected the Democrats to win and that pesky Congress had approved a bill that

would double the president's salary, so imagine their dismay when that...

SWAIN: To what?

ANSLOVER: From $50,000 I think to $100,000, which is a huge leap. And so imagine their dismay

when Harry Truman received that money, instead. But as the caller also mentioned, presidents did not

have pensions before Truman. They were just kind of put out. They didn't really even have security.

SWAIN: We'll take another call. This is from Jose in Philadelphia. Hi, Jose.

JOSE (ph): Yes, good evening. My question is about the attempt -- the assassination attempt on

President Truman. How did that affect Truman's family? And what was his political opinion on the

Puerto Rican question?

SWAIN: OK, thanks so much.

SEALE: Well -- do you want to do it, Nicole?

ANSLOVER: Go ahead.

SEALE: He had definitely favored independence for Puerto Rico. That's what's so strange. He had

made two important speeches, one to Congress and one there, favoring the independence of Puerto

Rico, and this was just, I guess, two killers who came along on November the 1st, 1950, assaulted --

attempted to run into the Blair House and got tangled up in a screen door. And the shooting started.

And, of course, a very wonderful young Secret Service man was killed.

And the Trumans were both there. They were on their way to Arlington Cemetery. They were getting

dressed to go to a dedication of General, I guess, Dills, the English general who died -- it was in the

war and attache -- in USA and requested to be buried in Arlington. They were going to his dedication,

and Mrs. Truman said, according to Margaret Truman, Mrs. Truman said, "Harry, they're shooting at

our policemen.”

And so the policemen yelled, "Get down. Get down.” He stuck his head out the window. It was a

pretty messy thing. And the -- well, the one -- the assassin who survived was sent to prison, and

President Carter released him from prison after, what, 40 years or something like that?

SWAIN: So this was during the second term...

SEALE: And he expressed no regret.

SWAIN: ... and when they were living in the Blair House, an explanation we have not yet gotten to,

why they spent so much time there. The 1940 election, did Bess Truman want Harry to run for re-

election?

ANSLOVER: She didn't try to stop him. You know, in her heart of hearts, does she want to keep

being first lady? No. But, again, this is a partnership. She might have been able to persuade him not to

run, but she knew that in his heart of hearts, that's what he believed was best for the country. And so

she supported him.

SWAIN: So many people would remember the famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline.

SEALE: New York Times.

SWAIN: You said earlier that everyone was expecting...

ANSLOVER: Everyone.

SWAIN: ... Dewey to win.

ANSLOVER: Everyone.

SWAIN: So give us some of the flavor of the campaign, what the issues were, and why there was so

much expectation Truman would lose.

ANSLOVER: Truman was not popular at this time.

SWAIN: Why not?

ANSLOVER: The economy wasn't reconverting as fast as it could have.

SEALE: He's liberal. I mean, he was...

ANSLOVER: He was liberal. People were...

SEALE: ... more liberal than people were at the time.

ANSLOVER: ... tired, but not liberal enough for many people. Harry Truman could do very little

right in 1948, and his own party didn't really support him. It wasn't 100 percent certain he was even

going to get the nomination.

So what are the issues? He campaigns on a recalcitrant Congress who won't work with him and won't

let him get anything done. And he campaigns on foreign policy. Look what I've done with the

Marshall Plan, look what I've done with the Truman doctrine. And this is where one of everyone's

favorite Truman stories comes out. His vice presidential nominee, Alben Barkley, tells him on a train

to go out there and give 'em hell, Harry. And one of the reporters hears that, and as these things

happen, from then on, that's what people yelled at him everywhere. "Give 'em hell, Harry."

SEALE: Because he made a cross-country -- and, you know, he had done that before, once when the

Prendergast machine had gotten him elected in Missouri, and they fell apart, and he ran again on his

own.

ANSLOVER: He did, 1940.

SEALE: And he went out and spoke to people and got in front of courthouses and everything and

won it on his own personality. So he must have had enormous personality as a stumper, as they say,

on stump speeches.

ANSLOVER: Absolutely. He was not a great orator. We don't look at Truman's speeches the same

way we look at Lincoln's speeches. But they say that in a small group and small crowds, he could win

anyone over, and he did.

SEALE: And he did.

SWAIN: How important was the whistle-stop tour of the campaign?

ANSLOVER: Hugely.

SEALE: Very, very.

SWAIN: Why?

SEALE: It got him elected, brought him to the people.

ANSLOVER: Absolutely.

SWAIN: And what was media coverage like at that time?

SEALE: Well, it was radio and print, you know?

SWAIN: And Movietones, as we saw...

SEALE: And, of course, television, but it was to be at the end. No, yeah, Movietone news, that sort

of thing.

ANSLOVER: And they stopped polling. Dewey was so far ahead that they stopped polling a couple

weeks before the election actually took place. And that's why their numbers were so off.

SWAIN: And did Bess and did Margaret campaign with him?

ANSLOVER: Uh-huh, yep. They spent a lot of time on the train. They were all exhausted and ready

to head down to Key West after that.

SWAIN: Well, we didn't talk about Key West. Adrian Myers Wilbur asks on Facebook, "I remember

visiting Key West, Florida, and seeing the little White House where the Trumans would visit in the

winter. I wonder what Bess thought of visiting Key West.” How did they use Key West?

SEALE: Well, he used it a lot to go fishing and swimming. And one of the Secret Servicemen who

used to go with him, Rex Scouten, said he had a little trick he liked to do. He liked to hold you under

the water until you were almost dead and then let you get up. But it was mostly men and men things.

He liked -- as I said earlier -- the company of men, poker and all that stuff. Mrs. Truman didn't go

many times.

ANSLOVER: No.

SEALE: But she did go. And, you know, Margaret had a public persona. She was kind of easy with

the press and things like that. People liked her.

SWAIN: We're watching some what's called B-roll, some footage without sound of the Trumans in

Key West. And it looks like he could relax there.

ANSLOVER: He absolutely did. And it also reminded me his fashion sense was always remarked

upon when he went down to Key West with...

SEALE: Hawaiian shirts.

ANSLOVER: ... flashy shirts.

SEALE: (inaudible)

ANSLOVER: Yes.

SEALE: They also -- they cut up a lot. They did. I mean, they took movies of him partying around,

jumping up and down and carrying on. He just let it go when he was with the Masons or with the --

he went over to Alexandria to the big Masonic building over there, and they introduced him, and he

interrupted and said, "Here, I'm Harry."

SWAIN: And can you imagine a president being this casual today?

SEALE: He was, but he was in control.

SWAIN: Casually in control.

ANSLOVER: He was casually in control.

SEALE: Yes, he was.

ANSLOVER: No.

SWAIN: And why not? Because of the media or...

ANSLOVER: Well, things have changed. I mean, just look at even the Blair House assassination

attempt with the president leaning out the window watching this happen. They don't have the freedom

to move around like they used to.

SEALE: The window would be unlocked. You could...

ANSLOVER: Right. There was no way that was going to happen.

SWAIN: So Harry Truman was elected, surprising the press, at least, and the political establishment

to his second term, and a busy second term it was. Here's just a list of some of the highlights of the

second Truman administration -- the establishment of NATO; the Korean War; that assassination

attempt we talked about; and the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, following Roosevelt, which

created presidential term limits.

How challenging a time was the second term?

ANSLOVER: The first year was said to be their happiest in the White House. They thought here was

the chance -- well, they -- Harry thought here was the chance to be president in his own right. This is

when the Fair Deal starts really kicking off. But then things go horribly wrong, largely because of

Korea. That shatters the economy. It shatters the people's faith in him and their willingness to

understand. And then he fires MacArthur.

SEALE: Yeah, and MacArthur made the biggest show out of it on Earth. He went and addressed the

Congress and said, "Old soldiers never die. They just fade away," and it became a popular song. And

it was -- they through a lot of mud. It was very undignified, really, to tell you the truth, but...

SWAIN: Did Bess change her approach to first ladyship in the second term? Did she spend more

time in the White House, more time in Missouri?

ANSLOVER: She's still going back and forth a lot. But, again, that's largely because of family

issues. They re-establish their partnership. They kind of get over the personal tensions that they had

during those early days where she's feeling a little bit left out. They find their rhythm again. And they

-- their union is happier and steadier the second term.

SWAIN: Let's take a call from Louis watching us in Los Angeles. Hi, Louis.

LOUIS (ph): Yes, thank you. What was Mrs. Truman's opinion about her husband's association about

-- with Tom Prendergast? I know Mr. Seale mentioned Tom Prendergast, but what was her thinking

and her opinion about Tom Prendergast and associating with President Truman? Thank you.

SEALE: Thank you. It's a good question.

SWAIN: Who he was, first of all.

SEALE: He was a political boss in Missouri. And he was a kingmaker and his son. Mrs. Truman's

family knew him. I mean, he was a prominent person. And I doubt that she thought much of it. I

mean, she thought he was probably just fine.

Truman says in his letters -- you see that he's going that way with Prendergast, doing what

Prendergast wants, because that's how he got in office, but he quickly began to splinter off from that.

But to answer your question, I don't imagine Mrs. Truman thought much of it, because she knew

them.

ANSLOVER: It was simply the way politics was done in Kansas City at that time.

SEALE: And they were a prominent family, and she -- the Prendergasts were -- and she knew them.

Thank you.

SWAIN: Robert is in Branson West, Missouri.

SEALE: Oh.

SWAIN: Hi, Robert, you're on the air.

ROBERT (ph): Hello. I was wondering if Bess Truman ever attended former or future first ladies'

funerals. Thank you.

SEALE: Gosh, I don't know.

ANSLOVER: I know three first ladies attended her funeral, but it's a very good question.

SEALE: Well, she would have...

SWAIN: Certainly some died, because she lived such a long time.

ANSLOVER: Well, I'm trying to think it...

SEALE: Actually, Ms. Theodore Roosevelt died during his presidency.

ANSLOVER: She certainly probably went to Mrs. Roosevelt's funeral...

SEALE: I would think so.

ANSLOVER: I would imagine. And when did Mamie Eisenhower?

SEALE: Oh, no, late, much later, as did Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt, but Ms. Theodore Roosevelt...

ANSLOVER: So there really wouldn't have been a huge opportunity.

SEALE: No, and probably wasn't expected, but I -- now, that's a tough one.

ANSLOVER: That's a really interesting question. I don't know.

SWAIN: Jack Cutton wants to know, what was Bess Truman's pet issue? Did she have one?

ANSLOVER: I don't believe they had any pets.

SEALE: I don't think she had one.

SWAIN: No, no, "pet issue."

SEALE: I don't think she had one.

ANSLOVER: Oh, no.

SWAIN: Favorite issue? So she had no causes?

ANSLOVER: Her thing? No.

SEALE: No, I don't think so.

SWAIN: And that was...

ANSLOVER: Well, actually, I take that back. She was interested in health care. She believed -- she

urged Harry to increase funding to, I think, the National Institute for Health, some sort of research

foundation, and you can look at the numbers in his second term. That budget does go up. She really

thought people should have better health care, as did Harry.

SEALE: Well, he proposed universal health care.

ANSLOVER: He did. And one of the reasons he was so unpopular.

SEALE: Yeah, a liberal program.

SWAIN: I want to tell you about a book, and it's my lead-in to the question about the best Truman

portrait, but this book has been published by our partners in this series, the White House Historical

Association, and it is a collection of biographies of the first ladies of the United States, has all of their

official portraits, biographies, of each of them.

And as a keepsake for those of you who've been watching the series, you see that little yellow bubble

at the bottom. It's listed as a special edition for "First Ladies: Influence and Image," the C-SPAN

original series, so if you're interested in this, it is available on our website at cspan.org/firstladies.

And in it, you will find, among all the others, Bess Truman's official portrait.

Her White House portrait was done, and we have a video that explains some of the background about

Bess Truman's official portrait.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLIFTON TRUMAN DANIEL: This painting was originally painted as my grandmother's official

White House portrait. In the 1960s, Lady Bird Johnson went looking for portraits of first ladies to

hang, to re-hang in the White House. She thought that was important. And she looked high and low

and she could not find my grandmother's official portrait, so she called my grandmother, and she said,

"Mrs. Truman, do you know where that painting is? We can't find it.” And my grandmother said,

"Yeah, it's on my wall."

And Mrs. Johnson said, "You really shouldn't have that. It belongs in the White House.” And my

grandmother said, "No, that's my painting, it's on my wall, and that's where it's going to stay.” And I

think Mrs. Johnson tried a couple of more times, so that eventually she gave up and had a copy

painted.

There are actually two copies made by the artist, Greta Kempton. And one of them hangs in the

Truman Library just down the road and the other is in the White House, but those are the two copies.

This is the original portrait.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: I don't know who did the portrait. I can look it up for you, but back to the table here, Bill.

SEALE: OK.

SWAIN: We have to tell the story about the renovations of the White House.

SEALE: OK.

SWAIN: Because the Trumans, in their almost eight years in the White House, spent less time in that

building than any other president.

SEALE: There you go. You want to do it?

ANSLOVER: Absolutely. It was falling down. The leg of Margaret's piano fell through the floor, and

the engineers were concerned that the whole thing was going to collapse onto the Trumans,

essentially. So...

SWAIN: So what did they do?

SEALE: Well, the trouble started right after Pearl Harbor, when the Corps of Army Engineers, the

old enemies of the White House, came in and did an engineering survey. I talked to some members of

the crew, long gone now, but the ceiling in the East Room had dropped 40 inches. The room's so

long, 85 feet, you can't tell. He said he walked in there under the plaster, it was -- but it was

considered a fire trap, and they recommended that Roosevelt move out. Of course, he wouldn't do it,

and he -- then they said they wanted to paint it camouflage during the war. He wouldn't do that.

Well, after the war, when Truman was there, the house was kind of empty in the upstairs and the

floors jiggled and all that. Roosevelt loved houses that did that. But the plaster would begin to trickle

down from the light fixtures. Yeah, and the light fixtures and would -- and so they decided that they

had to get out.

So they moved across the street, and great plans were done for redoing the White House. Now, I bet

you he consulted with this with Mrs. Truman. They wanted to tear it down. That was the easiest thing

to do. But George Washington built those walls and Truman wouldn't hear of it. He had the house

gutted, but the stone walls on the outside never were touched. In fact, they wanted to take a bulldozer

in through one of the doors, and they were about to open it up with pickaxes, and he saw them, and he

said, "Stop!" And they took the bulldozer down and a dump truck down and reassembled them in the

cellars of the house to dig the lower cellars.

And the house was rebuilt in steel and concrete. Here are your old walls with the brick taken -- they

had a brick backing of three feet. And then -- is this doing -- and, anyway, that's a steel frame on the

inside, and it's eight inches from the original stone walls, and each room is a cage. And when it was

finished, it was believed to be bombproof. Well, of course, that's the joke now.

ANSLOVER: Unfortunately.

SEALE: And they moved over to Blair House, where they lived most of the time. And they loved it.

They thought it was beautiful and it still had all the Blair things and it had never been decorated or

anything like that.

SWAIN: And smaller and more approachable, more...

ANSLOVER: Absolutely, more intimate.

SEALE: More approachable, more a home.

ANSLOVER: He did definitely consult with Bess. She wanted the original structure to remain. But

he also consulted with her, because why wasn't this done in their first term? It was falling down then.

And Bess and Harry are both convinced that somehow the press would blame the Trumans for

bringing down the White House. And so they waited until he was re-elected to tackle this project.

SWAIN: Did living in the Blair House have any positive or negative influence on his presidency?

ANSLOVER: It might have allowed him to relax a little bit more.

SEALE: But he lived with the formality of a president.

ANSLOVER: He did.

SEALE: He ate every meal even by himself with finger bowls and all the silver and all the stuff like

that, because he did a few funny descriptions of it.

ANSLOVER: One of my favorite Truman stories, he often wrote Bess letters when she was home in

Independence and he was in the White House. And he was just convinced he could hear the ghosts of

his predecessors wandering the halls. And I think he really enjoyed imagining they were there to keep

him company. Bess thought it was silly, until one night, she and Margaret heard a crash, and then

they thought for just a minute that maybe there were ghosts there, but...

SWAIN: Well, if you took the insides out, maybe the ghosts went with them.

ANSLOVER: They might have.

SWAIN: How much of the original White House was preserved in this process, mantles?

SEALE: Mantelpieces were preserved. Some doors. Not much of it was to be preserved, because it

was cheaper to put Crestwood in and stuff, but Lorenzo Winslow, the architect, really was the hero, as

far as the original things. He saved what he could.

And during the Clinton administration, when the Blue Room was being redone, and the paint was

taken off, there was all that old original pine, those enormous boards, the most gorgeous thing in the

world that Winslow had insisted that they be put back in the house while he was there to do it and

didn't have to listen to anyone else.

So I don't know what percentage. You know, of course, next year is the 200th anniversary of its

burning. And about 30 percent of it was torn down after that fire. But, you know, the walls are 100

percent. And what percentage is that of the house? I don't know. Everything else was -- and then the

sub-basements were dug.

And one secret one was dug, and Truman ordered the Park Service to surrender $750,000 of its

budget to do the sub-basement, the one in 9/11, that the vice president was in, and it's...

SWAIN: The secure space.

SEALE: It was done secretly -- and not secure anymore, but the -- that became secretly out of the

Park Service budget, and those bulldozers went down and dug it, but no one knew it.

SWAIN: We have some film, video of when the president re-introduced the White House to the

nation afterwards. What was the public reaction when it was reopened again?

SEALE: Oh, I think people thought it was beautiful. Would you agree, just thought it...

ANSLOVER: Absolutely.

SEALE: National Geographic did a beautiful issue on it after Truman moved out of office.

SWAIN: And here's a tour that I think NBC gave.

SEALE: People thought it was beautiful. It was all done by a department store in New York, the

decorating, B. Altman. And Chuck Haight made the decisions. Mrs. Truman and the president refused

to make decisions on wallpaper and things like that, because they said it was not their house. It was

for the future.

And so Mr. Haight and the staff made most of those decisions. And it was done cheaply. I mean,

they've beat everybody down. Scalamandre, Franco Scalamandre gave fabrics for $3.50 a yard,

which, you know, are hundreds of dollars a yard. So -- for the prestige.

SWAIN: So Sheldon Cooper asks on Twitter, how much influence did Bess have in the rebuilding of

the White House? The answer is, as much as she wanted, which...

SEALE: As much as she wanted, but they both felt that they weren't going to live there long and that

it was something more important.

SWAIN: Neesin is in Visalia, California. What's your question for us?

NEESIN (ph): Visalia, but I have two questions. One, since the World Series is on, was she a sports

fan, like, did she root for the Cardinals? And, number two...

ANSLOVER: Kansas City Royals all the way.

SWAIN: They were big sportspeople.

ANSLOVER: Bess was. Not Harry.

SEALE: Bess was. Not him.

NEESIN (ph): And then the second question was, you mentioned that Harry overcame his prejudices,

but I heard the story through Merle Miller who wrote the plain-speaking, that one time when they

came to the house, he said he couldn't let them in because he was Jewish and the family was kind of

anti-Semitic.

ANSLOVER: One of Harry's best friends, one of his Army buddies, was Eddie Jacobson, who was

Jewish, and he was actually the one that he ran the men's clothing store in Kansas City with. So the

Trumans certainly did associate with Jewish people.

SEALE: Wasn't he his best man?

ANSLOVER: I think Bess's brother served as best man.

SEALE: Well, a tailor was in the wedding who did a suit for him, but charged him for it.

ANSLOVER: I don't think that was a Jacobson. But he was a dear friend to Harry Truman.

SEALE: Yeah, very close friend.

SWAIN: A Twitter viewer, 379life, wanted to know, after watching that, where did they raise the

money to fix the White House?

SEALE: Congress.

SWAIN: All of it? No public appropriations?

SEALE: Would you -- no, would you believe it cost about $5.5 million? Think of what it would be

today.

SWAIN: Peter is in Boston. Hi, Peter.

PETER (ph): Hi, how are you?

SWAIN: Good, thanks.

PETER (ph): I just wondered, was Bess Truman friends with any other first ladies?

ANSLOVER: She admired Eleanor Roosevelt. They were friendly, not dear friends. Mamie

Eisenhower, before she was the first lady, when Bess was the first lady, they took a Spanish class

together in the White House. A group of Washington ladies decided to learn Spanish. And Bess grew

very fond of her then, and there was later a rift between the Trumans but -- and the Eisenhowers, but

Bess was fond of Mamie. Others?

SEALE: I can't think of any others.

ANSLOVER: I think she liked Lady Bird Johnson. Oh, they did very much enjoy the company of

both of the Kennedys. They went and stayed at the White House after Jack and Jackie were in the

White House.

SEALE: They certainly did. They went for the inauguration, didn't they?

ANSLOVER: Uh-huh.

SEALE: Didn't like Joe Kennedy, but they liked the son.

ANSLOVER: No. Yes.

SWAIN: I mentioned earlier our website, which has all the video of all of the first ladies programs

we've done so far and also lots of other videos you haven't seen here. You can find it at

cspan.org/firstladies. Each week, we put one special thing about the first lady that we're featuring that

we haven't used during the program. If you go there now, you'll find Clifton Truman Daniel sharing

another story about his grandmother from the home in Independence, so something just for you

online.

1952 election, why did the Trumans decide -- could they have run again if they wanted to?

ANSLOVER: Yes.

SEALE: Yeah.

ANSLOVER: The constitutional amendment not only did not apply to the incumbent, but it would

have only been his second time being elected. But Bess said to him that she could not take another

four years as first lady, and...

SWAIN: How old were they then?

ANSLOVER: In their 60s at least.

SEALE: Oh, yeah. He was 61 when we went to the White House, so he...

SWAIN: 69, he would have been.

SEALE: Yeah.

ANSLOVER: And she didn't think he could take it, either. They were in good health for their age,

but the Korea and McCarthyism was starting to spread, and they were getting worn down.

SEALE: And once Eisenhower turned Republican, it was pretty clear he was going to win. I mean,

he was a hero. But...

SWAIN: What was the Truman-Eisenhower relationship, since he had been president at the end of

the war?

ANSLOVER: Well, part of the trouble was that Eisenhower turned out to be a Republican, where

Truman had hinted that he might support Eisenhower if he wanted to run as a Democrat in 1948 and

Truman wouldn't run. Truman really admired Eisenhower for a long time. And Eisenhower was

somewhat aloof to him from all of the letters and memos that we see.

And then Truman was highly offended during the transition period, when Eisenhower did not appear

to want to take his advice, and then a big social snub occurred on Inauguration Day. It's customary for

the incoming president to stop by the White House, have tea, pick up the outgoing president, and ride

together. First, Eisenhower, it said, wanted to be picked up at his hotel. The Trumans said no. So he

and Mamie arrived at the White House, but they would not come inside and greet the Trumans.

SEALE: Sat in the car.

ANSLOVER: They sat in the car. And the president of the United States had to walk out to him. So

you can feel the tension, if you look at the pictures of that inauguration.

SEALE: And after the inauguration, Truman was almost forgotten. I mean, he was almost thrown

out. Had no guards. Guards were taken away and everything. Of course, he had no pension or

anything coming to him. And one of the Secret Service detail took annual leave to accompany them

back on the train to Independence.

And no one told them goodbye, until they got to the train station. There were about, what, 100 people

cheering them?

ANSLOVER: No, I think there were more. It was another time that no one had turned out. I think

when they left, there were more. And then when they returned home, there were thousands in

Independence.

SEALE: Right, in Independence.

ANSLOVER: And so they were gratified, but, yeah, somewhat offended.

SEALE: He had trouble with the thousands. You know, there's that story about him getting out of his

car and going to the front door. And his glasses were gone, and the crowd pushed in on him. His

glasses were gone and his handkerchief was gone. And they built an iron fence that's there now.

That's after the presidency.

ANSLOVER: They did not expect the crowds, and people just kept walking by and wanting to see

them. There's a story about Margaret one day coming out onto the porch and yelling at someone to go

away, and they later found out he was an escaped mental patient or something like that who had a

gun. It was a very different time.

SEALE: Price of fame.

ANSLOVER: Very different time.

SEALE: But the city of Independence put up a retired (inaudible) retired, but a policeman off-duty

on the back porch, and that's the only guard they had...

ANSLOVER: That was it.

SEALE: ... until after Kennedy, when Kennedy was killed, and then the pensions stared, and the

Secret Service detail, and all that.

ANSLOVER: But Bess would not allow them in the house still.

SEALE: Oh, I didn't know that. She wouldn't?

ANSLOVER: No, she would not allow them in the house.

SEALE: Ha.

SWAIN: In fact, during the White House years, when she would go back to home in Independence,

she would not allow Secret Service protection.

ANSLOVER: No, she wanted to go shopping. She wanted to do her Christmas shopping and live as

normally as possible.

SEALE: But did they go anyway with her?

ANSLOVER: Not that I'm aware of.

SEALE: Really?

ANSLOVER: No.

SEALE: Surprised they let her get by with that one.

SWAIN: Don in Chester, Pennsylvania? Hi, Don.

DON (ph): Hello. Hello?

SWAIN: Your question, please?

DON (ph): Yes, I had the good privilege of corresponding with Mrs. Truman twice after her

husband's death. I'd sent her a copy of a tribute that I had written for our school paper, and she very

graciously responded with a nice letter, and then I sent her birthday greetings. And she made a

personal letter.

She had terrible arthritis, and she just made the effort to be down home. The interesting thing was

that, in Margaret's book about her mother, she comments that President Truman was very protective

of Mrs. Truman concerning her father's death. And a cousin very meanly told Margaret about the

circumstances of her grandfather's death, and, of course, President Truman had a fit about that and

really ripped into the woman, and that was very unusual, because he was a very courtly gentleman as

a rule. So that was a very interesting footnote to the Trumans family history.

And she was at Mrs. Roosevelt's funeral with her husband and the Johnsons and the Kennedys, and

there are pictures to that effect in the Roosevelt Library.

SWAIN: Don, that...

DON (ph): Thank you.

SWAIN: Don, before you go, how did you get so interested in the Trumans?

DON (ph): Well, since -- interestingly enough, just hours before Robert Kennedy was killed, I picked

up a book on President Kennedy, and that got me interested in politics in general. And since that, 45

years ago, I really have become a particular aficionado of the presidents, but just of politics in

general, especially American politics, from 1932 to the present.

SWAIN: Thanks for your call tonight. So in their years after the White House, one of the things they

did was an interview for national television in 1955. Now, talk about easy interviews. Who were they

interviewed by?

ANSLOVER: Their daughter, Margaret.

SWAIN: Their daughter, Margaret, asked her parents the questions. We have -- it was a program on

CBS called "Person to Person," which was really a big hit program at the time. And it was the only

television interview that Bess Truman ever did. How about that? In her whole public career. And

you're going to see a little bit of that next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARGARET TRUMAN: But, Mother...

BESS TRUMAN: Yes?

MARGARET TRUMAN: Please tell everyone why you went back to Missouri instead of staying in

Washington.

BESS TRUMAN: Well, there was never any question of staying in Washington. There was never

any question about coming home. Is that reasonable enough?

MARGARET TRUMAN: That's all right, yes, I'll buy that. Mother?

BESS TRUMAN: Yes?

MARGARET TRUMAN: Are we still getting a lot of sightseers and visitors?

BESS TRUMAN: Oh, loads of them, yes.

MARGARET TRUMAN: All the time?

BESS TRUMAN: All the time, every day. We had a funny experience the other night. Dad and I

went over to see your cousins across the street, and there were so many of them out here in front of

the house, we couldn't come home. We had to spend most of the evening on the front porch over there

all by ourselves, because the cousins were not at home.

MARGARET TRUMAN: Oh, fine.

BESS TRUMAN: Is that ridiculous?

MARGARET TRUMAN: Yes. Yeah, what about the time someone picked your tulips? Remember?

BESS TRUMAN: Oh -- well, yes, some woman came into the backyard and started picking all my

beautiful white tulips. A lot of the men on the place went down to ask her just what she thought she

was doing, and she said, oh, she didn't think Mrs. Truman would care if she took some of her tulips.

MARGARET TRUMAN: Fine thing, after...

BESS TRUMAN: Well, she helped herself. She took all she wanted.

MARGARET TRUMAN: That's a fine thing, after all the work you did on them.

BESS TRUMAN: Yes, isn't it?

MARGARET TRUMAN: Mother?

BESS TRUMAN: Yes?

MARGARET TRUMAN: For years, we had Secret Servicemen around us, at least Dad and I did. Do

you miss Washington?

BESS TRUMAN: Oh, yes, I miss Washington. I miss Washington a lot. I loved it there. But I'm

completely happy at home. Of course, the Secret Servicemen didn't bother me as much as they did

you and Dad.

MARGARET TRUMAN: Well, if I remember, you lost them.

BESS TRUMAN: Yes, I did. Early in the game.

MARGARET TRUMAN: That's what I thought. Ed Murrow wanted me to ask you just how much

influence and help was Mother when you were in the White House?

HARRY TRUMAN: She was a wonderful influence and a wonderful help. A president is in a bad

way if he doesn't have a first lady that knows her job and is a full support to him. She's the greatest

helper a president can have, and mine was.

MARGARET TRUMAN: Good. Mother, let me switch from Washington to Kansas City. Hey, how's

your baseball team doing?

BESS TRUMAN: Well, we're doing pretty well. We're going to have a great team, though, before the

season's gone.

MARGARET TRUMAN: That sounds like a good -- you're the sports fan in the family. Have you

seen anything good on TV lately?

BESS TRUMAN: Well, a few good things, yes, but I haven't been able to find that wrestling

matches.

MARGARET TRUMAN: No good wrestling matches, huh?

BESS TRUMAN: No, not at all.

MARGARET TRUMAN: Mommy, you want to say a few words about politics specifically or in

general?

BESS TRUMAN: No, not in either category, thank you.

MARGARET TRUMAN: Oh, that's definite enough. Dad...

HARRY TRUMAN: You know your mother never talks politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: So that is just a glimpse...

SEALE: That was fun.

SWAIN: ... of a much longer -- isn't that fun? A much longer "Person to Person" interview by

Margaret Truman of her parents in 1955 after they left the White House. They do come across as just

plain folks.

ANSLOVER: They really were, and they valued that. They valued loyalty and hard work and

honesty. And they liked a good laugh, but they were normal people.

SWAIN: But he was not popular when he left the White House. It took many years for his reputation

to be re-established. Why were so many people going to see them in Missouri?

ANSLOVER: Well, part of it -- he wasn't necessarily unpopular at home. He's still the hometown

hero. Independence, Missouri, has not had any other presidents. And they probably thought they

could just walk right up and say hello to the Trumans as they had in the past.

SWAIN: How did they spend their post-White House years? They were long ones.

ANSLOVER: They were long ones. He wrote his memoirs, first of all, because he had to make

money. He wasn't getting a pension. And several lucrative offers came his way, but he -- like Bill was

saying, he never believed anyone should trade on the presidency. So he wrote his memoirs and Bess

edited every single word. And that was their first project.

SWAIN: And the establishment of the Truman Library.

SEALE: He was intimate to that, intimate to that, and believed very much that it was a matter of

history, of interpreting history. And he did the original design himself for the exhibit.

SWAIN: And kept an office there.

SEALE: Yes.

SWAIN: And if you visit -- visit there today, you can see the office, and one of the striking things is

his office looked right out on his future grave site.

ANSLOVER: Well, the great story with that, he said, I can just see -- Bess, you're going to lay there

next to me, and I can say one day I can see myself saying, "Oh, I feel like going into the office.” And

you'll say, "Harry, oughtn't.” So that's how they expected to spend eternity.

SEALE: And Margaret's buried there, and Mr. Daniel, as well, her husband.

SWAIN: Yeah, and we're seeing pictures of the Truman family grave sites right now. They have --

Margaret Truman, by the way, had four sons, and as you saw, Clifton Truman is very involved in the

legacy of his grandparents. One of the four sons passed away, and I'm not sure about how the other

two or whether they're really involved in the library and the preservation of the history.

There's one story -- and we're running out of time, but this is such a great story. And someone asked,

what I'd like to know more about is the trip she took with the president by car after leaving the White

House. Did they really just do it, the two of them? It was the convertible trip across the country.

SEALE: It's a charming book about it. I can't remember the author's name, I'm sorry to say.

ANSLOVER: I can't remember, either, but there's good stories out of it.

SEALE: But you can find it on the web about the Trumans' trip, the automobile trip.

SWAIN: And they drove to Washington from Missouri.

SEALE: It's a wonderful book.

ANSLOVER: Yeah.

SWAIN: Well, one of the stories I'll tell you that I remember is of people passing them on the road

and nearly having accidents, because he was in a convertible and all of a sudden they recognized they

had just passed the president of the United States and the first lady.

Well, as we wrap up here, we have about two minutes left. Someone keeps asking -- wants to know,

what -- on Twitter, so we should ask it -- what would Bess Truman say is her greatest contribution to

the role of first lady?

ANSLOVER: Her greatest contribution to the role of first lady? Demonstrating that you can be a

strong influential partner and you don't have to be on the front page or on the TV every day. Your

influence can be strong without it being public.

SEALE: Exactly, and that she supported her husband and the president when he became the

president. She supported him. They were very aware of that president and individual, you know?

SWAIN: Harry died in 1972. Bess died in 1982, 10 years later.

SEALE: Ten years.

SWAIN: How did she spend those 10 years after he passed? She up in years. She died at age 97.

ANSLOVER: Right, she was at home. She tried to keep up her correspondence.

SEALE: The rheumatoid arthritis.

ANSLOVER: Time with Margaret.

SEALE: She had a caregiver finally, and then several of them at the end, but she died at home.

ANSLOVER: She died in her home, and I imagine that's the way she would have wanted it.

SEALE: He died in a hospital, she died at home.

SWAIN: And how should we remember?

ANSLOVER: I think we should remember her the way she wanted to be remembered, that you can

be a wonderful influential first lady, even if people don't know it at that time.

SWAIN: And did have then any influence on the role of first lady? Or was she really truly her own

person in that job?

SEALE: I would say she was her own person.

ANSLOVER: I think absolutely.

SEALE: Because it's not really possible anymore. Mrs. Reagan said, well, she was going to play

cards with her friends, which is something Bess Truman would have done. Oh, my goodness, you'd

think she'd committed treason, and so she got causes going. But Mrs. Truman would have responded

to that saying it's my life and I'm not elected.

ANSLOVER: Right.

SWAIN: But not possible today. So she was an independent-minded person...

SEALE: It depends on the woman.

SWAIN: ... at a time when that was allowed. Is that really a good...

SEALE: Well, I think it depends on the woman, you know, if she wanted to not get involved, but

today women are so much more out than they were then. And...

SWAIN: And this was 1940s and 1950s American women.

SEALE: Yeah.

ANSLOVER: She was her own person.

SWAIN: Well, thanks to both of you for telling us the story of...

SEALE: Thank you, Susan.

ANSLOVER: Thank you.

SWAIN: ... of Bess, Harry, and Margaret Truman, the tight-knit family in the White House thrust

into the job after the death of Franklin Roosevelt and then making it their own. We appreciate your

time.

SEALE: Thank you, Susan.

ANSLOVER: Thank you.

SWAIN: And thanks to the White House Historical Association, our partners in this series, and to the

folks at the Truman Library and the Truman House in Independence for their help with the video

tonight.

END