Harry Truman (48 page)

By this time, Mother and I had gone home to Missouri. I was practicing hard, getting ready for a reconstructed concert tour. There was no trace of worry, only the usual complaints about loneliness in the letters Dad sent me in mid-July.

On July 19, he was teasing me: “Do you need anything - money, marbles or chalk? You may have anything I have. You should see the most beautiful and ancient ring the latest Arab visitor gave me. It is a peculiar stone carved evidently in ancient Egypt. The ring itself was made before Christ. I can’t get it on.”

Early in the morning of July 26, his sister Mary called Dad at the White House to tell him Mamma Truman had pneumonia and was close to death. Dad had to stay in the White House long enough to sign the armed forces unification bill, one of the great achievements of his administration, but he was airborne before noon. He was dozing in his cabin when his mother’s face suddenly appeared before him with amazing clarity. Dad sat up, terribly shaken. A few minutes later, Dr. Graham handed him a report which the pilot of the plane had just received. Mamma Truman was dead. “I knew she was gone when I saw her in that dream,” Dad said. “She was saying goodbye to me.”

We met Dad at the airport at 3:30 p.m. He was calm but sad. Mamma Truman had been part of his life for so long he found it hard to realize she was gone. In spite of his grief, he immediately took control. He appointed me his deputy, charged with making sure “none of the family gets pushed around during the funeral.’”

The next two days were hectic. Dad spent most of his time in Grandview, talking to people who came to pay their respects. The following day, July 28, I summed up in my diary as follows:

On August 1, Dad was still feeling his loss.

I picked up my singing career again with an appearance in Los Angeles. I sang in the Hollywood Bowl on August 26, 1947, with Eugene Ormandy conducting the orchestra. On October 17, I relaunched my concert tour in Pittsburgh. Mother, Mr. and Mrs. John Snyder, Mrs. Fred Vinson, Pearl Mesta, and several other Washington supporters flew in to boost my morale. Dad would have given anything to come, but he absolutely vetoed the idea, in spite of strong pleas from the mayor of the city and Senator Myers of Pennsylvania. “I’m afraid I’d upset the apple cart if I went,” he wrote to me a few days before the event. I understood exactly what he meant. He wanted me to get the publicity, and it is impossible for anyone, even the President’s daughter, to manage this when the Chief Executive and his traveling circus arrive on the scene.

The concert was a success and I took off on a swing through the south and southwest, singing every second or third night at places like Amarillo, Forth Worth, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Memphis, and Shreveport. Dad kept very good track of me as you can see from this letter he wrote on December 3, 1947:

On December 21, I ended my tour with a concert in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. It was one of the most wonderful nights of my life. Dad could join the audience here without turning the city inside out. Every seat was filled. The Cabinet sent me a great basket of red roses, and I received eleven bouquets over the footlights. I sang better than I had sung anywhere else throughout the tour. Dad was immensely pleased. I really think in some ways he enjoyed the evening more than I did.

It was a perfect prelude to our first White House Christmas. The thought of Christmas at home without Mamma Truman was too painful for Dad. So he invited the whole family to join us at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Here is how he summed it up in a memorandum he wrote on his calendar that day:

ALONG WITH INTERNATIONAL crises and personal grief and singing debuts, 1947 was the year of the Truman Traveling Troupe. This was the nickname I conjured up for the inevitable “circus” Dad took with him on his trips to Mexico, Canada, and Brazil. These trips were not vacations - they did not have the slightest resemblance to the trip Dad took to Bermuda in 1946. They were serious political expeditions, aimed at building solidarity between the United States and our sister nations in the Western Hemisphere. With Russia threatening aggression in Europe and Asia, Dad felt it was vital to build friendship on our borders.

I did not go with Dad to Mexico in early March. I was preparing for my concert debut. He tried everything to entice me to join him, but I am just as stubborn as he is, when I make up my mind to do something. So he flew off without me.

Tremendous crowds greeted him in Mexico City. Relations between Mexico and the United States had frequently been strained and at times downright hostile in the past. We fought one war with them, and almost went to war a second time in 1914, and again in 1916. My father was anxious to sweep away the legacy of suspicion of the United States that these confrontations had created. So he made the first state visit ever undertaken by an American President to Mexico.

He was delighted by the enormous crowds. In response, he broke away from his Mexican and American Secret Service escorts and mingled with the people. In an address to the Mexican legislature, he pledged that the United States would continue to observe the nonintervention clause of the Good Neighbor Policy. But he insisted nonintervention did not mean indifference. Dad also managed to exhaust Secret Service men and reporters by climbing up and down pyramids and temples outside Mexico City, unbothered by the thin air - the altitude is over 7,000 feet - that later gave several Olympic athletes all sorts of trouble.

The following day, my father drew upon his knowledge of history for a gesture that aroused the deepest emotions in the Mexican people. He suddenly announced he wanted to visit Chapultepec. The State Department types in the American Embassy were aghast. The American army had stormed this fortress in its successful assault on Mexico City. Among the Mexican garrison had been several hundred young cadets who fought to the last man, with incredible bravery. A handful of them - six, I believe - were trapped on the roof and committed suicide by leaping over the walls rather than surrender. A shrine to
Los Niños Héroes
had been erected by the Mexican people in Chapultepec.

After touring the fortress, my father went straight to this shrine and placed a wreath before it. Then he stood with bowed head, paying silent tribute to the memory of these young men who had died so heroically for their country. A contingent of contemporary cadets was drawn up in precise military formation, and when they saw the President of the United States make this almost unbelievable (to them) gesture, tears streamed down their cheeks. “Brave men do not belong to any one country,” Dad said. “I respect bravery wherever I see it.” At a luncheon in the U.S. Embassy later that day, President Alemán of Mexico conferred on Dad the title of Champion of Inter-American Solidarity.

I joined the Traveling Troupe for our next trip, to Canada, on June 9, 1947. We spent a really delightful three days there. The prime minister, MacKenzie King, was one of the most charming statesmen I have ever met, with a delicious sense of humor. We loved the old world charm of Ottawa. It was like a trip to London with only one tenth the trouble. Even that quintessential Missouri Democrat, Harry S. Truman, admitted he liked the “royal” touches that were a standard part of our greeting. We walked up miles of red carpet and regularly received three cheers and a tiger. Dad spoke to a joint session of Parliament. He hailed the Canadian-American tradition of friendship and reiterated the Truman Doctrine. In a press conference, he told reporters the United States wanted only peace in the world and friendship with every nation. He told them to underline “every.” There was the usual whirl of receptions, lunches, and dinners, plus a stop at Niagara Falls to get the view from the Canadian side, which they solemnly assured us was the best.

Canada and Mexico were only warm-ups for the main event of the Truman Traveling Troupe - our September visit to Brazil. General Marshall had been representing the United States at the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security. The conference was a diplomatic triumph for the United States. The twenty American nations represented there agreed to sign a pact which forbade any one of them from committing aggression against another nation in our hemisphere, and also bound them to act in concert against an aggressor. Dad was so pleased with this dramatic affirmation of inter-American unity that he decided he would fly there and join in signing the treaty, and at the same time join Brazil in celebrating the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of her independence, on September 7. We flew out of Washington aboard the
Independence,
the lovely DC-6 that had replaced the
Sacred Cow,
on Sunday, August 31.

A stopover in Trinidad for rest and refueling turned into a wild combination of comedy and adventure. In order to reach Rio in time for a scheduled reception, we had to take off from Trinidad at the ungodly hour of 3:00 a.m. It was raining as it can only come down in the tropics, in thick, drenching torrents. To complicate matters, we all had to dress in formal clothes - Mother and I in our best dresses and hats and Dad and his entourage in striped trousers and morning coats. We looked like a bunch of broken-down actors leaving town one jump ahead of the sheriff. But we finally got aboard the plane, buckled ourselves into our seats, and were watching the propellers begin to spin when somebody said, “Where’s Charlie?”

Charlie Ross was still asleep, back in the commandant’s house where we had spent the night - or more exactly - half the night. Correspondence secretary Bill Hassett volunteered to go get him. By the time Bill had finished sloshing through several miles of jungle in the downpour, both he and Charlie were not exactly visions of sartorial splendor. In fact, their striped pants looked like they had spent the previous year at the bottom of a laundry bag. We finally decided to put them in the middle of the procession and hope for the best. A tailor with a hot iron was not included on the staff of the Truman Traveling Troupe.

After a fascinating flight across the Brazilian jungle and the Amazon, we arrived at Galeão, across the bay from Rio de Janeiro, where Secretary Marshall and Mrs. Marshall, and Ambassador and Mrs. William D. Pawley met us. A letter Dad wrote to his sister Mary tells the rest of the story from his point of view.

I had only one complaint about our reception. As we crossed the harbor, our battleship
Missouri
and the Brazilian battleship
Minas Gerais
thundered out 21-gun salutes. As an old artilleryman, Dad was totally unbothered by the boom of cannon. In fact, he liked it. My sensitive ears found it intolerable. So many salutes were fired in the following days, Admiral Leahy finally got tired of watching me standing there with my hands over my ears and presented me with a roll of absorbent cotton. It didn’t do much good.

On September 3, Dad again eluded his Secret Service men - even more totally than he had in Mexico City. He and Dr. Graham climbed 1,000 feet up nearby Mount Corcovado and brought back a half-dozen orchids. This soon got into the news, and every orchid grower in the United States, so it seemed, sent samples from his garden or greenhouse to us in Washington.

On Friday evening came the climax of our visit, a state dinner given by the foreign minister at Itamarati Palace. Here is Dad’s description of it in a letter to his sister Mary:

Dad neglected to add in this letter the marvelous bit of dialogue he exchanged with King Carol of Rumania. Dad had met Carol’s son, King Michael, who had given him a vivid history of how his father had wrecked Rumania with his erratic combination of greed for power and pursuit of his illicit love, Madame Lupescu. So Dad had no use for Carol on five or six counts. When Carol introduced himself, Dad said, “I met your very fine young son in Washington. I think he is greatly to be commended for his courage in staying on the job.” With that, he turned back to Brazil’s first lady, Mrs. Dutra, who was on his left, and resumed conversing with her.

Carol was hard to discourage, however. “Mr. President, do you speak French?” he asked.

Dad looked over his shoulder at him and said, “No French - and very little English.”

This time Carol got the message. He stood up, bowed stiffly, and departed.

During the parade, we stood at attention in the reviewing stand while what seemed like the entire Brazilian army marched by for four and a half hours. It was a beautiful, even a spectacular show, and the military music was magnificent. But my poor feet almost collapsed. I never felt more relieved in my life when Matt Connelly whispered to me that there was a campstool at the back of the reviewing stand, and I could sit down on it for exactly two minutes. Matt actually timed me - and everyone else - with a stopwatch, so that no one got more than the allotted break.

At the end of the parade, we boarded the
Missouri,
while every gun in the Brazilian navy and in their shore batteries blasted salutes to us. We relaxed on the fantail of the
Missouri,
enjoying the magnificent view of Rio from the harbor, and then staggered off to bed. We were looking forward to twelve days of beautiful, restful isolation aboard the big ship.

For the first few days, we seemed to be getting it. Dad wandered around wearing a yachting cap given to him by a Washington club. He called it his “six-star hat,” which meant he outranked five-star Admiral Leahy. He ate with the officers, the chief petty officers, and the crew. He chatted with sailors and marines on and off duty, and watched the
Missouri
refuel our two escorting destroyers. Best of all, as far as he was concerned - and worst of all, as far as I was concerned - was artillery practice which included firing at drone planes with the 40-millimeter and five-inch guns. The five-inchers make the most agonizing imaginable bang.

On our third day out of Rio, odd things suddenly began happening aboard the Mighty Mo. Sailors started wearing the weirdest uniforms - their pants on backward, their leggings worn above bare feet. Other sailors swung long canvas billies at their posteriors. In the officers’ mess, some of the ensigns and lieutenants sat at the table with their chairs turned backward, and another group sang ridiculous songs throughout the meal. We were approaching the equator, and the traditional initiation ceremonies practiced by sailors for several hundred years when they crossed the line were about to begin.

I thought it was all pretty ridiculous. I’ve never been fond of initiations or secret ceremonies, but Dad loved every minute of it. He chuckled with delight while the shellbacks - those who have already crossed the line - laid out tables full of leg irons, saws, knives, whips, and other instruments of torture.

As night fell, a barrage of rockets and flares went up, informing us Davy Jones had arrived aboard the ship. The band began playing, “Sailing, Sailing Over the Bounding Main,” and the bugler sounded five ruffles - one more than Dad himself got when he
came aboard. We
all
assembled on the superstructure
deck to
greet Davy. Dad was wearing
a sport shirt and a baker’s
hat,
Mother was similarly attired, and I had been forced to don a raincoat, boots, and a sou’wester hat.

Davy Jones handed a communication from Neptunus Rex to Captain Dennison, the commander of the
Missouri.
The captain dutifully read it aloud: