Harry Truman (73 page)

Whenever Dad and Mother, or Dad alone, came to New York, they stayed at the Carlyle Hotel. He followed his usual routine, arising at dawn, and taking a 6:00 a.m. stroll. If he was in town alone, he developed the habit of dropping in on me for breakfast. This created problems until I gave him his own key. My children inherited their grandfather’s habits and insisted on getting up by the dawn’s early light. The children’s schedule and Dad’s meshed beautifully. He would arrive at the apartment around seven, sit down in the same chair in the living room, known as Grandfather’s chair, and occupy himself with a book. They would creep downstairs and join him.

One morning, I came downstairs and found Kif and Will sitting on the arms of Grandfather’s chair, while he read aloud to them.

“Well, good morning,” Dad said, putting down the book and implying with one of his looks that I had wasted the better half of the day.

“Hello,” I said, yawning and glancing at the title of the book he was reading.

My two sons, whom I had thus far been unable to interest in anything weightier than comic books, had been listening enthralled to the Greek historian Thucydides.

When President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy gave a dinner for my parents, the four of us - Mother, Dad, Clifton, and I - were invited to spend the weekend at the White House. This was very nice of Jack Kennedy, and we appreciated it very much. Dad had opposed his nomination in the 1960 convention, but he did it without rancor, simply arguing that JFK was not yet ready for the job. He campaigned for him vigorously, once Jack was the nominee, acting as always on the conviction this kind of harmony was essential to our two-party system.

Dad accepted the invitation but insisted we would stay in the White House only one night. He knew longer visits put a strain on the staff as well as on the busy hosts.

For dinner, President Kennedy assembled a number of Dad’s Cabinet and other high officials in his administration. The President made some witty remarks about how many former Trumanites were working in the White House. They amounted to about 50 percent of the staff.

We dined at the great horseshoe table, decked with the lovely centerpiece President Monroe had commissioned in France, the gold plate, and the gold flatware. The main course was grouse, and each of us was served a small bird of his own. Cheerfully conversing, we began to cut them up. I noticed after a few moments my knife was simply not penetrating. I pressed a little harder. Still no luck. I noticed Dad was working rather hard on his bird and also getting nowhere. President Kennedy, with true Irish determination, was fighting his to the finish. With a Herculean effort, he actually cut it in two pieces. But the idea of trying to chew, must less digest, such a rubberized item forced him to abandon his efforts there. He looked across the table at Jackie with a tense mixture of wrath and dismay. I turned to Bobby Kennedy and said, “These White House knives never could cut butter.” Bobby broke up.

Mother and Dad, having met similar situations at numerous political banquets, did not so much as hint there was anything wrong. Eventually, the butlers came and took our uneaten grouse away.

After dinner and a concert, we went upstairs with the Kennedys to the family quarters. President Kennedy asked Dad or me or both to play the piano. We said we would be glad to oblige, if we could find some music. A search of piano benches ensued. The only piece of sheet music turned up was “Once in Love with Mamie.”

President Kennedy gave up his hopes of being entertained and told us he was going off to the executive wing to do a few hours’ work. He explained to Dad he was a night worker and late riser. Dad said he was a daytime worker and an early riser. President Kennedy very sensibly said that in that case they had better say goodbye.

The next morning, Clifton and I knew we had to be packed and ready at eight for breakfast in the Lincoln Room. By superhuman effort, we made it, half asleep. Dad was already there, fresh as always.

One of the butlers, who had belonged to the White House staff when we lived there, took care of us. “Nothing has changed, Ficklin,” I muttered to him. “I would like some black coffee, grapefruit, and a glass of ice water.”

Dad ate his usual breakfast. By 8:45, we were in the car headed for the Mayflower Hotel, where Dad was to address the ladies of the press at another breakfast. I was faced with a second breakfast, though I have never felt food should be consumed before 10:00 a.m. Dad cheerfully ate again.

When we finally got upstairs to our hotel room, my telephone was ringing wildly. It was Mrs. Kennedy. “Margaret, what happened?” she asked in genuine distress. “I rushed down at nine o’clock and you had all gone.”

“Don’t give it another thought,” I told her. “My father is an early riser. He said goodbye last night.”

“But I thought nine o’clock was early,” she said plaintively.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said, “but I’ve never been able to prove it to Dad.”

About a year after we visited the White House, Dad had a chance to do President Kennedy a favor. As President, Dad had always striven for a balanced budget. President Kennedy became a convert to deficit spending, to pep up the economy. Dad disapproved of this, and he let the reporters know it, during one of his early morning strolls in New York. A plea came from the White House, asking him to soft-pedal such talk. Dad sent back the following polite reply. He still believed in a balanced budget but he was a good Democrat, and if the Democratic President of the United States wanted him to stop talking about it, he would shut up, forthwith. He did, too.

Dad was deeply grieved by President Kennedy’s assassination. He felt fate had cut him down before he had a chance to really master the intricacies of the presidency. At the funeral Mass, the Trumans and the Eisenhowers sat in the same pew. Reporters and ex-president watchers immediately started buzzing. They seemed to have forgotten Ike had visited Dad at the Library in Independence in 1961, to get some pointers on how to set up the Eisenhower presidential library. At that time, there was a spate of “burying the hatchet” cartoons, and much talk about the supposed feud being over. On Dad’s part, there never had been a feud. He was simply incapable of holding a grudge long enough to turn it into a feud.

Ike and Mamie offered to share their car with us for the ride to Arlington Cemetery. The two ex-Presidents chatted agreeably en route to that sad final farewell to John F. Kennedy. When I discovered the Eisenhowers were not planning to stay in Washington, I suggested they come back to Blair House with us and have something to eat before they went back to Gettysburg. While we were having coffee and sandwiches, a hubbub erupted on the front steps. A sizable tribe of reporters, scenting a story, were demanding to see either or both former chief executives. Neither Dad nor Ike was in the least inclined to oblige them, so guess-who got dispatched to deal with them. I scoffed at talk of hatchet burying and insisted it was simply a matter of civilized people being hospitable, on both sides.

A year later, Dad flew to Greece at the request of President Johnson to represent the United States at the funeral of King Paul. The party included many old associates from his administration. Though the mission was melancholy, Dad enjoyed being with men he had known and worked with during his White House years. A poker game got going on the plane, and it lasted all night. My husband, Clifton, who was part of the entourage, became very worried. He feared Dad would overtax himself, especially in view of the time change between America and Greece.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” I demanded. “After all, he is eighty years old.”

“Who me?” Clifton asked, horrified. “Do you think I’m going to tell the former President of the United States, and my father-in-law to boot, to go to bed?”

I had to concede it wouldn’t have done any good, even if Clifton had had the courage.

Dad returned from Greece, flying the Atlantic twice in one week, on the eve of a trip to Florida. He got home at midnight and was up at six as usual and on his way again. His eightieth birthday came soon afterward, and he made a speech at every breakfast, lunch, dinner, and reception given in his honor. This included a visit to the U.S. Senate, where he became the first ex-President to address that body while it was in formal session. After a week of this, he said one night, “You know, I feel tired. I simply can’t understand it.”

The following year, Dad was very pleased when President Lyndon Johnson flew to Independence and signed the Medicare Bill, seated beside him on the stage of the Truman Library auditorium. The bill, President Johnson pointed out, was the culmination of the long struggle for a national health policy which Dad had begun in 1945, as part of the twenty-one-point program that had stunned the complacent conservatives then dominating Congress.

Dad was equally fond of our second set of boys, who came a little later in his grandfatherhood. They are Harrison and Thomas. But he inevitably felt a little closer to Kif and Will, because he spent more time with them. I did my best to maintain my standing rule against newspaper publicity, but I did not always succeed. One day, during a vacation in Florida, Will was photographed walking down a road behind Dad. He was imitating Dad’s stride. Moreover, the resemblance between him and Dad was striking. Kif tends more toward the Daniel side of the family. Actually, both Kif and Will were following Dad, but in the photograph the only part of Kif that was evident was his foot. Kif was not too happy about that, especially when Will was presented with a wooden plaque on which a photoengraving of the picture was superimposed.

A few months later, Kif and Will were supposed to meet Dad and Mother at Kennedy Airport. On the arrival day, Will came down with an earache and to his great dismay couldn’t go. Kif made a polite effort to restrain his enthusiasm at being the only youthful ambassador to meet his grandparents, but he was obviously pretty set up about it and took great pains with his appearance. By the time he departed with his father to meet the plane, he looked like an advertisement for Brooks Brothers. The day after the meeting, Kif’s picture with Dad and Mother and Clifton appeared in the paper. Very pleased with himself, he sauntered into the bedroom and said to Will, “Well, I made the
Tribune
this morning.”

All the boys call Dad Grandpa. He never much liked nicknames, but he tolerated this one. Mother never liked nicknames either, but rejoiced in the name Gammy and had absolutely no objection to hearing herself called that in public. The mere sight of any one of the five men in my family reduced her to the consistency of a marshmallow.

Dad was not the sort of grandfather who got down on the floor and roughhoused with the children. He treated them with dignity, as if they were men, and impressed them when he talked or read or told them stories. “My grandsons respect me,” he said. However, he was perfectly capable of taking their side against mine if there was any justice in it. It was a new experience for me to have Dad on somebody else’s side.

During one of Mother and Dad’s visits, we were vacationing in the country. A stray kitten arrived on our doorstep. Kif and Will immediately fell in love with it and began to pester me to be allowed to keep it. A Bedlington terrier, which came with the house we had rented for the summer, disapproved of the new guest. Although I rarely agreed with the Bedlington, I was in her corner for once. Much to my dismay, Dad upheld Kif and Will. He petted the kitten and said the boys were right.

The Bedlington bided her time until nobody was looking and was on the point of making one mouthful of the tiny thing when the kitten jumped about six feet to the trunk of a big old oak tree, scaled the rough bark like a shot, and got out on the end of the highest limb. There it crouched, yowling piteously, and could not be coaxed to move.

Pandemonium set in. The Bedlington ran round and round the tree trunk, barking fiercely. Kif and Will began to jump up and down and wail that the kitten had to be rescued. “Tie up that dog!” Dad ordered, and somebody undertook to collar the Bedlington. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the publisher of
The New York Times,
a dinner guest (I had planned what I thought would be an especially pleasant and relaxing evening, since we were entertaining my husband’s boss), got a ladder out of the garage, climbed the tree, and retrieved the kitten.

I had seen enough of the kitten by now to last me a lifetime and was planning subtle arrangements for its disappearance. But Dad, after applauding Sulzberger’s gallantry in action, expressed great concern for the creature.

“It’s had a bad experience,” he said to the boys. “We will have to look after it.”

“Oh, dear,” I murmured. “I thought you liked horses.”

“I like cats,” Dad informed me, as Kif and Will beamed.

Dad suggested I go into the house and get a big, soft turkish towel. He instructed me in how the towel should be folded and directed its placement under a chair. “So the kitten will feel secure,” he said. “Now, Margaret, go get a bowl of milk.”

When I came back with the milk, I plunked it down on the terrace.

“Put it under the chair,” Dad said, “on the towel. The kitten is too frightened to eat out in the open.”

“But it will just make a big mess,” I warned.

“No, it won’t,” my father said. “Cats are very neat animals.”

“But I don’t want a kitten,” I said. “If we feed it, it will stay.”

“We’ll get around to that,” he said.

It then occurred to me to call our neighbors across the road to find out if they were short a kitten. (The kitten had further irritated me by proving Dad’s point and lapping up the milk without spilling a drop.) Our neighbors had, indeed, lost a kitten. I was the only one who was relieved when they came for it.

The boys loved to visit their grandfather and grandmother in Independence in the big old house where I was born. They especially liked to go there for Christmas to decorate the tree with all the ornaments I remember from my own childhood and hear stories of Christmases past. In Independence, they had a lot of freedom.

All the boys had a tour of Dad’s library, and though I doubt they completely understood its significance, they were impressed with many of the personal mementos and the importance strangers assign to them. They became more and more aware of the fact their grandfather played a very large role in the history of their country.