Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip (22 page)

The early reviews of the show were bad, and the ratings weren’t much better. Who was home to watch TV at that hour anyway? Children— and their mothers, of course. After the program introduced a year-old Cameroonian chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs on January 28, 1953, ratings skyrocketed, though not everyone was amused. The show’s newsreader, Jack Fleming, didn’t care to deliver the headlines seated next to a chimp (and not a particularly friendly one, by most accounts), so he quit. Fleming was replaced by Frank Blair, who was less offended by the simian; Blair stayed with the program for twenty-two years.
Today,
of course, grew into a colossus. It now generates about a half-billion dollars in revenue annually for NBC. (J. Fred Muggs “retired” from the program in 1958, reportedly after biting Martha Raye on the arm. Believe it or not, in 2008 the chimp was still alive and well, living with a handler in Florida.)

Harry hated the way television turned politicians into “play actors,” but he understood, perhaps sooner than most, the power of the medium. “Television is on the threshold of great development,” he declared in a speech on August 13, 1943—when most people barely had any idea what television was. “It is true that there are many technical and commercial difficulties that must be overcome. But the day cannot be far off when our homes, schools, offices, and automobiles will be equipped with television sets. We will see news and sporting events while they are actually happening.”

Truman’s State of the Union address on January 6, 1947, was the first to be televised. Transmitted from the House chamber by coaxial cable, the speech was carried on stations in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. According to one report, the picture was “for the most part … of acceptable clarity.” Not that a lot of people were watching. Only about fourteen thousand sets were in use at the time.

Later that year, Truman installed the first television set in the White House, a $1,795 behemoth that he plopped down next to his desk in the Oval Office. In 1949, Truman’s inauguration was the first to be televised. By then there were stations in fourteen cities as far west as St. Louis, and as many as ten million viewers watched the ceremony—more than had witnessed all previous inaugurals combined.

Four and a half years later, when Tom Naud, one of the
Today
show’s announcers, spotted Harry Truman’s bespectacled visage in the window behind Dave Garroway, he grabbed a microphone and ran outside to grab an impromptu interview with the former president. Naud asked Truman how he stayed in shape and how fast he walked. Then Truman had a question for Naud. Pointing through the window into the studio, he asked, “What’s that fellow doing with the baby in there?” The baby in question was J. Fred Muggs.

His cameo complete, Truman smiled and waved and went his merry way.

I was determined to appear as one of the faces in the background of the
Today
show too, so early on the morning of Friday, May 2, 2008, I set out from my friends’ apartment in Brooklyn for the NBC studios at Rockefeller Center. How hard could it be? All I had to do was stand there.

I had forgotten, however, that
Today
hosts live concerts on Rockefeller Plaza most Fridays. By the time I reached the plaza, it was already teeming—with women of a certain age. They were there to see Neil Diamond.

The crowd was impenetrable. I couldn’t get anywhere near the stage, where all the cameras were.

Not only that, I hadn’t brought a sign. A sign, it turns out, is nearly a prerequisite for getting your mug on
Today.
The cameras favor people with signs, especially signs that mention the
Today
show. The handmade
Today
show sign is practically a modern form of folk art. A stocky guy next to me was holding a large piece of red cardboard with Magic Marker letters: W
HERE IN THE WORLD IS
M
ATT
L
AUER
? (Lauer, one of the program’s hosts, periodically disappears to strange and exotic locales, leaving viewers to guess his whereabouts.) I asked him why he’d made it. “To get on TV,” he said with a shrug. Why else? Soon he waded fearlessly into the crushing mob, a strategy for which I had neither the inclination nor the physique.

So there I was, stuck in the back of the crowd and signless. Neil played “Song Sung Blue” and “America.” The crowd was only growing larger. When he launched into the obligatory song from the new CD, I finally gave up and headed back to Brooklyn, disappointed.

Back at my friends’ apartment, I decided to watch the show, which I had recorded. Mostly I was curious to see what Neil Diamond looked like from less than a block away. Imagine my surprise when I saw myself. Unbeknownst to me, a camera mounted on a robotic crane had panned over the crowd exactly one hour and thirty-one minutes into the program. In a sea of screaming Diamond-heads I could clearly be seen for about a second, standing ramrod straight and stone faced. I looked a bit like a stalker. Or an assassin. Nevertheless, I had, in fact, appeared on the
Today
show.

Later in the show I saw a close-up of a sign: W
HERE IN THE WORLD IS
M
ATT
L
AUER
? The camera pulled back. The stocky guy who’d been standing next to me had had his wish fulfilled too.

After his morning walk on Friday, July 3, Harry visited the new United Nations headquarters on First Avenue. Truman played a crucial role in the creation of the UN. On the evening of April 12, 1945, just minutes after he had hastily taken the oath of office in the cabinet room of the White House, an aide asked Truman if the San Francisco conference on the United Nations was going to take place as scheduled in less than two weeks. “I said it most certainly was,” Truman remembered. “I said it was what Roosevelt had wanted, and it had to take place if we were going to keep the peace. And that’s the first decision I made as President of the United States.”

It was at the San Francisco conference that the United Nations charter was ratified. Afterward, a committee formed to find a home for the new organization. European delegates argued for Geneva, the home of the League of Nations, but the Soviets (of all people) pushed for the United States. “The Old World had it once,” said Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko, “and it is time for the New World to have it.” Besides, as Gromyko pointed out, the United States was conveniently located between Asia and Europe. The committee chose the United States—specifically several square miles covering parts of Westchester County, New York, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. The idea was to create an international version of the District of Columbia.

In early 1946, the General Assembly voted to move the UN from London to New York City until its permanent home in the suburbs was ready. In the summer, the Security Council began meeting in a gymnasium on the campus of Hunter College, a women’s school in the Bronx. Meanwhile, Westchester and Fairfield were having second thoughts about hosting the organization. “A lot of homeowners … got alarmed about the idea of all these foreigners with diplomatic immunity tearing around, running over their children, and having property that couldn’t be taxed,” recalled Isaac Stokes, an American diplomat posted to the UN at the time. In a referendum, Greenwich residents voted 5,505 to 2,019 against hosting the UN. The General Assembly abandoned the “international D.C.” idea and reopened the search for a home. That fall, with classes about to resume at Hunter College, the Security Council was forced to move into an abandoned war factory on Long Island.

With Westchester and Fairfield now out of the running, cities began to furiously compete for the honor (and lucre) of hosting the UN, much as cities compete for the Olympics or the Super Bowl today. Isaac Stokes was the unlucky diplomat assigned to field calls from cities convinced “they had
‘the
place’ for the United Nations.” “I remember Virginia Beach coming in,” said Stokes (though he may have meant to say Richmond).

Ultimately four cities were chosen as finalists: Boston, San Francisco, New York, and Philadelphia. The Soviets vetoed Boston because the city’s Roman Catholic Archbishop, Richard J. Cushing, was a vocal critic of their “Godless” regime. European countries opposed San Francisco because it was too far afield. That left Philadelphia and New York, and, for a time, the leading contender was the City of Brotherly Love. “They had done all their homework,” remembered Isaac Stokes. “They were prepared to offer practically the entire Fairmount Park … to the UN.”

Enter William Zeckendorf Sr., a real estate developer who had recently purchased seventeen acres overlooking the East River in midtown Manhattan for nearly ten million dollars. It was a run-down area of slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants that Zeckendorf planned to turn into a business park to rival Rockefeller Center. Then, on the morning of Friday, December 6, 1946, Zeckendorf read an article in the
New York Times
about the likelihood that New York would lose the United Nations. The developer called Mayor William O’Dwyer and told him the UN could have the land he’d purchased “for any price they wish to pay.” O’Dwyer summoned Robert Moses, who called Nelson Rockefeller, who called his father, John D. Rockefeller. The elder Rockefeller, who wasn’t crazy about Rockefeller Center facing competition from Zeckendorf’s development anyway, agreed to give the UN $8.5 million to buy the property. The catch, according to Isaac Stokes, was that Congress had to pass a law allowing him to claim the donation as a tax deduction, since contributions to international organizations were not deductible. The law got passed and Rockefeller gave the money to the UN, which bought the land from Zeckendorf, who took a loss on the deal but rescued the organization from Philadelphia.

President Truman convinced Congress to loan the UN sixty-five million dollars, interest-free, to pay for construction of the organization’s headquarters. (The loan was paid off, on time, in 1982.) Truman himself laid the cornerstone on United Nations Day, October 24, 1949, and construction was completed less than a year later. Designed by a multinational team of architects, the centerpiece of the headquarters is the thirty-eight-story aluminum, glass, and marble Secretariat Building, which soars 550 feet above the East River.

When Harry arrived for his tour, Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold greeted him in front of the Secretariat Building. Hammarskjold had just been installed the previous autumn, and the two men had never met. They shook hands for photographers, who begged them for “just one more” shot. “Photographers,” Truman warned Hammarskjold, “are tyrants.” Eventually the handshake ended and Harry and Dag went up to the secretary general’s top-floor office for coffee. Afterward, Truman stopped by the pressroom to chat with UN correspondents (and have another cup of coffee). In the Trusteeship Council chamber, a meeting was adjourned so he could shake hands with the delegates. Next door, in the Economic and Social Council chamber, Hammarskjold proudly pointed out the ceiling, which had been designed by an architect from his native Sweden. Pipes and ducts were left exposed, a symbolic reminder that the work of the United Nations, like the ceiling, would never be finished.

“Acoustically correct!” Truman declared.

With the former president setting a brisk pace, the tour lasted just forty minutes. “I feel top-notch about the whole thing,” he said at the end. “I am wishing all the success in the world to the United Nations. That will be my wish as long as I live.”

The United Nations hasn’t changed much since Harry visited in 1953—and I’m not talking about its seeming inability to solve the world’s problems. The buildings look much the same. Security, however, is a different story. A 1953 travel guide says visitors could feel free to “wander around in most of the public lobbies, lounges, and outdoor terraces and grounds.” There was no charge for admission. Today everyone must pass through a metal detector. There is absolutely no wandering. And a tour costs $13.50.

My tour group was led by a petite and brilliant woman named Julia. Her knowledge of the UN was absolute. She probably could have recited the member nations in alphabetical order. And she never referred to the UN as “the UN.” To Julia it was “the organ-eye-zation.” She was most efficient. Her only flaw was that she couldn’t decide what to do with her hair. Between each stop on the tour she’d either tie it up in a scrunchie or take it down again. It was distracting. Yet also enchanting.

We toured the chambers: Security Council, Trusteeship Council, Economic and Social Council. Then we came to a small exhibit on disarmament. It included artifacts recovered from the sites of the two nuclear weapons dropped on Japan in 1945—the Truman bombs. From Hiroshima there were cans and coins and bottles all fused into a charred lump by the heat of the blast. From Nagasaki, a stone statue of St. Agnes that stood less than a kilometer from ground zero, the back mottled and charred. None of this was here when Harry visited, of course. But, implicitly anyway, the exhibit questioned his judgment. The bombings killed more than two hundred thousand people. Truman always claimed he never had any second thoughts about authorizing the use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese. “They never would have surrendered otherwise,” he told an interviewer in 1955. “I don’t believe in speculating on the mental feeling and as far as the bomb is concerned I ordered its use for a military reason—for no other cause—and it saved the lives of a great many of our soldiers. That is all I had in mind.”

“I have never worried about the dropping of the bomb,” he wrote in 1964. “It was just a means to end the war and that is what was accomplished.”

Julia put her hair up and shepherded us to the General Assembly Hall, where all 192 member-nations have seats. (Actually, each gets six seats, three for delegates and three for alternates.) When Harry visited back in 1953, just sixty nations were represented in the General Assembly. In fact the UN was built to accommodate only as many as seventy, a number that was exceeded in 1955, forcing major renovations. Julia explained that the nations are seated by lottery. Each year, the secretary general randomly selects the name of one country, and the seats are assigned in English alphabetical order beginning with that country. In 2007, Mexico was the lucky Number 1, so it got the best seats in the house, followed by Micronesia. Poor Mauritius—its delegation got the worst seats in the house. Well, not the worst—those are up in the balcony, where we were.