Harry Truman (33 page)

“Yes, Mamma,” Dad said, “but you know there are good Yankees as well as bad and good Rebels.”

“Well, if there are any good Yankees, I haven’t seen one yet,” Mamma Truman replied.

Toward the end of her stay, Mamma was coming down a small four-step stairway at the end of the hall in the east wing when she slipped and fell. She picked herself up and did not say a word about it. The only hint she gave of trouble was her refusal to go to church with us the next day. Not until she was back in Missouri did she tell her daughter Mary about the fall.

After Mamma Truman went home, we settled into White House living. It was not easy. My friends had to run a gauntlet of guards to see me. Mother was busy from dawn to dark, appearing at various lunches and teas. My biggest gripe was the White House food. There were simply too many cooks on the staff, working various shifts, to allow room for any personal touches. It was hotel kitchen food, adequate but uninspired. I discovered another hotel touch when I wandered down to the kitchen one night during our first few weeks in 1945 and found locks on all the iceboxes. I squawked to the President of the United States, but not even he could do anything about it. The locks were necessary, he was told. The staff was so large, it was impossible to keep track of everybody as they came and went and without locks it would have been ridiculously easy for people to start lugging home steaks, hams, and other goodies.

Fortunately, President Roosevelt had installed a small kitchen on the third floor which he often used when he was alone in the White House. Dad permitted his midnight-snack-loving daughter to stock its tiny icebox with Cokes, ice cream, and other fattening materials for after-hours dining.

During our first months in the White House, we had to cope with Mrs. Nesbitt, the housekeeper we inherited from the Roosevelts. Her taste in food was atrocious, and her attitude toward the Trumans was openly condescending. One night, when Mother was away, brussels sprouts were served at dinner. Dad made a face and pushed them aside. He hates brussels sprouts. I told this to Mrs. Nesbitt. The next night, we got brussels sprouts again. Tensely, I informed Mrs. Nesbitt I did not want to see another brussels sprout in the White House, much less on our dinner table. The next night we got them again! I called Mother and told her either Mrs. Nesbitt went, or I went. “Don’t do or say anything until I get there,” Mother told me.

I reluctantly obeyed, and Mother tried to cope with Mrs. Nesbitt by giving her detailed instructions on menus and other household matters. “Mrs. Roosevelt never did things that way,” Mrs. Nesbitt grandly declared.

Mother just looked at her, and that night she had a talk with Dad about Mrs. Nesbitt. A few weeks later she retired.

Dad was never particularly happy being waited on by the numerous servants in the White House. It offended his ingrained Missouri sense of equality. The White House staff was astonished, for instance, when Dad introduced his brother Vivian to Alonzo Fields, the head butler, and they shook hands before Vivian sat down at the table. Dad and Mother made it a point to know each servant by name, and whenever a new man went on duty in the dining room, Fields introduced him. Dad would stand up, shake hands with him, and say, “Now don’t be disturbed by me. You just do what Fields tells you and I know we will be glad to have you aboard.”

Mother and I, on the other hand, not being particularly domestic, never fretted over being waited on. Mother, who is nothing if not frank, said later, when we were reminiscing about our White House days: “There’s only one thing I miss. All that help.” And she sighed. I agreed, and Dad could only shake his head and wonder where two people raised in Missouri could get such notions.

During the tumultuous middle months of 1945, my father had little time to worry about such things. The Russians continued to be impossible, even though Dad, faithful to the Yalta agreements, pulled our troops back to the stipulated zones of occupation, turning over most of Eastern Europe to their control. Meanwhile, General Charles de Gaulle began behaving like a spoiled boy. To my father’s astonishment, he refused to withdraw French troops that had occupied the German city of Stuttgart. Then, in an even more outrageous move, he sent troops across the border into northwest Italy to seize part of the Aosta Valley. He also sent troops rampaging into Syria and Lebanon, intent on reclaiming French power there. General De Gaulle may have achieved a good deal with his policy of “grandeur” for France in the 1960s. I seriously doubt it. His headstrong nationalism was anachronistic. In the weeks after Germany’s surrender, he exasperated everyone. At one point, there seemed to be a serious possibility that French and American troops might start shooting each other in the Aosta Valley.

What particularly angered my father was the General’s contemptuous indifference to Russian reactions to his unilateral grandstanding. If we had let him get away with his grab for Italian and German territory, Stalin would have had a perfect example to excuse his seizure of Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. In the course of this argument, De Gaulle was almost as insulting to Dad as Marshal Stalin had been to President Roosevelt. Prime Minister Churchill wanted Dad to release the correspondence to the public - knowing it would have finished De Gaulle politically in France. Admiral Leahy also favored such a move. My father decided against it. He sensed - quite accurately - that without De Gaulle, France would be politically unstable and easy prey for a Communist takeover.

My father made General De Gaulle behave by issuing a very simple order.

He asked Admiral Leahy: “The French are using our guns, are they not?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Admiral Leahy.

“All right, we will at once stop shipping guns, ammunition, and equipment to De Gaulle.”

Even tougher tactics had to be used to restrain Marshal Tito from grabbing Trieste and the surrounding countryside for Yugoslavia. In this test of wills, for a while it looked as if full-scale warfare might be necessary. Air units were alerted, five armored divisions were prepared for an advance through the Brenner Pass, and units of the Mediterranean fleet headed for the Adriatic. Marshal Tito soon changed his mind about occupying Trieste.

On the home front, my father also had to show a little steel in his relations with Congress. He vetoed a bill which would have extended the deferment of agricultural workers. As a farmer who went to war in World War I, Dad could see no reason for this measure. But he also displayed more than a little shrewdness in his congressional politics, born of his years on the Hill. One of Roosevelt’s most cantankerous opponents had been Kenneth McKellar, the senior senator from Tennessee. He had been in the Senate since 1916 and was now president pro tem, which meant, with Dad transferred to the White House, he was the Senate’s chief executive officer. Dad decided that, in this capacity, he should sit in on Cabinet meetings. Old “Mac” was very flattered by this attention from the Executive Branch and only much later did he realize this new role made it very difficult for him to be an anti-Truman Democrat in the Senate.

The first test of this policy was my father’s decision to reappoint David Lilienthal chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority for another nine years. Senator McKellar had been feuding with Lilienthal ever since he took office, and the TVA chairman had almost no hope of being reconfirmed. In his diary, shortly after President Roosevelt died, Lilienthal noted:

Ironically, Lilienthal, relatively unacquainted with the inside approach to Senate politics, was dismayed when he learned Senator McKellar was sitting in on Cabinet meetings. On April 23, Lilienthal noted in his diary: “McKellar had a conference with the President the other day. He may already have a commitment that I shall not be named.”

On May 1, when Lilienthal saw my father in his office, Dad told him McKellar had already promised “the biggest explosion in the Senate in twenty years” if Dad renominated Lilienthal. “I guess we will have it,” Dad said. Lilienthal was amazed by his unworried, matter-of-fact tone.

Then, solemnly, my father asked him if he would be prepared to do something to save face for Senator McKellar. Lilienthal was about to object, when Dad continued, “I want to know if you are ready to assure me that you will carry on the TVA for me in the same fine way that you did for my predecessor, and do your best to keep it out of political difficulties?”

Lilienthal grinned. “That’s easy. I shall be honored to serve under you, and I will certainly try to carry on as well in the future as I have in the past twelve years. . . . As for keeping out of political difficulties, you know from your own public career that you can’t please everyone.”

My father nodded and said he was familiar with Senator McKellar. “I had to fight him many times on the Appropriations Committee and I know how arbitrary and mean he can be.”

Almost in bewilderment, Lilienthal confided to his diary: “And that was about all there was about McKellar. No talk about what a “rap” he as President was assuming in naming me in spite of the President of the Senate; no talk, such as Byrnes and President Roosevelt had given me, about what McKellar could do to disrupt the peace if his wishes concerning me were not respected - none of that - just, there it was.”

On May 23, Lilienthal informed his journal: “The shootin’ is over. . . . When I compare what actually happened with what Justice Byrnes predicted to the late President would happen as recently as November, I rub my eyes. McKellar, his power increased, did go the limit, to wit, a “personally and politically objectionable issue” (in fact, he made me a triple-threat man: “objectionable, obnoxious, and offensive”), but they got absolutely nowhere with anyone, either in the committee or on the final go-round Monday afternoon, when the name was confirmed, with only McKay and Stewart recorded nay on a voice vote. . . . I am incredulous.”

Each day, callers streamed into my father’s office. He tried to see as many of these “customers” as possible. After lunch - usually at one o’clock - he would take a half hour nap, and resume his appointments for the rest of the afternoon, working until six or six-thirty. Often he took a quick swim or a stroll around the grounds before returning to our side of the house for dinner at seven. Most previous Presidents reserved their afternoons for paperwork. Dad was doing his paperwork at night, and he very soon developed the habit of signing the innumerable documents the President must sign each day while he talked with his visitors.

During these first months, my father tried to make a brief memorandum on each visitor. He thought they might be helpful in compiling a history of his presidency. But after October 1945, he abandoned the habit, partly because he was under too much pressure, but also because an amazing number of people who came to see the President did nothing but waste his time. Let me give you a sample of what I mean from Dad’s early appointment schedules.

On Monday, May 14, at 9:30, Senator George Radcliffe of Maryland “came in to pay respects and to assure me he was still the same friend he had always been to me and if ever he could be helpful in any way he wanted me to understand he was available.”

At 9:45, Major General William Donovan came in to “tell how important the Secret Service is and how much he could do to run the government on an even basis.”

At 10:00, there was a policy meeting with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and other high officials.

At 10:15, the Honorable Sergio Osmeña, president of the Philippines, came in and “signed the agreement to furnish the U.S. with all the military and naval bases it needed.”

At 10:30, F. L. Altschuler, railroad man from Kansas City – “just came in to pay respects.”

At 10:45, the representatives of the Gulf Ports Association “came in to tell importance of Gulf ports - in which I did not put much house. I did sympathize with them, however, and told them I knew a great deal about the Gulf Coast.”

At 11:00, the Honorable Elmer Davis came in to thrash out the problem of the military government’s attitude toward news in Germany.

At 11:15, came Herbert Rivers from Kansas City, “one of AFL pillars here in Washington and has always been a personal friend. Came in to talk labor with me.”

At 11:30, Admiral Richard E. Byrd “came in to tell me how to settle world peace - in his opinion Stalin was going to ruin peace proposal or program and was cause of veto [in the UN] - When I informed him Churchill was cause of veto, his whole thesis collapsed.”

At 12:00, Myron Blaylock, national committeeman from Texas, came in to pay his respects “and to say Texas was for me.”

At 12:15, the Honorable Donald Nelson, who was leaving government service, “came in to say goodbye.”

At 12:30, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, came in to discuss an appointment which Dad did not approve. But because President Roosevelt had named him, he was letting Ickes send his man up to the Senate.

At 12:45, Mrs. Charles B. Gilbert, president of the American Legion Auxiliary, presented the first poppy of the year to the President.

After lunch, the procession resumed. At 2:00, Dr. Τ. V. Soong “came in to discuss financial situation in China and urged me to give China the balance of $200 million, which I did.”

At 2:30, Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, and other members of the British delegation to the San Francisco Conference came in “to pay respects and to discuss the world situation.”

At 2:45 . . .

And so it went, this incredible combination of the trivial and the momentous, for the rest of the day, which ended at 8:15 with a War Bond show in the East Room of the White House, presided over by Bob Hope. I was thrilled to meet Hope and the other members of his troupe, which included Vera Vague and Jerry Colonna. Dad noted at the bottom of his daily schedule: “Had a good time at the show.”