Bess Truman

First Lady

• Born: February 13, 1885
• Birthplace: Independence, Missouri
• Died: October 18, 1982
• Place of death: Independence, Missouri

President:Harry S. Truman 1945–1953

Overview

Bess Truman became First Lady upon the sudden death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April, 1945. She was a private person who avoided reporters and felt uncomfortable in the Washington, DC, political arena. Behind the scenes, however, she was a shrewd and trusted adviser to her husband, and she played a key role in President Harry S. Truman’s most important political decisions.

Early Life

Elizabeth Virginia Wallace was born on February 13, 1885, in Independence, Missouri, the oldest child of Margaret (Madge) Gates Wallace and David Willock Wallace. Bess was both an excellent student and an accomplished athlete in high school. She was considered to be the best tennis player in Independence—male or female—as well as an excellent ice skater and horseback rider.

When she was eighteen years old, Bess’s life was shattered by the violent death of her father. He was one of the most popular men in town, but his life was deeply troubled. Wallace held a succession of minor political patronage positions that never produced enough income to support his extravagant wife and their five children. Becoming increasingly depressed, Wallace began drinking heavily. On the morning of June 17, 1903, forty-three-year-old David Wallace committed suicide by shooting himself with a revolver. His death by his own hand profoundly influenced Bess for the rest of her life; after her father’s death she became much more reserved, private, and pessimistic.

Marriage and Family

Bess first met Harry S. Truman in 1890, when he was six years old and she was five. Harry was absolutely infatuated with her, but she considered him to be just a friend. In 1906 they began seeing each other more frequently. Bess’s mother strongly disapproved of the growing relationship, but Harry was determined to win Bess’s hand in marriage. In June 1911, he finally summoned up the courage to propose, but she refused. Bess knew that her mother was almost totally dependent upon her, which had discouraged other suitors but not Harry. Afraid that he would take Bess away from her, Mrs. Wallace told her daughter, “You don’t want to marry that farmer boy, he’s not going to make it anywhere.” Finally, in 1917, after seven years of courtship and just before Truman joined the Army and was to be shipped overseas, Bess accepted his proposal. She wanted to get married at once, but now Harry refused, telling her that she must not tie herself to a man who might come home a cripple or not at all.

Harry returned safely from World War I, and on June 28, 1919, they were married. They moved in with her mother at 219 North Delaware Street in Independence. Harry and a war buddy, Eddie Jacobson, opened a men’s haberdashery in Kansas City, but it went bankrupt in 1921. Unemployed and in debt, he decided to try his hand at politics, accepting the support of the powerful Pendergast family, a Kansas City political machine, much to the distaste of Bess. She always believed that her father’s lack of success in politics had much to do with his depression, alcoholism, and suicide, and she remembered the publicity and public humiliation of her family by the press following his death. Bess had no desire to be a politician’s wife.

Truman was elected county judge of the eastern district of Jackson County in 1922, but he was defeated in 1924. This setback placed a considerable strain on their marriage, as Margaret Truman, their only child, was born at home on February 17, 1924. In 1926, after a few unsuccessful business ventures, the Pendergast machine agreed to support Harry for presiding judge of the county court. Truman easily won the election. Quietly and behind the scenes, Bess worked to aid her husband, but she kept a low profile in public. Her husband and daughter were her top priorities; she had no desire for public attention or acclaim.

Truman earned respect as a county judge, and soon there was talk of him as a candidate for governor of Missouri. He was, however, passed over for the nomination and was certain his political career was over. Missouri political boss Tom Pendergast did have plans for Harry, though: a run for the US Congress.

Bess did not approve. Concerned about her ailing mother, she was not eager to leave Missouri for Washington, DC. Meanwhile, Pendergast had changed his mind and picked another candidate. Harry was dejected, but a few weeks later he received some astonishing news: Pendergast had chosen him to run for the US Senate.

Bess supported her husband’s decision to accept the nomination but was not certain she could endure the personal and political attacks sure to come their way. Truman waged a relentless campaign across the state of Missouri, often speaking as many as sixteen times in a single day. She would frequently appear with him on the platform but never said a word on his behalf. Political speeches, she told Harry, were not her style. He won an overwhelming victory in the November 1934 election, and in the following January, Harry and Bess, along with their ten-year-old daughter and Mother Wallace, boarded a train for Washington. Bess enrolled Margaret in Gunston Hall, a private school for young girls, where she would spend the school year and then return home for the summer.

Whenever they could, Bess and Margaret stayed in Independence. Harry missed them, but he understood Bess’s homesickness. Although she preferred to stay home as long as possible, she realized that he was relying on her more and more. Senator Truman called his wife a genius at handling reporters, and she became his favorite speechwriter. When Bess was away from Washington, Harry constantly kept her informed of events in the Senate, and she, in turn, was his eyes and ears at home. He often used his letters to her as an opportunity to clarify his thoughts.

By Truman’s second term, Bess had become such an important partner—and their finances were so low—that he put her on the Senate payroll as his secretary. As his work on the Truman Committee required frequent travel to visit arms factories and military installations, Bess became more involved in the daily operation of the office. Truman was quite content being a senator, but by the summer of 1943, rumors about his possible vice presidential candidacy began to circulate. “I don’t want to be the vice president,” he said, “the vice president simply presides over the Senate and sits around hoping for a funeral. . . . It is a very high office which consists entirely of honor, and I don’t have any ambition to hold an office like that. And besides,” he added, “the Madam doesn’t want me to do it.”

Presidency and First Ladyship

Privately, many of the Democratic Party bosses knew President Franklin D. Roosevelt was dying, and their choice for vice president would very likely become Roosevelt’s successor. Truman knew perfectly well what his nomination meant. A reporter remarked to him that as vice president he might “succeed to the throne.” Truman replied, “Hell, I don’t want to be president.” He was concerned about Bess and Margaret’s privacy, and he knew the fact that his wife was on his Senate office payroll would surely surface. Additionally, Bess very much feared that her father’s suicide, which had so strongly affected her as a young girl, would become public.

On the convention floor, the momentum was building for a Truman vice presidential nomination, although Harry continued to insist that he was not interested in the job. On the afternoon of July 19, 1944, he was summoned to a hotel room where the party bosses were waiting. They had Roosevelt on the phone, who said, “You tell the senator that if he wants to break up the Democratic Party in the middle of the war, that’s his responsibility.” A stunned Truman replied, “Well, if that’s the situation, I’ll have to say yes.”

Bess was very unhappy about the sudden turn of events. After delivering his brief acceptance speech, Truman and his wife made their way to a waiting car through a crush of reporters and photographers. As they got into the car, Bess glared at Harry and asked, “Are we going to have to go through this for the rest of our lives?”

Truman tirelessly campaigned for Roosevelt in 1944, traveling thousands of miles around the country. Throughout most of the campaign, Bess had remained so obscure that reporters knew virtually nothing about her. At one point her job as Truman’s Senate secretary was made an issue, but Truman vigorously defended his wife, telling the press that it was no secret Bess was on the Senate payroll. “She’s a clerk in my office and does much of my clerical work,” he said. “I need her here and that’s the reason I’ve got her there. I never make a report or deliver a speech without her editing it. . . . There’s nothing secret about it.” This would be the only time during the campaign that the press would scrutinize Bess. To the Trumans’ immense relief, nothing was said about the death of her father.

On April 12, 1945, at the beginning of his fourth term as president, Roosevelt died of a massive brain hemorrhage. That evening, Harry S. Truman took the oath of office as the thirty-third president of the United States. Bess and Margaret stood next to him as he solemnly took the oath. Later Bess recounted that she spent most of the night thinking about how her and Harry’s life would be changed. “I was very apprehensive,” she admitted. “The country was used to Eleanor Roosevelt. I couldn’t possibly be anything like her.”

A few days later, the new First Lady held her first press conference which, she announced, would also be her last. A reporter asked, “Mrs. Truman, how are we ever going to get to know you?” She quickly replied, “You don’t need to know me. I’m only the president’s wife and the mother of his daughter.”

During Harry’s first years as president, Bess held no press conferences, made few public appearances, and expressed few personal opinions. “People don’t warm up to her easily,” one article said. “[They] respect her integrity and recognize her determination to measure up to the requirements of her position, but they do not enthuse about her.”

In private, Bess’s Washington friends found her warm and kind, and they were extremely fond of her. She was said to be considerate of others, a gracious hostess, and an entertaining conversationalist, although she almost never discussed public affairs. Old friends from Independence or members of the White House staff who saw her on an almost daily basis would speak warmly of her.

The newspaperwomen who had the run of the White House during Eleanor Roosevelt’s regime were incredulous and enraged at Bess’s public silence. The First Lady flatly refused to be interviewed. Finally, after months of trying, Washington women reporters persuaded Mrs. Truman to answer a series of written questions in 1947. Her extremely brief, written, penciled replies were read aloud by two White House secretaries.

Longtime White House servant J. B. West, who served in the Truman White House, said, “Bess guarded her privacy like a precious jewel, yet within that privacy played a prominent role far exceeding what any but a few suspected. She did advise Truman on decisions. And he listened to her.” To the American public, though, Bess remained a mystery. It would take some time for her to warm up to the press and the public.

Bess’s role in the hard-fought presidential campaign of 1948 was considerable. Harry called her his “chief adviser,” and she was. Virtually every decision he made was discussed with her. “She was a one-woman Gallup poll and audience-reaction tester,” Newsweek magazine reported, “keeping a sharp watch on the crowds which listened to her husband’s oratory. She was also the careful censor of the President’s occasional lapses into humorous over-exuberance.” She accompanied her husband by train on the famous whistle-stop campaign across the country. Newsmen told of seeing her sitting at a window of the train, busily blue-penciling Harry’s speeches. At every stop the routine was the same: They would appear together on the rear platform of their private car, Harry would deliver a few words and then introduce Bess as “the boss,” and then Margaret as “the boss’s boss.” This homespun display of family solidarity helped to portray Truman as a decent and devoted family man to the small-town crowds of the American heartland and was considered by many to be a decisive factor in Truman’s election victory in 1948.

The final two years of Truman’s administration, as the Korean War raged, were the most difficult of his entire presidency. Yet early in 1952, he was still toying with the idea of running for another term. Bess feared that Harry could not survive another four years as president, and she did not think that she could survive either. She reminded him that he would be seventy-three years old at the end of another term. On March 29, 1952, Truman announced to the American people what most had already suspected: he would not be a candidate for president. Bess was happy and relieved.

Legacy

After the inauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bess and Harry returned to Missouri to live much as they had before they had left for Washington—as just ordinary citizens. Harry S. Truman died on December 26, 1972, at the age of eighty-eight. Bess continued to live in their Independence home for another ten years. She died on October 18, 1982, at age ninety-seven.

Unlike Eleanor Roosevelt, who preceded her, Bess preferred to remain in the background. She saw her most important role as being the president’s sounding board and confidante.

Bibliography

Ferrell, Robert H. Dear Bess. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983.

“First Lady Biography: Bess Truman. ” National First Ladies’ Library. Natl. First Ladies’ Lib., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2015.

McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Robbins, Jhan. Bess and Harry: An American Love Story. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980.

Truman, Harry S. Memoirs. 2 vols. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955–1956.

Truman, Margaret. Bess W. Truman. New York: Macmillan, 1986.

Truman, Margaret. Souvenir: Margaret Truman’s Own Story. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956.