The Man From Independence: The Harry S. Truman Story

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Exclusions apply. The only president from the state of Missouri, Harry S. Truman. Here's our own Monty Montgomery to get us started. Harry Truman was born May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri. But his family would soon move to the town he's most associated with.

Here's MPS Ranger Doug Richardson with more. It was likely in 1890 that the Truman family settled in Independence, mostly so that Harry could attend the better schools. And for the rest of his life, Truman described Kansas City as a suburb of Independence.

He believed that. Well, it's good to be back home in what I call the center of the world, Independence, Missouri. I think it's the greatest town in the United States and I've been all over the country and I've been to Europe and South America and several other places. But I'd still like to come back home and I'll continue to feel that way as long as I live. And I think you'll find everybody in Independence feel the same way about this town because it's the center of things for most of us and it's the center of things for me.

And I'm more than happy to be here and to stay here for the rest of my life. Truman would graduate from those schools his family moved to Independence for in 1901, meeting his future wife Bess Wallace in the process. But his plans for higher education didn't pan out. Harry Truman's father suffered a financial reversal of sorts and it appears as if John Anderson Truman lost at the time about 40 some thousand dollars as a result of some not so great investments and that pretty much dashed any hope of Harry Truman continuing into college. So to this date Harry Truman is the last president that we've had in this country who did not have a college education.

He was very conscious about, self-conscious about that. So Harry Truman went to Kansas City and entered the workforce. He served as a payroll clerk on the railroad.

He served in a bank. He actually roomed with a brother of Dwight David Eisenhower. But then Truman's mother, father, brother and sister were asked to return to the family farm in Grandview. Harry Truman's grandmother was now getting older.

Her brother Harry's uncle Harrison, for whom Harry Truman was named, wanted to include the Trumans. And by 1906 Harry Truman gave up a pretty good job at a bank in Kansas City and went to work on the farm. It was while working on that farm that Truman really taught himself the art of agriculture all at a time where they weren't using a lot of high-tech farming equipment.

We're still talking mules and horses and plows. He's doing jobs that need to be done, but jobs that he doesn't necessarily like to do, putting rings in pigs ears and bailing hay and all of that. But it was on that farm that Harry Truman's mother said he learned common sense.

And she said that it was something that he could never have gained in town. Now while living on the farm too, Truman served briefly on the school board. He served briefly as the postmaster of Grandview. He got involved in the Masons. And so he built these community relations too. And in a way, working on the farm and being part of all of this helped bring an introverted young man out. As you get in towards the middle of the 1910s, after Harry Truman's father died in Grandview in the farm home in November of 1914. So Truman is now the principal farmer on the farm.

But when what we now call World War I broke open in Europe, Truman stepped up. He had earlier been in reserve unit in Kansas City. When I was 21 years old, I joined an organization in Kansas City known as Battery B of the Missouri Battalion of Field Artillery. I couldn't join before I was 21 because my mother and father were afraid I'd have to wear a blue uniform and I did. And I wore that blue uniform out to see my old grandmother. She looked at me and I thought I looked mighty pretty in that uniform. Said Harry, that's the first time a uniform of that color has been in this house since the Civil War. Don't you bring it back. I didn't.

You can be sure of that. But Truman was now into his 30s. He was, in essence, legally blind. His brother said that the only reason that the Army probably took him was that Harry Truman might have fudged the eye exam.

He knew that he memorized the chart. But regardless of that, Harry Truman reenlisted in the United States Army and became attached to an American artillery battery. And they saw some heavy action. After I'd been in France about a month, I was promoted to a captain and then was put in command of Battery D. That battery had quite an experience. We started out in the Vosges Mountains. We found out exactly what it meant to be under fire. Then we moved over to the Meuse-Argonne Drive at Saubidoux, a sector they called it. And there we fired 3,000 rounds. When we got through firing that barrage, we reached up as fast as we could and went into position up between Verdun and Sheppey. And while we were in that position, I had a chance to shoot out three batteries on the German side. In doing that, I was firing outside the sector. The colonel called me up and asked me if I was firing outside the sector. I said, yes, colonel. I just put some German batteries out of business. He says, you quit firing over there. Well, he was way back and I knew he'd never get up with me, so I kept on firing and knocked out the other two batteries, which paid off in the election of 1948. These were Pennsylvania batteries, and I got into a town where two of these batteries came from.

And if you don't think I carried those two times, you're off your beam, sure enough, because they found out that I was the battery that saved them from getting shot at. Harry Truman could be proud, and his men could be proud, that he lost not one man in battle in World War I. And when we continue more on the life of Harry Truman here on Our American Story. Folks, if you love the stories we tell about this great country, and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture, and faith, are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. A place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life, and all the things that are good in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.

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That's Goldco.com slash iHeart. Music And we return to our American stories and the story of Harry S. Truman. When we last left off, Doug Richardson, a ranger at the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site in Independence, Missouri, was telling us about Truman's early life and service in World War I. Truman would return from the war and marry his childhood sweetheart, Bess Wallace. And together they would move into 219 North Delaware Street in Independence.

Let's continue with the story. One of the decisions Harry Truman did make after coming home from the war, he was not going to return to the farm. So one of the relationships that Harry Truman struck up in his wartime service was with a fellow by the name of Eddie Jacobson. They ran a canteen together on base when they were preparing to go to war. And so when they came home from the war, they decided to open up a haberdashery in downtown Kansas City on 12th Street. He called it the shirt store. And at first the business was booming. But then the economy started to take a nosedive. And when it came to the shirt store, unfortunately, Harry Truman and his partner lost their shirts. Truman's partner ended up filing for bankruptcy. Harry Truman did not.

And there's less speculation as to why. A lot of us believe that it was because by this time, Harry Truman had been approached by some members in the famous, notorious, whatever word you'd like to use, Pendergast family, about getting into local politics. And I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any politician who would love to enter politics with a bankruptcy under their belt. The Pendergast family were more or less the Democratic Party's kingmakers in Kansas City at the time. And Tom Pendergast, their leader, was notoriously corrupt. At one point, he received a large amount of money from insurance companies.

A lot of that money went to friends, and he was eventually arrested for tax evasion. Here's Harry Truman's friend, Rufus B. Burrus, on Pendergast. Mr. Tom Pendergast, his own right was not a crook in his own ways. He had done a great deal of good for the citizens of Kansas City.

But there were 112 insurance companies that corrupted Mr. Pendergast at a time when he was greatly indebted on account of being a devotee of the horse races, where he had lost. And for that reason, it's hard to say that a man is a crook, because somebody that was in a high place took advantage of a man that was in dire trouble and distress at the time he was. But Truman was approached to get involved in local politics under the system of the day. What the rest of the country probably called county commissioners here, they were called county judges. And he was asked to run as the Eastern District Judge for Jackson County.

And it's a great story. He's native to this area. His family had ties to the Western trails. He was a soldier, served in the Great War, and that's always a wonderful bonus to somebody who's getting into elected politics. And Truman won. Now, unfortunately, when it came time for re-election, he lost a bit for re-election and had a couple of years sort of in the wilderness, where he sold automobile memberships, almost like the AAA.

But then, he was elected for a couple of terms as presiding judge of Jackson County. And what's so neat is that to this very day, there is evidence of Harry Truman's influence in local politics. Harry Truman supervised the enlarging of and building of the Independence Courthouse. He modernized the roads here, hospitals.

And what's remarkable is that almost all of these investments either came in at or below budget. Of course, Harry Truman would admit he could never have achieved success in electoral politics without the influence of the Pendergast family. But one thing that's frequently forgotten is that when Truman was judge here in Jackson County, sometimes there was conflict with the Pendergasts. Pendergast, Thomas Pendergast, recognized that it was actually in the Pendergast's best interests to let Harry Truman be an honest politician.

So, a famous example, when Truman was rebuilding some of the roads here in Jackson County, some of the influencers in the Pendergast machine wanted to use Pendergast cement and concrete, and they just happened not to be the lowest bidder. But Pendergast was smart enough to recognize, let Truman be Truman, and that was a political asset. Now, Truman was reaching sort of a crossroads when his second term as presiding judge was nearing its end. He could not run again.

What would be next for him? He had found politics to his liking. Now, today, a lot of people probably think of the word politics or politician as a pejorative.

Truman never did. To him, it was a noble job. Well, again, through the intercession of the Pendergasts, he was nominated to run as United States senator, and it was a tough campaign. It was a really tough campaign.

Sometimes he didn't have enough money to go to hotel rooms, so he slept in his car. It was a true grassroots campaign, really, both times. He was elected in 1934 to serve as Missouri's junior senator and then reelected in 1940. He entered the United States Senate with a little bit of a cloud over his head. Some called him the senator from Pendergast. But as he got into his second term, Truman made a name for himself in what was eventually called the Truman Committee. He didn't like that, but it was a committee that investigated waste, fraud, and abuse in military spending. And the Truman Committee and his work ended up saving the American taxpayers billions of dollars, which was important as we got closer and then passed December 7th of 1941. I think Truman would tell you he would have been perfectly content to have spent the rest of his political life in the United States Senate. He was happy.

He just loved everything about it. But fate played another hand at the Democratic National Convention in 1944, when through a fascinating series of discussions and political machinery, Truman ended up being nominated as vice president under Franklin Roosevelt, as Roosevelt was trying to win his fourth term as president of the United States. One of the most fascinating photographs that have Mr. and Mrs. Truman together is at that convention because you can see in her face, this is not what she wants.

This is not what she wants at all. And it was said that it was frosty for a little while. I got to the hotel that evening after I'd been nominated. There was a Secret Service man down in one hallway that went this way and a Secret Service man down this hallway that went this way and one standing in front of the door. And Margaret and Mrs. Truman both began to cry on and over me if they'd have to go through that for the rest of their lives.

And I said, I am very much afraid that you will unless somebody takes the notion to shoot me, as they do sometimes when a fellow gets in my position. And then that made him cry worse. And thus in January of 1945, Harry Truman became vice president of the United States. So instead of being a member of the United States Senate, he was now presiding officer of the United States Senate, and he didn't like that as much.

That's where he happened to be on April 12th of 1945. Truman and the Speaker of the House and others were prepared to convene what was called the Board of Education, which is a fancy name for a poker game. And so the cards were being dealt, and Vice President Truman was told that Franklin Roosevelt's press secretary had called. Harry Truman was told to call the White House, and all who were there said that the look on Harry Truman's face was indescribable. Very quickly, in short order, Truman rushed from the United States Capitol to the White House, and once escorted into the White House, Eleanor Roosevelt placed her hands on the vice president and said, Harry, the president is dead. And Truman said, Mrs. Roosevelt, is there anything I can do for you?

And Mrs. Roosevelt looked him in the eyes and said, no, Harry, is there anything I can do for you, for you are the one in trouble now? No vice president ever has the opportunity to become properly prepared to become president and succeed to that great office. Every president, when he goes into office, takes some time to familiarize himself with the duties. John Marshall said there was only one heartbeat between the vice president and the White House, and he knew exactly what he was talking about, and I experienced that situation. But when the vice president does take over, he must assume the office of the presidency and do the very best to make it work.

And when we continue more of the life of President Harry S. Truman here on Our American Stories. Brought to you by Nissan designed to thrill the art and science of designing a vehicle involves many stages, some of which include cutting edge technology. But at the very start, there's a step that has been around since the beginning of design itself, the two dimensional sketch, and the designers at Nissan know that this involves much more than a technical drawing. The early finished sketches can be abstract. They might give a sense of shapes and colors of lines and reflective surfaces. They're there to impart a feeling that this car was meant to go fast or this car is meant to take you on an adventure.

Ideally, the sketch marries form and function. It looks like the type of vehicle that will take your breath away, but also be perfectly suited for its intended purpose. Brought to you by Nissan designed to thrill.

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Expecto Patronum! Sometimes you feel a little grouchy. And I love being grouchy. Or you feel like an adventure. I'm on my way to flavor town.

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With everything going on in the economy, inflation, war, and the threat of recession, you can't afford to do nothing. Call GoldCo today to see if diversifying your money with gold and silver is right for you. And get your free Ronald Reagan half ounce silver coin. Visit GoldCo.com slash iHeart.

That's GoldCo.com slash iHeart. And we return to our American stories and the story of Harry S. Truman. When we last left off, Vice President Truman had just found out from Eleanor Roosevelt that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died.

And he was about to become president. Here's Truman's daughter, Margaret Truman Daniel, reflecting on that day. I remember April the 12th, 1945 very well. It was the birthday of a good friend of mine who lived next door to us in Washington. I also had a date for the theater and for dinner. We were going on to the birthday party later.

Naturally, I never made it to the theater. My father called, and I thought his voice sounded a little strange, but I didn't know why. He said, I'd like to speak to your mother. He had to tell me that three times, and finally I got the message.

Something must be really wrong. I called Mother to the phone, and when she came off the phone, there were tears in her eyes. And she told me that President Roosevelt had just died. And then I remember we went down to the White House, and I believe that Dad was sworn in at 7.08 or 9, something like that.

Everything was very quiet, and naturally everyone extremely sad. At 7.09 p.m. April 12th, 1945, the cabinet was gathered with just a few exceptions. Members of the Supreme Court came.

The Chief Justice came. And under a big portrait of Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman took the oath of office as president. There's silent film footage of that. And when you look at that, it's remarkable to look at Mrs. Truman and Margaret Truman standing next to him, because it's obvious that Mrs. Truman had been crying quite a bit. And it's likely because everybody was shocked at the death of Franklin Roosevelt, but now Mrs. Truman knew that her world was about to change as well. And the thing about it, Harry Truman did sort of everything late in life. He married late. He served late in World War I. He wasn't really known outside of Jackson County, Missouri, until he was 50. And now 60, he's President of the United States.

It is, not to sound overly romantic, it is just an exceptional American story. So the very first decision that Harry Truman made as President of the United States was allowing Mrs. Roosevelt to use an Army plane to go down and be with her husband in Georgia. Now, shortly after that oath of office, the Secretary of War took President Truman aside and said, I need to talk to you about something very important, but didn't say what it was. It wasn't for a few more days that Harry Truman was made fully aware of what we now call the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.

Truman had only been Vice President for just over 82 days and had rarely even seen Roosevelt while he was Vice President. And now Truman had to really seriously study everything, including this weapon. Now, a few days after Truman became President of the United States, Hitler committed suicide.

Mussolini was executed by the Italians. And on Truman's birthday, he got a great birthday present. He was able to announce to the world that Germany had surrendered. This is a solemn but a glorious hour. I only wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations. The flags of freedom fly all over Europe. For this victory, we join in offering our thanks to the providence which has guided and sustained us through the dark days of adversity.

I call upon the people of the United States, whatever their faith, to unite in offering joyful thanks to God for the victory we have won and to pray that he will support us through the end of our present struggle and guide us into the ways of peace. One thing I like to think about, he made his first trip home as President of the United States in late June of 1945. And again, he had never been able to complete college. But when he came home in late June of 1945, what is now UMKC, gave him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

And the voice, the timbre of his voice receiving that is just indescribable. But then on June 28th of 1945, it was his wedding anniversary. He waved at the reporters and he stepped inside of 219 North Delaware Street and there were no public events for the day. It was Harry Truman and his wife and Margaret. He received a power, he received a feeling from his family that some people may feel after drinking a case of Mountain Dew perhaps. He just drew strength from them. And he felt it when they weren't there. And he started to refer to the White House as the Great White Jail or the Great White Sepulcher. And Mrs. Truman, because she was still taking care of her mother, Mrs. Truman would frequently come home to independence and he felt very lonely. And he was a demon letter writer, sometimes a couple a day. And they could talk on the phone and all of that. When he went to Potsdam, Germany to meet with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin and to think a man who just a few years before had a shirt store in Kansas City and now he's meeting the two most powerful men in the world.

The best part of the day for him was talking to his wife on the phone. And it was meeting with these two that Harry Truman started to help shape the world that we are in right now. Pick up your newspaper, watch your TV news. You're going to hear the United Nations in the news. You're going to hear the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the news.

You're going to hear all of this. This is the world that Harry Truman helped start to create in the post-World War era. And it was on his way home from Potsdam that he issued the order to use these bombs against the Japanese Empire. I told Stalin about the atomic explosion and explained to him that we had the most powerful explosive that had ever been discovered in the history of the world and that we expected to use it on Japan. He smiled at me and bowed and said he was glad we had the explosive and he hoped that it would end the Japanese war. I don't think he knew what I was talking about because he didn't display any surprise at all. He just thought we had something extra that we were going to use maybe in a long gun like the Germans had used on Paris. Now, Harry Truman made an address to the country about the dropping of the bombs and I often wonder how many people heard the phrase atomic bomb probably for the first time in their lives.

But for the rest of his life, Truman never second-guessed himself. Well, I thought it was a blessing. I thought it could be used and made a blessing. I never worried about it being a curse.

I never had any such feeling at all. I thought of that as a weapon of war and as a weapon that was powerful enough to win that war after we made the demonstration of it in New Mexico. The word came to me in Potsdam just exactly what had happened. Two pages on legal-type paper and it was a long, weepy proposition and I showed it to the members of the cabinet that were there and I said, now, we're in a shape to win the war with very few casualties on our side. It wasn't a weapon that could win the war and it did.

That's what I was interested in. And all of those decisions, we can never stop remembering that our presidents are human. They don't necessarily have a big S on their chest.

They're human. I just can't help but think that at some point it sort of did anguish him and that Mrs. Truman was a sounding board, consolation, whatever phrase you would like to use. And what a story we're hearing from selling shirts, being in charge of the weapons of mass destruction that no country had made nor used.

When we come back, more of this remarkable story, President Truman's story, here on Our American Story. Brought to you by Nissan. Designed to thrill. The art and science of designing a vehicle involves many stages, some of which include cutting-edge technology. But at the very start, there's a step that has been around since the beginning of design itself, the two-dimensional sketch. And the designers at Nissan know that this involves much more than a technical drawing. The early finished sketches can be abstract. They might give a sense of shapes and colors, of lines and reflective surfaces. They're there to impart a feeling that this car was meant to go fast or this car is meant to take you on an adventure.

Ideally, the sketch marries form and function. It looks like the type of vehicle that will take your breath away, but also be perfectly suited for its intended purpose. Brought to you by Nissan. Designed to thrill.

Max is the streaming service for every mood. Today you're feeling like Khaleesi, the Mother of Dragons. I was born to rule the Seven Kingdoms. Tomorrow, you may feel like Harry Potter.

Expecto Patronum! Sometimes you feel a little grouchy. And I love being grouchy. Or you feel like an adventure. I'm on my way to flavor town!

And sometimes you just need a laugh with friends. Pivot! Pivot! No matter what mood you're in, Max has it all. Max. The one to watch. Subscription required.

Visit max.com. Do you have at least $50,000 saved for retirement? Good news! You could be eligible for a free Ronald Reagan half-ounce silver coin.

That's right! All qualified iHeart listeners who call GoldCo, the number one rated precious metals company this week, will get a free Ronald Reagan half-ounce silver coin. All you have to do is visit goldco.com slash iHeart and get yours free while supplies last. GoldCo has helped thousands of people just like you place over $1 billion in gold and silver to help protect and diversify their savings. We're also offering up to $10,000 in free silver when you open a qualified gold IRA account. With everything going on in the economy, inflation, war, and the threat of recession, you can't afford to do nothing. Call GoldCo today to see if diversifying your money with gold and silver is right for you. And get your free Ronald Reagan half-ounce silver coin. Visit goldco.com slash iHeart.

That's goldco.com slash iHeart. And we return to our American stories and the story of Harry S. Truman. When we last left off, NPS Ranger Doug Richardson was telling us about Truman seeing the U.S. into victory in both theaters of World War II. Truman would soon turn his attention to the devastated city of Berlin and Europe as a whole with the Marshall Plan, an astounding effort to kickstart the rebuilding of Europe and save lives from starvation. Here's Truman talking about the Berlin Airlift, a big part of that effort. So I assembled all the planes that I could get my hands on from one end of the world to the other, and we ran those planes to Berlin and kept them alive and furnished them with coal and everything else they had to have to get through that winter. And in about 11 months, we got to the point where we could land the plane every 63 seconds, which is quite a record. And we saved Berlin.

That's all there was to it. Truman was able to, with the Congress, and if we think today a divided Congress is a new phenomenon, absolutely not. Truman was able to finagle with the Congress the incredible legislation that lifted tens of millions out of poverty in Europe. This is an international story.

With Europe saved, Truman was able to turn his attention to issues at home, including civil rights. But the ball only really started moving forward after a terrible incident. A sergeant with the United States Army who was African-American came home and... His home was in North Carolina, and as he tried to go home, he was stopped by one of the police officers down there, a sheriff, I think, and he protested that he was just on his way home. They charged him with being drunk and disorderly, and he wasn't drunk at all. But he got hit over the head with a blackjack and hit across the face with a billy club and blinded him for life. His name was Isaac Woodard. And when Harry Truman heard the story of the violence against Sergeant Woodard, it outraged him. Now, it is absolutely true that Harry Truman, growing up in western Missouri, did have some personal biases, but was able to rise above them via an executive order of desegregating the military and the federal workforce. And so he started the ball rolling for the post-World War civil rights legislation and decisions from the judiciaries. And you could make a case tying the blinding of Isaac Woodard to the decision of the Warren Court, Brown v. Board of Education. And so as president of the United States, Harry Truman spoke to the NAACP, first president to do so, and he's talking about equal rights for Americans, and he said, and when I say Americans, I mean all Americans. And so Truman, as president of the United States, started to transform the presidency itself and the relationship of the government to the people. In every state in the union, in every community, there is a small minority who are radicals, bigots, they're called, and they're not confined to any one state or any one section.

You'll find a few of them anywhere you want to go. Their objective is to attain their ends by direct means. They don't understand this government of ours, which is a representative government, and the men who wrote the Constitution knew exactly what they were doing. Well, Truman had a very good honeymoon period politically in 1945, then going into 1946. It was really the midterms in 1946 where Republicans ended up taking the control of Congress. And moving into the 1948 general, things weren't looking much better for Truman. Poll numbers were atrocious. All those people who took polls were of the opinion that I could never be a Democrat.

In fact, there was some doubt as to whether I could even be nominated by the Democratic convention or not. There were times when Truman was on his train barnstorming the country, the legendary whistle-stop tour across the country. There were places where the train just stopped dead in the tracks because there was no money to continue.

So people started to pass the hat around and just to get to the next town. But despite his poll numbers, when Truman started that whistle-stop tour and they would go to these sometimes small towns, sometimes big towns, big cities, they just weren't prepared for what they were seeing, these big crowds. And Harry Truman was not necessarily the best orator, but he was a very honest orator and powerful. Now, how confident was Truman that he was going to win?

I don't know. At one point during the campaign, he met with Thomas Dewey and joked with him and said, well, Governor, do me a favor when you move into the White House, fix deployment. But, you know, truth be told, when it came election night, he came home, he voted, and then Truman escaped to the Elms Hotel in Excelsior Springs. And finally succeeded in getting re-elected, believe it or not, and it was a surprise to everybody. I remember that there was one gentleman who was broadcasting on the night of the election in 1940, on the night of the election in 1948, and he was telling the people exactly why I was not going to win. I heard him about six o'clock.

I went over to Excelsior Springs, took one of those hot baths over there, went upstairs to the suite that they'd given me, and the radio hadn't been turned on. And Calvin Bourne was telling them all about why I wouldn't win. At that time, I had about a million 200,000 votes, and the other fellow had 900,000.

But Calvin Bourne said, just wait till they come in. Well, I happened to wake up about 12 o'clock and listened again. The radio was still on. At that time, I was about to have about 2,100,000 votes, and the other fellow had about 1,800,000, but I was still going to lose. I went back to bed and went to sleep. Pretty soon, the Secret Service chief came in and woke me up about 4 o'clock, and he said, Mr. President, you'd better get up and listen to this. I got up, I had about 2,400,000 votes, and the other fellow had about 2,100,000. And I turned around and I said, Jim, harness up the horses. You've got to go back to Kansas City now. We're in trouble for another four years.

And we were. Now, when Truman was asked what the most difficult decision from his presidency, his almost eight years, was, he just jumped right away and said Korea. Many people would expect him to say the atomic bomb.

No, it was Korea, on whether or not the United States would become engaged in the battle in Korea under the umbrella of the United Nations, and in part because of the Korean War and the relieving of Douglas MacArthur. That's one of the reasons why Harry Truman decided not to run for re-election in 1952. He could have. The 22nd Amendment did not apply to him, but he decided not to. Could he have won?

It all comes down to the electoral college. He might have known the math. But I think a lot of it was he felt he had done his duty, served in the Senate for about 10 years, as president of the United States for about eight years. And I think one person who helped him make that decision was that beautiful blonde-haired lady who is now gray with the beautiful blue eyes that she had for the rest of her life.

I think she was ready to come home, and I think he was too. So Truman had these incredibly low poll numbers, and so he was surprised on January 20th of 1953 when they were getting ready to leave Washington to come home to independence that it was said over 10,000 people gathered at the train station. And, you know, Truman's world changed. At that time, there was no presidential pension for former presidents, no Secret Service protection for former presidents. Truman's income dropped from $100,000 a year as a presidential salary to just over $100 a month in an Army pension. But he came home.

And there was just really no question they were gonna come home with 219 North Delaware Street. I really do believe that who we are today is the summary of who we have been, and that's what Harry Truman was. When he becomes president of the United States, he had been a student, he had been a railroad timekeeper, he had been a bank teller, he had been a farmer, he had been a shirt salesman, and he had had some successes, but he had had some failures.

A business failed, he lost reelection. I think it's a rare human being who doesn't have a combination of successes and failures. I think about that a lot because one time Winston Churchill, of all people, looked at Harry Truman and said, you know, when we first met at Potsdam, I resented you because you were not Franklin Roosevelt. But Churchill said, you, Mr. President, have probably done more than any other human being in saving Western civilization. And that is the legacy of a man from Independence in Grandview, Missouri.

And a terrific job on the production by Monty Montgomery. A special thanks to NPS Ranger Doug Richardson for sharing the story with us about President Truman. Also thanks to Screen Gems Collection for the Harry S. Truman Library. And what a life lived, saving Western Europe with the Marshall Plan, dropping the bomb, and that was a tough call, but he did it and never looked back. And last but not least, like Calvin Coolidge, he just went home.

The story of Harry S. Truman here on Our American Story. Ah, summer's here, and you know what that means. It's time to heat up your wardrobe at Lulu's, the only stop you need for affordable, high-quality, on-trend items that look as good as they feel.

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