President Truman’s Visit to Tiny Dexter, Iowa—And How It Helped Him Win Reelection

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Listen to find strength in community on the MG journey on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Music And we return to our American stories and up next, a story about when our 33rd president made an all important visit to a small town in Iowa. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with a story. Music Dexter, Iowa is a small town with a lot of heart. And even though its population has never exceeded a thousand people, there's a lot of history there. The Barrow gang had a famous shootout there. They hosted an amusement park at one point. And it was also once a presidential campaign stop. The presidential campaign stop for that election cycle.

Here's Rod Stanley with more on that. September 1948, President Truman came to Dexter, Iowa for the national plowing match. It was a big deal. The national plowing match was a big, big deal. But what exactly is a plowing match?

Roughly put, it's a competition to see who's the best farmer. They judged him on, I mean they judged him on different things. They brought their tractors and their plows and there were judges that judged how well you plowed the field.

How straight it was, how open it was. They had some other like conservation, like making a pond. They made a pond on my uncle's farm. They blew up, they were using dynamite and they blew up land and they made a waterway to drain water off and stuff. This was a statewide thing so it was a national thing too. So you had lots of people coming in from, like there was an airport south of Dexter, southwest of Dexter. And that day like 120 airplanes landed and brought bringing people in.

They estimated the crowd between 75 and 100,000. But how did President Truman even get involved in this whole thing? It boils down to the drive of a radio personality, Truman's opponent, and like a lot of things in politics, poll numbers. The guy he was running against was a fellow by the name of Thomas Dewey from New York. And Thomas Dewey was so far ahead in the polls. Her plambec, famous WHO farm personality, was in charge of organizing this whole thing. And her plambec called or went and talked to Thomas Dewey and asked him, do you want to be the headliner out here in Dexter and talk to these people? And Dewey said in so many words, I'm doing pretty well in the polls.

I don't think I need to come out to Iowa and to talk to these people. So her plambec then called up and scheduled a meeting with Truman. And normally they're on a limited time basis when they talk to the president and so on.

But they made an appointment. They talked to Truman and actually went over the time limit because Truman liked talking. I mean, Truman was one of those guys that liked to talk to him. He was a former farmer, too.

I mean, as far as he was a farming occupation before he got into politics. And he said, well, boys, he said, I would really like to come out and to do that. But he says, I don't think the Secret Service will allow me to do what I want to do.

And that's to go out and mingle and talk to people and so on. And so when her plambec left that meeting, he thought, well, gosh, I don't think I don't think Truman's going to come either. And so it kind of sat that way until like three weeks before the event. And the White House calls her plan back up and says Truman's coming.

That threw a whole big wrench because they had to make sure that the security had to be better. And there's a lot of things they had to do to prepare for the president. Truman started over in eastern Iowa in Davenport on the Rock Island Railroad line, the one that runs through Dexter and goes across the state. And he gave a speech there early in the morning. Then he gave a speech at Oxford, Iowa, I believe. Then a speech in Grinnell and a speech in Des Moines. Never in the world were the farmers of any republic or any kingdom or any other country as prosperous as the farmers of the United States.

And if they don't do their duty by the Democratic Party, they're the most ungrateful people in the world. Those were just preliminaries. And he actually, I believe, picked up his wife, Bess, and his daughter, Margaret, in Des Moines. And they rode the train out to Dexter. The band, Dexter Band, was there to meet Truman. I believe they played the Missouri waltz for him when they when he arrived at the depot in Dexter. They had brought his Cadillac, his robin egg blue Cadillac out, according to my uncle Dean Stiles, about three days before. And everybody was wondering what the heck was that was going on, bringing that blue Cadillac out here. And eventually they figured it out that it was the president and he was going to be stopping and going out to the plowing match. But he was concerned, still concerned, about the Secret Service blocking his style.

But he came anyway. Bess said that we're setting with Truman. When Truman saw the crowd, when Truman saw how big the crowd was, he said he had a smile from ear to ear. He was just loving it. He was saying, this is this is going to give me an opportunity to really to get my cam.

I'm so far behind. It can't hurt. It's going to give me a chance to to hammer home my points. The majority of these farmers that attended were of the Republican persuasion, but he got 13 ovations that day. And he really hammered on the Republicans to do the do nothings.

He called them the do nothing Congress. It was his first major campaign speech of the 1948 election. He used this type of campaign, the whistle stop, using the train, traveling around, stop and talk in small towns to people to actually turn the tide. It's interesting when Thomas Dewey found out 100,000 people showed up in Dexter, Iowa. He got a little nervous and he actually got the Republicans in Iowa to have a campaign thing for him in Des Moines.

And they actually got like 15,000 people to hear Thomas Dewey give a speech, which is a pretty good crowd, but nothing like Truman. But anyway, when Truman was here, he ate lunch. We have stuff in the museum, the tablecloth, actually, that that was on the table that he ate off of. But anyway, he ate lunch out there, had fried chicken dinner, mashed potatoes and corn and relish tray and all apple pie or had different kinds of pie. And then he went out on a he went out on a wagon to look at some of the projects, the conservation projects that they were doing that day. It wasn't only a plowing contest, but there was some like they were making a pond and they were making waterways and they were doing some other stuff, conservation things that out there on that in that area as well. But anyway, he went out and and he was on the back of a hay wagon.

Of course, the Secret Service was with him and they were they were cruising along and the Secret Service looked around and Truman wasn't on the wagon anymore. And he had jumped off the wagon and he was heading down to where they were making this pond. And we called it Walker's Pond back when I was growing up. It was on Howard Walker's property.

It was Piper property back then. But anyway, so those people that were on the bulldozers had actually been told by the Secret Service earlier that if Truman came down there to turn off the bulldozers and, you know, just sit on the bulldozers. And so if the president comes over and wants to ask you questions and and that kind of thing. And and so that's what they did. They saw they saw this guy coming down. They figured it was Truman or some of them recognized him. So they turned their bulldozers off and Truman got down there, which is chatting with them like, you know, like you normally chat with people. And he said, well, why did you turn off your bulldozers for?

I mean, you guys got work to do. He said, well, we were told by the Secret Service to to do that. And Truman said, well, he says the next time they ask you to do that, you tell those SOBs that you aren't going to do that.

You just keep right on working. You know, he got everybody got a big laugh out of that. And of course, the Secret Service gets down there and puts him back on the wagon and away they go. But that was Truman. But he did get to talk to some of the people out there. But like I said, this this was a huge boost to his is it turned the tide as far as his his election. And he was really the only one in the articles I read.

He was the only one. Even his wife had given up. He was so far behind that he's going to lose.

And she said, we need to start packing things up to get back to Missouri and and live in Independence where our house there. And Truman says he doesn't want to give up yet. And the election came in November and he was listening to it. And he was holding his own and in it and Dewey wasn't blowing him away. And he goes to bed thinking that probably the next morning that, you know, that maybe I won't be president.

But he he was kind of had a quiet confidence. He thought he thought he was going to win. And the next morning, the results are are rolling in and Truman's winning and he's going to he's going to end up winning the election. And it was a huge, huge upset.

I mean, there was no way that he was supposed to win. But they say that win all started right here in the one horse town of Dexter, Iowa, in 19 September of 48. And a great job is always on the production and the storytelling by Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to Rod Stanley of the Dexter Museum in Dexter, Iowa. Dexter is a one light town and the small museum is right off the main street running through it. If you're in the neighborhood, I'll drop by and take a visit. We love visiting these really small, small towns and telling stories about them. And the national plowing match of 1948 helps propel Truman to victory.

The story of Dexter and Harry Truman's campaign victory here on our American story. Now is the time to flex your footprint with T-Mobile for business and the nation's largest 5G network. Inspiration can strike from virtually anywhere. So whether you're in the office, on the road or on your PT not quite O, you'll be ready for the next big thing. After all, if geography doesn't limit your business, your network shouldn't either.

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