Welcome to Harry’s Town : Returning to Independence, Missouri, a Family Member Recalls the Town That Helped Shape ‘Common Man’ President Harry Truman

Whenever I return to this town, I am always struck by how little it has changed fromthe days when Harry S. Truman used to stroll its maple-shaded sidewalks. The outskirts of Independence may be filled with mini-malls, auto supply shops and fast-food restaurants, but the city’s old center, with its gingerbread Victorian homes and traditional town square, seems as if it has been preserved in amber. It’s a place where the 33rd President’s presence is still very much alive.

Nearly 20 years after his death, Truman’s popularity has never been greater. Americans have been buying enough copies of David McCullough’s major biography to keep it at the top of the bestseller lists for five months, and both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates have tried to turn old Truman quotes to their political advantage. (In recent days, President Bush even campaigned from the back of a vintage railroad car, using Truman’s old “whistle-stop” technique.)

So an election year in which the most popular politician may be Truman, who died on Dec. 26, 1972, seems a fitting time to explore the Jackson County, Mo., town that “Give ‘em Hell Harry” loved and always returned to. The plain-spoken Truman once said of Independence: “It’s just as good a place as there is, and they don’t make them any better.” Harry Truman was my uncle, I spent my childhood living under the same roof, and I agree.

A visit here will reward not only those interested in examining Truman’s hometown for insights into the man, but those fascinated by the opening of the American West as well. Although today it is essentially a suburb of Kansas City, 150 years ago Independence was perched on the edge of America’s frontier, where the Santa Fe, California and Oregon trails started meandering their way westward. (Kansas City was originally Westport Landing, a spot where the wagons crossed the Missouri River). It was also a Civil War battleground and is an important Mormon religious center.

But Independence today celebrates its favorite son above all, and scattered all around Jackson County are office buildings, schools, hospitals, parks, sports complexes and a superb presidential library, all bearing the name of the unpretentious man who never forgot his Midwestern roots.

By far the most evocative of the Truman sites--and the one which means the most to me--is the 19th-Century gingerbread Victorian house at 219 N. Delaware St.

Driving into town on (what else?) Truman Road, you can’t miss the gleaming white, gabled Truman Home, started in 1867 by my great-grandfather (Bess Truman’s grandfather), George Porterfield Gates. Renovated and run by the National Park Service since Mrs. Truman’s death in 1982, it was used as the summer White House during Truman’s presidency, from 1945 to 1953.

But in 1919, Harry Truman had just returned from World War I when he married Bess Wallace and they moved into her mother’s house to start raising a family. (Their only child, Margaret, was born in an upstairs bedroom). My mother and father--Bess’s youngest brother, Fred--moved in 10 years later, and when I was growing up in the 1930s and early ‘40s, seven family members occupied the various upstairs bedrooms. My grandmother, Madge Gates Wallace (whom Truman always called “Mrs. Wallace,” deferring to her conviction that he never measured up socially to her daughter), lived in a downstairs bedroom off the living room.

Life, as I remember it then, was simple: Conversation, not TV, provided the entertainment; nearly everyone went to church on Sundays, and the 6 a.m. Missouri-Pacific freight train always whistled on time.

Touring my old home recently with Carol Dage, curator of the site for the National Park Service, I saw reminders of that era everywhere. Uncle Harry was then a U.S. senator, shuttling with Bess and Margaret between Independence and their apartment in Washington, where he was beginning to get a national reputation.

The upstairs of the 14-room house is in terrible shape (the ceiling is sagging in some places) and closed to the public, pending future restoration. But the the bottom floor, open for public tours, is meticulous in its detail. “We have everything the Trumans used in their lifetime,” Dage explained. “Our ideal is to preserve and protect it so it appears as if the Trumans just walked out the door.”

The first room visitors encounter, the kitchen, is very basic, but it used to be even simpler, with an old-fashioned icebox and a wood-burning stove. There, my grandmother, the first to rise, would make coffee and oatmeal, supplemented with eggs and the like by Aunt Bess and my mother. Dinner was prepared by the family’s beloved, long-time housekeeper, Vietta Garr (we all called her “Pete” for some reason), who taught me to cook.

The dining room is accurately set up for a family dinner--in the ‘30s always served precisely at 6 and always including hot biscuits--my grandmother presiding at one end of the table, Uncle Harry at the other. (I remember that in her teens, Margaret drove us crazy calling people “Dearie” and was fined 10 cents every time she said it at the table.) But the most important furnishing in the room for most of us then was the table-high standing radiator on one wall. We made a beeline to sit on its heated marble top before dinner. Winters in Independence can be cold.

In the living room, only the old grandfather clock (with its hands cut from an old pie tin) is left of the furnishings of the 1920s and ‘30s; much of the rest of the downstairs furniture went west with my parents when we moved to Denver in 1942. Many winter nights were spent around a roaring fire in the living room, talking or listening to my grandmother’s radio. The 12-foot-high ceiling still has the mark made by a too-tall blue spruce Christmas tree.

In the parlor off the front hall is the baby grand piano that the Trumans gave Margaret when she was 8 (she was crestfallen, having wanted an electric train). In the adjoining cozy den is the brown easy chair where Uncle Harry, who never went to college, spent long hours reading. The book shelves are still filled with the histories and biographies he preferred; Aunt Bess liked mysteries.

In the hall, hanging from a wooden rack under the stairs--just as if he had just put them there after one of his morning walks--are Uncle Harry’s tan overcoat and the gray fedora for which he was famous. I can almost smell the lilac Vegetal cologne he always used.

The adjacent back door was the only door we ever used entering and leaving the house. The tall, elegant front doors, with etched glass panels, were used only when guests came and went.

One thing the Truman house evokes for me is how different the family dynamic was in the Midwest two generations ago. Not only did three generations of relatives live in one house, Bess’ other brothers, Frank and George, and their wives lived in adjacent cottages, creating a sort of family compound. In the center of it all was the old family barn, which once housed horses and buggies and now holds Truman’s last car, a 1972 Chrysler.

As one might expect, Christmas was extra special in a small town. President Truman reminisced about it in 1948 as he lit the national Christmas tree on the White House lawn by remote control from Independence:

“Christmas is the family day,” he said. “It began that way. As I came up the street in the gathering dusk, I saw a hundred commonplace things that are hallowed to me--hallowed by their associations with the sanctuary of home. I saw the lighted windows of my neighbors, the gaily decked Christmas trees and the friendly lawns and gardens. The branches of the trees were bare and stark but somehow they looked familiar and friendly.”

I saw one of those “commonplace things” in on my last visit to the house: a pile of fruit cake molds in the pantry off the kitchen. About a month or so before the holidays, our entire family would gather around the dining room table to cut up fruit for my grandmother’s famed fruitcakes.

A mile or so north on Delaware Street is another important Truman site and the most visited of them all, the Truman Library. It was built with private funds and, aside from its rather clinical facade, is considered one of the most alive, most rewarding of the 10 presidential libraries.

Its exhibits, which focus both on Truman and his times, are extremely well presented and engrossing, its racks filled with a tremendous lode of material, including papers and oral histories of more than 500 prominent people associated with the era. Dr. Benedict K. Zobrist, director of the library for 23 years, says that is how Truman wanted it.

“It was always intended to be a living institution, a place where scholars and students could come to study. After his death the public began clamoring for more and more about him,” Zobrist said. “America started to rediscover Truman during the disillusionment of the Watergate period, when there were stories everywhere about him, the man who told it the way it was, the man of integrity.”

The most popular permanent exhibits for the 200,000 or so visitors who traipse through the library annually are Thomas Hart Benton’s monumental mural, “Independence and the Opening of the West”; a replica of the White House’s Oval Office as it looked during the Truman administration, and an 18-foot brass model of the battleship Missouri, on which the Japanese signed the instrument of surrender ending World War II after Franklin Roosevelt had died and Truman had become President.

Most visitors are also drawn to memorabilia of the whistle-stop campaign of 1948, the year in which Truman confounded political pundits by beating Thomas Dewey. Three Truman presidency cars are also on display. One is a Lincoln limousine, which arrived in 1949 after he threw out the White House Cadillacs made by General Motors, a bitter adversary in the election. On a courtyard outside the library are the grave sites where my Uncle Harry and Aunt Bess lie side by side.

The old part of town centers around Independence Square, about four blocks from the Truman Home, marked by a bronze statue of Truman walking at the brisk gait he favored when touring the neighborhood. It is located at the east end of one the most impressive sites associated with the former President, the old Jackson County Courthouse.

Remodeled in 1933 in a Williamsburg Colonial style (my father, David Wallace, Sr., was chief architect on the job), the courthouse contains the restored, beige and brown courtroom and office Truman occupied as presiding judge of Jackson County--an elected post comparable to that of a county administrator--for eight years prior to his election to the U.S. Senate in 1934. It was during his judgeship that Truman first developed his reputation for honesty and fairness, particularly in how he allocated dozens of road-paving contracts during his tenure.

Across the street is Clinton’s Soda Fountain (J. H. Clinton’s Pharmacy in Truman’s time), where Uncle Harry got his first job when he was 14. For $3 a week he was expected to open the place at 6:30 a.m., mop the floor, take out the trash, work the fountain and clerk. In his spare time, he washed hundreds of prescription bottles.

Little of Clinton’s interior is original, but they still make pretty good sodas and sandwiches, far better than the mostly tacky Truman memorabilia sold here and throughout Independence.

On the southeast corner of Independence Square (where in 1862 and 1864 major Civil War battles raged) stands a building--now an office supply company but originally the Farmers and Merchants Bank--where, in 1922, Truman and some of his army buddies started the Harpie Club, named after the harmonica one of them played. The men played poker here every Monday night, for a 10-cent limit.

A few blocks up Liberty Street from the square is the old Trinity (Episcopal) Church where Harry and Bess were married (as was my grandmother--Aunt Bess’ mother--and grandfather in 1883); where Margaret was married in 1956 to Clifton Daniel, an editor at the New York Times; and where Bess’s funeral took place in October, 1982, with former First Ladies Nancy Reagan, Betty Ford and Rosalind Carter in the front pew.

South of the church is a place Truman recalled when addressing a welcome-home audience in February, 1953, when he retired after deciding not to seek reelection:

“I’ve been taking my morning walks around the city and passing places that bring back wonderful recollections,” he told the gathering. “I pass by the Noland School, where I first started school in 1892. I had a white cap with a sign above the visor which said ‘Grover Cleveland for President--Adlai Stevenson for Vice President,’ the grandfather of the man I supported in 1952, 60 years later. Isn’t that fantastic?”

The school Truman referred to, at 515 Liberty, was remodeled after a fire in 1957 and is used today as a day-care center.

Heading back toward the Truman Home from the square, one passes the First Presbyterian Church at 100 N. Pleasant St. Looking more or less exactly as it did in my childhood, the church is where Truman (a Baptist) and Bess Wallace (an Episcopalian) met in 1890, attending the only Sunday school in town at the time. Truman recalled in that same 1953 speech that it was the place “where . . . at the age of 6 years . . . I first saw a lovely little golden-haired girl who became the lovely silver-haired lady by my side.”

Continuing his reminiscences, which could serve as a sort of guided tour for visitors 40 years later, Truman continued: “I pass the site of the old Independence High School at Maple and Pleasant. Ours was the first class graduated there, in 1901. It burned down several years ago with all the records, so there’s no proof that I never had any education at all!” Palmer Junior High, built in 1933, occupies the site today.

A bit south of town, at Pacific and Grand, is the Harry S. Truman (railroad) Depot. At present in unrestored service as an Amtrak station, the depot evokes instant memories of the 1948 whistle-stop campaign, so-called because much of it was conducted from the rear porch of his private railroad car that traveled nearly 22,000 miles around the country.

During the decade before World War I, Truman worked on the family farm in Grandview, about 20 miles southwest. There one can visit the Truman Farm Home, where the President-to-be, his mother said, “could plow a straighter furrow than any other boy in Jackson County.” All but six acres of the original 660, once devoted to raising grain, have been sold off (the huge Truman Corners Shopping Center is on part of the original land), but a visit to the three-bedroom, green-trimmed farmhouse is worthwhile. The President’s mother, Martha Ellen Truman, lived most of her long life in the house. It has been restored to its 1910 appearance and contains several original pieces of furniture.

A location most commonly associated with Truman is one visitors can no longer see: the haberdashery he once owned in Kansas City. It is said that the failure of the men’s clothing store, Truman & Jacobson, which he started in 1919 with army buddy Eddie Jacobson, was what propelled Truman into politics. Today the site, at 12th and Baltimore, is occupied by a Radisson Suites hotel. The hotel coffee shop, The Haberdashery, contains a collection of photographs of Truman’s shop.

Visitors should not forget that Independence was more than Harry Truman’s hometown. Between 1822 and 1860 it was the jumping-off place for the American frontier, known as the “Queen City of the Trails.”

Independence’s early commercial success came by outfitting many of the 500,000-plus pioneers headed west, and the National Frontier Trails Center, which lies near the railroad depot and mounts exhibits exploring local history, will recall this period in an exhibition called “Getting Ready,” opening next March 19.

Just off Independence Square is another reminder of the town’s heritage, the 1859 Jail. The brick building and the local marshall’s home attached (J.B. Ross, father of Charlie Ross, Truman’s close friend and first press secretary, was marshall from 1886-1896) housed at one time or another some of the most notorious outlaws of its day, including the Confederate raiders William Quantrill and John Younger, as well as outlaw Frank James, Jesse’s brother.

Civil War buffs will want to visit the Bingham-Waggoner estate (across the street from the Frontier Trails Center), where George Caleb Bingham painted his famous “Martial Law.” The work depicts one of the most painful periods of the Civil War for Missourians when, to curb local support for Confederate raiders, the Union military command’s General Order 11 drove thousands of residents from their homes.

Independence also played an important part in the history of the Mormons, who believe the city is the “New Jerusalem” where Christ will one day return and direct the affairs of the world. The Mormon Visitor’s Center, located at Walnut and River streets, is run by the branch of the church which followed Brigham Young west to Salt Lake City and offers a display of paintings and artifacts concerned with that history.

Nearby is the just-completed Temple of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS), with a controversial, 300-foot spiral tower, a 6,000-seat auditorium and RLDS headquarters for the Mormon sect that refused to accept Brigham Young’s succession as head of the church following Joseph Smith’s assassination. Also close is the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), believed by its small, 2,400-member Hedrickite sect to have been dedicated by Mormon prophet Joseph Smith.

When Truman returned in 1953 to spend his remaining years in Independence, the “common man” President tried to sum up the uncomplicated honesty of his hometown:

“Mrs. Truman, Margie and I have been through all the trials and tribulations of public elective office . . . there were rough times, locally, in the Senate and as President of the United States, the greatest office in the history of the world--the greatest honor and the most awful responsibility that can come to any man.

“But the hometown reception was worth all the effort . . . What a pleasure to be back here at home, once more a free and independent citizen of the gateway city of the old great West.

“Our grandparents were citizens here when the going was rough. They were real pioneers. They gave us our background of honor and integrity. I hope we’ve lived up to that heritage.”

GUIDEBOOK

Harry Truman’s Independence

Getting there: Independence is about 35 miles southeast of Kansas City International Airport, served from several Los Angeles-area airports by most major airlines. Lowest round-trip, advance-purchase fare is $400. Most major car-rental agencies are represented at the airport. Independence may also be reached from the airport by public transportation or by taxi (approximately $35); call (800) 221-9165. Reduced-fare taxis are available with at least eight hours’ prior notice ($24, plus $7 for each additional passenger).

Where to stay: There are a number of bed and breakfasts in historic homes in Independence. During my last visit, I stayed in Arthurs’ Horse & Carriage House (601 W. Maple, Independence, Mo. 64050, (816) 461- 6814; doubles $35, $55 and $65), a Victorian gem half a block from the Truman Home. Three other B&Bs; that I have not visited are: The Woodstock Inn, 1212 W. Lexington St., (816) 833-2233 (double rooms $45-$65, including private bath); Serendipity, 403 N. Delaware St., (816) 833-4719 ($45 per double), and The House of Hoyt, 626 N. Delaware St., (816) 461-7226 ($55-$85 per double). All inns include breakfast, are nonsmoking and have airport pickup available.

There are many accommodations in Kansas City, but closer to Independence the most luxurious hotel is the Adams Mark (Interstate 70 at the Truman Sports Complex, 800-231- 5858); $69-$125 per night, double occupancy. A number of moderately priced motels are about 5 miles from the Truman Library on I-70. They include: Howard Johnson Motor Lodge (I-70 and Noland Road, 800-338-3752; $40-$50 per double); American Inn (I-70 and Noland Road, 816-373-8300; doubles $23-$37); Shoney’s Inn (I-70 and Noland Road, 816-254-0100; $40-$46 per double), and Super 8 (I-70 and Noland Road, 800-800-8000; $33-$49).

Where to eat: Fine, “heartland of America” meals (hickory-smoked chicken, brisket, pork chops, apple fritters) have been served since 1946 at Stephenson’s Apple Farm, U.S. 40 and Lee’s Summit Road; (816) 373-5400. The Rheinland Restaurant, 208 N. Main St., (816) 461-5383, has decent German-style food; entrees about $9. The Courthouse Exchange, 113 Lexington St., (816) 252-0344, features American standards such as steaks, chicken and pork tenderloin.

Truman sites: Truman Home, 219 N. Delaware St., (816) 254-7199. Open for tours Tuesday through Sunday. Admission: $1. Purchase tickets at the National Park Service headquarters, located in a converted, century-old firehouse just off Independence Square.

Truman Library, U.S. 24 and Delaware Street, Independence, Mo. 64050, (816) 833-1225. Open daily except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Admission: $2 for those over 15.

Jackson County Courthouse, Independence Square, (816) 881-4467. The Truman Courtroom is open Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m.-5p.m., with a 35-minute audiovisual presentation shown each hour. $2 admission, $1 children and seniors.

Truman Farm Home, 12301 Blue Ridge Blvd., Grandview, (816) 881-4431. Open Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoons April 16-Nov. 15; open the rest of the year by appointment.

Other historical sites: National Frontier Trails Center, 318 W. Pacific Ave., (816) 254-0059. Open daily and weekend afternoons. Admission: $2 adults, $1.50 seniors.

1859 Jail, Marshall’s Home and Museum, 217 N. Main St., (816) 252-1892. Admission: $2.50 adults, $1.75 seniors, 50 cents children 12 and under. Closed during January, and Mondays in February and March.

Bingham-Waggoner Estate, 313 W. Pacific St., is closed in winter except during the holidays, when visitors can tour it, the 1859 Jail and the town’s Victorian Vaile Mansion decorated for a special “Spirit of Christmas Past Homes Tour,” Nov. 27-Dec. 23 and Dec. 26-30 (closed Mondays). Cost: $6 for adults, $3 children under 12. For information, call (816) 836-7111.

For more information: Contact the City of Independence Tourism Department, (800) 748-7323 or (816) 836-7111.