Evan Bayh Oral History Interview

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
WITH
EVAN BAYH

APRIL 8, 2004

VIA TELEPHONE FROM INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI,
TO WASHINGTON, D.C.

INTERVIEWED BY JIM WILLIAMS
ORAL HISTORY #2004-1
HARRY S TRUMAN NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

EDITORIAL NOTICE
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for Harry S Truman National Historic Site. After a draft of this transcript was made, the park provided a copy to the interviewee and requested that he or she return the transcript with any corrections or modifications that he or she wished to be included in the final transcript. The interviewer, or in some cases another qualified staff member, also reviewed the draft and compared it to the tape recordings. The corrections and other changes suggested by the interviewee and interviewer have been incorporated into this final transcript. The transcript follows as closely as possible the recorded interview, including the usual starts, stops, and other rough spots in typical conversation. The reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written, word. Stylistic matters, such as punctuation and capitalization, follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition. The transcript includes bracketed notices at the end of one tape and the beginning of the next so that, if desired, the reader can find a section of tape more easily by using this transcript.
Evan Bayh and Jim Williams reviewed the draft of this transcript.

RESTRICTION

Researchers may read, quote from, cite, and photocopy this transcript without permission for purposes of research only. Publication is prohibited, however, without permission from the Superintendent, Harry S Truman National Historic Site.
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ABSTRACT

Senator Evan Bayh (Democrat, Indiana) discusses his visit with Harry S Truman in January 1962 at the Truman Library. Six years old at the time, young Bayh accompanied his parents Birch and Marvella Bayh during a social call in advance of Birch Bayh’s run for the U.S. Senate later that year. Evan Bayh remembers the impression Truman made on him that day—with a courtesy to an embarrassed young boy and a gift of a silver dollar—and then compares that meeting with others he had with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson as a youngster. Bayh finishes the phone call with reflections on Truman’s character and his impact on national politics in the 2000s.

Persons mentioned: Birch E. Bayh, Marvella Bayh, Harry S Truman, Delbert M. Hearn, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Lady Bird Johnson.
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ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH
EVAN BAYH

HSTR INTERVIEW #2004-1
[Preliminary phone conversation between Williams and Senator Bayh’s office not transcribed.]
EVAN BAYH: Hello?
JIM WILLIAMS: Hi, Senator Bayh. This is Jim Williams in Independence, Missouri.
BAYH: Hi Jim. How are you?
WILLIAMS: I’m fine, thanks. First, I want to make sure that you know that I’m recording the phone call.
BAYH: Okay.
WILLIAMS: Is that okay with you?
BAYH: That’s fine.
WILLIAMS: Okay. And I don’t know how much you know about the purpose of this interview, but back in 1996 I was reading George magazine, and you told a story about visiting with your parents here as a boy, and since we do an oral history project at the Truman home about the Truman family, I thought that was an interesting story. Do you remember that story?
BAYH: I do remember the story. Part of it is contained in my mother’s autobiography, which was . . . She died in 1979 and it was published posthumously later that year. So I do remember the story, although I was young at the time.
WILLIAMS: You were six, I think, or thereabouts.
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BAYH: That’s about right.
WILLIAMS: Could you tell it to me in your own words, what you remember?
BAYH: Yeah. The background on it is, my father was thinking very seriously about running for the United States Senate in Indiana, and his election was in November of 1962. My mother, who was originally from Oklahoma, and she had met President Truman . . . She was president, she was governor of Girls State in Oklahoma and then president of Girls Nation and had met President Truman when she went to Washington for Girls Nation. [see appendix, item 1] So she was a big admirer of the former president, and her father, my grandfather, who was a wheat farmer in Enid, Oklahoma, was also a great admirer of Harry Truman’s. So my grandfather, at his own initiative, took it upon himself to write a letter to the former president asking if he would, could possibly agree to meet with his son-in-law, who was considering running for the senate in Indiana, you know, to give him his advice. The former president wrote back and said by all means, have him contact me, which is kind of amazing by today’s standards. Here’s just a humble wheat farmer from Enid contacting a former president, and he said, “Sure. I’d be happy to meet with your son-in-law.”
So we drove out from . . . We were living in Terre Haute, Indiana, at the time and drove from Terre Haute to Independence and met with the former president there in the home. I was very young. I think he gave me a silver dollar, which we’ve kept. I’ve since been told, although I don’t know it to be true, that that was important because he was a frugal individual.
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In any event, my mother used to always tell the story—and I think it’s included in her book [see appendix, item 2]—that when we were talking to the president . . . I was dressed up in my one little suit, and my mother had admonished me, you know, to be quiet because the president wasn’t there to hear me. So . . . but at some point when the president and my father were talking . . . we had some soda pops on the drive out, and I just couldn’t wait any longer, so I blurted out that I had to go to the bathroom. Well, she was eternally embarrassed, and President Truman kind of saved me and the day by standing up and saying, "That’s all right, son. So do I." And off we went to the bathroom. And so my claim to fame is that I went to the bathroom with Harry Truman.
WILLIAMS: Okay. That’s the story that I like, from a young boy’s perspective getting to meet—
BAYH: I was going to be in big trouble with my mother, but he bailed me out.
WILLIAMS: So you’ve already helped explain some letters that I found at the Truman Library. One was from Delbert Hearn. [see appendix, item 3]
BAYH: That’s my maternal grandfather.
WILLIAMS: Right, and that’s the one that set up the visit in December of 1961.
BAYH: Oh, great. Well, I’m glad you have that.
WILLIAMS: And you’re right, he did respond exactly as you said.
BAYH: Would it be possible to get a copy of those?
WILLIAMS: Yes. I can send those.
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BAYH: Because we’d love to have those just for kind of . . . I’d love to show them to my kid. We have one eight-year-old boy, so I maybe kind of need to have that just in our family records.
WILLIAMS: And you’re on the president’s engagements on January 3, 1962. [see appendix, item 4]
BAYH: Oh, is that right?
WILLIAMS: Your appointment.
BAYH: You’ve got it all nailed down.
WILLIAMS: Well, we tried.
BAYH: That was right after New Year’s Day.
WILLIAMS: Yes, it was. But he was in the office. You’ve also answered my question because in a letter from your father on January 8 thanking Mr. Truman for the visit, your father says that “Evan shall always treasure the lucky coin you gave to him.” [see appendix, item 5]
BAYH: Oh, okay. Well then my memory is good. He gave me a silver dollar. It was, I think we still . . . As a young boy I had a little tin box that I put precious items in, you know. It could have been an acorn or whatever happened to be important to me. I think I still have that silver dollar someplace.
WILLIAMS: And also your, we have a photograph that your parents sent, a color photograph of them with Mr. Truman. Do you have that? [see appendix, items 6 and7]
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BAYH: I think we have . . . I think so, and I think it’s on display in our home now. It’s a picture of my parents with the former president? It’s like on the steps of the house or something?
WILLIAMS: It looks like it’s at the Truman Library.
BAYH: The Truman Library, okay. Well, I frankly . . . It’s on one of the bookshelves in our home, and so I see it from time to time, but I never really intently look at it.
WILLIAMS: It looks like your mother has a mink or something over her arm. Anyway, they’re all, they’re very well dressed. And it looks like there was a little bit of contact between your father and Mr. Truman after that, but not very much as far as I could see. But Mr. Truman did send him an autographed photo in 1966.
BAYH: It could be. I have no knowledge of that.
WILLIAMS: Okay. I just wondered if that had been passed along as well.
BAYH: Not to my knowledge. Unfortunately, my folks had moved several times. Although that’s the kind of thing I’m sure they’d save. But we had a terrible house fire a couple years ago, and it started in the attic, so, unfortunately, a lot of things . . . We’d stored family scrapbooks and, you know, pictures, those kind of things. A lot of that got destroyed, unfortunately.
WILLIAMS: You come from a prominent Democratic family. And as a boy, I just wonder how this experience with President Truman relates to maybe some other experiences you had with other political figures.
[Bayh’s assistant interjects in the phone call; not transcribed]
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BAYH: In what way . . . relates to?
WILLIAMS: Well, did you meet other presidents growing up? Could you compare Mr. Truman to some other people in terms of—
BAYH: Well, I was fortunate . . . I don’t want to overplay this. They were all exceptional.This was not an everyday kind of thing; these were exceptional occurrences in my life. Obviously, meeting President Truman was a big deal, and his human touch, both in giving me the silver dollar and in taking me to the restroom, that was pretty special. My interactions with the other presidents were briefer and more formal. When John Kennedy came to campaign in Terre Haute in 1960—this had actually been before the meeting with President Truman—a big crowd came out to meet him at the airport, and my father was there because he was in the . . . I think he was the minority leader at the time in the state legislature. He took me out there, and I was even younger at that time, four or something like that. My parents told me, you know, that I was pretty shy and all I could do was cry [laughing] when they introduced me to John Kennedy, so I’m afraid I didn’t carry off that moment with great composure.
But then later, after my father went to the Senate, they were invited to go down to the White House to have dinner with President Johnson and Lady Bird, just up in the private quarters, and couldn’t find a babysitter, so the Johnsons were kind enough to say, “Well, bring the boy along.” So they took me down there and had dinner. I still remember a couple of things. I remember there were three things from that. Number one, after dinner, LBJ
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put his boots up on the table, which my—kind of leaned back in his rocking chair and put his boots up on the table, which my mother informed me when I got home presidents could do but young boys couldn’t.
Secondly, they put down a completely mysterious bowl of clear liquid in front of me, which I was, had no . . . My mother had told me, “Look, if you don’t know what fork to use, just look at the woman on your left or right and do what she’s doing.” Well, I looked at this thing. I had no idea what to do, and Mrs. Johnson realized that I’d never seen a finger bowl before and told me what to do, because I was on the verge of trying to eat part of it. So I was glad she rescued me there.
And then, when they started talking politics, or whatever, again Mrs. Johnson kind of figured out that I probably—I was ten at the time, something like that—wouldn’t be too involved in that, so she took me into their bedroom and turned on the television and gave me something that I’d never seen before, which was a remote control for the TV, which I was convinced, you know, the CIA must have produced [?]—it looked like a James Bond thing to me at the time, because they were not very common back in those days.
So those were my memories of that. Of course, since then, in my own public career, I’ve met several presidents, but during my youth, those were, you know . . . President Truman obviously had a great common touch with people and was very kind to me as a young boy when he had no particular reason to be, other than just the kindness of his heart.
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WILLIAMS: Do you ever think about him now when you’re making public policy, as a senator?
BAYH: From time to time. You know, I refer—right now, with national security being such a big issue, and some people questioning whether the Democratic Party is strong enough on national security, I always point out that, you know, it was Harry Truman who drew the line in the sand against the spread of global communism. Our party, traditionally, has had a reputation for being very strong in national security matters. As a matter of fact, John Kennedy claimed that the Eisenhower administration, in some respects, hadn’t been strong enough. So I do fight him in that regard. It’s only been since Vietnam that we’ve had a reputation for being, in some people’s minds, inadequate on national defense and security. So I do refer to Truman.
Of course, his desire to try and provide national healthcare is an idea whose . . . perhaps not through a government-run program, but whatever vehicle, the recognition of the need to try and ensure that everybody has access to quality healthcare is very topical. But more than that, just his reputation for forthrightness and a willingness to make difficult decisions that might be unpopular at the time, but in the full course of history are borne out. So I do think about that from time to time.
WILLIAMS: Well, I’d like to thank you for taking your time today, and I will send you the file that I’ve accumulated from the Truman Library.
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BAYH: Well, it’s so kind of you to think of calling, because this would be great just to show my own children some day, just to have in our family archives.
WILLIAMS: Well, it’s a nice interview for us to have, too.
BAYH: Thank you.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
BAYH: Good luck!
WILLIAMS: Okay, thanks.
BAYH: Do you have our address here? I’ll tell you what, can I give you our home address? After this doggone anthrax and all that, our mail gets sent somewhere to be irradiated and has to be opened. Do you have a pen handy?
WILLIAMS: Yes, I do.
BAYH: Our home address is 5170 Tilden Street, and that’s in Northwest Washington, and the zip code is 20016.
WILLIAMS: Okay. I’ll do that.
BAYH: Thank you so much.
WILLIAMS: Thank you
BAYH: Take care.
WILLIAMS: Okay. Bye.
BAYH: Bye.
END OF INTERVIEW
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