Article

May (Southern) Wallace Oral History Interviews

  • May Wallace Oral History, June 14, 1983, Part I


    First portion of this oral history.

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    NPS. Funded by Eastern National
    Date created:
    04/07/2022
    Audio Transcript

  • May Wallace Oral History June 14, 1983, Part II


    Part two of this oral history.

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    Date created:
    04/07/2022
    Audio Transcript

  • May Wallace Oral History June 14, 1983 Part III


    Part III Corresponds with transcription below.

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    Date created:
    04/07/2022
    Audio Transcript

  • May Wallace Oral History June 14, 1983 Part IV


    Part IV Corresponds with transcription below

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    Date created:
    04/07/2022
    Audio Transcript

  • May Wallace Oral History July 20, 1983 Part I


    Part I. Transcription below

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    NPS Funded by Eastern National
    Date created:
    04/07/2022
    Audio Transcript

  • May Wallace Oral History July 20, 1983, Part II


    Part II Transcription below

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    Date created:
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    Audio Transcript

  • May Wallace Oral History July 20, 1983 Part III


    Part III Transcription below

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    Date created:
    04/07/2022
    Audio Transcript

  • May Wallace Oral History March 2, 1984, Part I


    Part I Transcription below

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    NPS Funded by Eastern National
    Date created:
    04/07/2022
    Audio Transcript

  • May Wallace Oral History March 2, 1984, Part II


    Part II Transcription below.

    Credit / Author:
    NPS Funded by Eastern National
    Date created:
    04/07/2022
Mrs. May Wallace
Mrs. May Wallace

NPS

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH MAY WALLACE: JUNE 14, 1983

JUNE 14, 1983
INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI

INTERVIEWED BY RON COCKRELL
ORAL HISTORY #1983-2, 1983-4, 1984-2
This transcript corresponds to audiotapes DAV-AR #4061-4064, 4074-4075
REVISED EDITION

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.
Jim Williams reviewed the draft of this transcript. His corrections were incorporated into this final transcript by Perky Beisel in summer 2001. A grant from Eastern National Park and Monument Association funded the revised edition of this interview.

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

May Wallace was the wife of George Wallace and sister-in-law of Harry and Bess Truman. The majority of her 3 part interview is a discussion about the relationships between the Wallace and Truman family members, particularly Madge Gates Wallace’s relationship with family members. She briefly mentions domestic help, cooking, and Wallace-Truman family Christmas traditions, in addition to the weekly bridge club gatherings. Her walk through narration of the rooms in the Truman Home provides valuable first hand documentation as to the historic arrangement and use of the rooms as well as the history of some of the furnishings.

Persons mentioned: Professor Bryant, Rufus Burrus, Bill Carnes, John Carnes, Helen Crow, Claudine Ford, Vietta Garr, Frank Gates, Grandfather Gates, Grandmother Gates, Maud Gates, Myra Gates, Walter Gates, Edna Hutchinson, Mag Knoll, Valerie [LaMere], Lucy Peters, Mary Shaw, Mr. Shaupe, Thelma Pallette Sibel, Mr. Southern, Christine Wallace, David Willock Wallace, Frank Wallace, Fred Wallace, George Wallace, Madge Wallace, Natalie Ott Wallace, Bess Truman, Margaret Truman, Harry Truman.
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ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH MRS. GEORGE P. [MAY] WALLACE

HSTR INTERVIEW 1983-2

RON COCKRELL: Mrs. Wallace, this morning I wanted to talk to you about the Truman house, these two houses [601 and 605 West Truman Road], the garage, and the surrounding property. I thought perhaps the best way to start was to ask you about your earliest recollections about the main house. What do you remember about it?
MAY WALLACE: [Chuckling] I moved here when I was married in 1916. The house next door was built in 1915. At that time, both Mr. and Mrs. Gates, the grandparents, were living, and they lived in the bedroom downstairs which now is Mrs. Truman’s bedroom and living room. Mrs. Wallace and her family lived mostly upstairs and in the back. The Gateses were older people and they wanted a life of their own. They didn’t want to bother each other.
There is a back stairs which goes up out of the kitchen and that was the stairs we used to get up to the back room upstairs where we congregated at night.
I can remember the house before that, that is just casually, because when we were—let’s see, if I was married in 1916, not much earlier before that—when we were in high school, Mrs. 1
Wallace had the group in for dinner a time or two, but I had no intimate connection with the house at that time until after we were married. Then, as I say, we didn’t use the front part of the house. Don’t ask me when Grandfather and Grandmother Gates died because, well, he died first. When was Mrs. Truman married? In ’29?
COCKRELL: In 1919.
WALLACE: Well, then, he died in 1918, the year before. Of course Mr. Truman was in the Army and didn’t get phased out as soon as he thought he would.
COCKRELL: You said you used to “congregate” on the upper floor using the stairway from the kitchen. Was there a sitting room up there?
WALLACE: Yes, there was at that time. It’s just a junk room now with boxes and things like that. Mother Wallace had her little sewing machine out there and they had some books and things out there. We used to go up there at night so as not to disturb the older grandparents.
COCKRELL: I see. Was it kind of a living room then?
WALLACE: Yes. She had made a living room out of it. She had it so that we could just go over there and up the back stairs so we didn’t bother anybody. So we did that for a number of years.
Mother Wallace, well shall I say, she was a very queenly woman. You can tell from Mrs. Truman that she was very much a lady, but she was very sweet. She was a mighty good mother-in-
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law. We went up there on Sunday for dinner, and Thanksgiving and Christmas we traded back and forth with my parents. It was quite an intimate relationship. The older brother that lived over here was Frank Wallace. We used to picnic out in the back yard. People made their amusement in those days. They didn’t just go to the picture show!
COCKRELL: Do you remember what the sleeping arrangements were? Which bedrooms people occupied?
WALLACE: Oh yes. Mrs. Truman’s bedroom was always the south room that you go up same steps. You’ve been upstairs?
COCKRELL: Yes. That’s not the one with the colored glass in it, is it?
WALLACE: No. That’s just a little alcove, isn’t it?
COCKRELL: Well, there’s an alcove, but then there’s a big bedroom with a big old picture window with the colored glass.
WALLACE: That faces onto the street. No, her bedroom was to the left of that. Mother Wallace must have had that big bedroom. Fred, the youngest brother, had the north bedroom. After Bess was married and they came back there to live. After Margaret was born, they cut a—after she was old enough to have a room of her own, they cut that passage across from their bedroom back to her little bedroom so that they could get to her at night.
COCKRELL: So that was right after Margaret was born that they did that?
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WALLACE: Well, I suspect that it was several years because she was running back and forth for a while.
COCKRELL: So maybe it was two or three years . . . ?
WALLACE: Yes, a couple of years, I don’t remember exactly. It was a convenience to them because they could get through there easily.
COCKRELL: I’ve read that the house was gray until President Truman became president and then they painted it white. Do you remember that?
WALLACE: I don’t. After you change the color of something I never can remember it before, but it could well have been. I don’t remember when it was painted and I don’t know when that back porch was enlarged and made into a living quarters. It was in his lifetime of course because he sat out there and read at night. And they had that fan. Is it still up there?
COCKRELL: I believe it is.
WALLACE: A friend of Mr. and Mrs. Truman gave them that and had it installed because she thought they needed air on the back porch. That was quite a living porch. They really enjoyed it. I wish I could remember when that was extended. The porch originally was a narrow porch like the one in the front and just came on around.
COCKRELL: I believe it was built around the same time that the White House in Washington was undergoing renovation. It must have been in the late 1940s.
WALLACE: Yes, it must’ve been.
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COCKRELL: He took a lot of criticism over how the White House was being changed, but he could do anything he wanted to on the “Summer White House” and no one could say or do anything about it.
WALLACE: Yes! Well, when he was in the White House, they had Secret Service men and they came back with Mrs. Truman and Margaret when they were here in the summers.
COCKRELL: Didn’t they build a little security booth out there in the yard?
WALLACE: Yes, a little house.
COCKRELL: Where was that located?
WALLACE: Right at the side of the barn.
COCKRELL: Do you remember when that was removed?
WALLACE: No, but it must of been after he was out of the presidency, because they didn’t require any Secret Service here then.
COCKRELL: So they didn’t have any use for it after that?
WALLACE: No. He had Secret Service protection later over at the Library. There was an Independence policeman named Mike Westwood who used to walk with him in the mornings when he took his morning walk. Mike’s been dead a number of years, too. They told a good story on Mike. They walked over toward the Catholic Church. They were there on the corner with a little girl who was going to school and she started to cross. Mr. Truman said something to her and she didn’t respond. Mike said, “You didn’t answer Mr. Truman.“ She said, “My mother told me not to speak 5
to strange men.” Mike told her, “You’re perfectly safe with this gentleman.” We’ve always laughed about that.
He used to get up early in the mornings at about five o’clock. He had a stick with a nail in the bottom and he’d go out and pick up all the papers and things out in the yard. They didn’t have breakfast until about eight o’clock. I guess he read the paper and wrote and walked before that.
After they were married, they thought they were going to live out in Grandview, but that summer Mother Wallace became very ill. Bess came home; it was soon after they were married. She came home to take care of her mother and they never did establish any other residence. They just lived up there.
COCKRELL: Did they actually intend to live in Grandview?
WALLACE: Well, that was his home, and I suppose he had a place out there, and his sister lived out there and all. I don’t think that Harry was ever much of a farmer. I wouldn’t want to say that as a plain fact, but that is really what happened. They came back. Mother Wallace had a very serious sciatic rheumatism and Bess really had to take over the running of the house.
COCKRELL: So her mother never was in very good health?
WALLACE: She was up and around, but then she had this problem. I guess if you have sciatic you always have a pain or two. Of course the younger brother was at home then, Fred. Mother Wallace wanted 6
to keep her finger on all of us. She’d been left a widow at an early age and she had raised her children and she was sweet and good, but she did want to know what we were all doing all the time.
COCKRELL: You said these two houses were built in 1915 and 1916. Was the land given by Mr. Gates?
WALLACE: Yes. Grandfather Gates gave each one of the grandsons fifty feet—Frank Wallace fifty feet, and George Wallace, my husband, fifty feet. They were married in 1915 in the spring, but that house was not built until the summer of 1915. I wouldn’t want to put an absolute date on it, but they lived—Mr. and Mrs. Frank Wallace—lived in an old house near the Baptist Church for a while. I know that this house was built in the gunner of 1916 before we moved into it in October of that year.
COCKRELL: So the property line . . .
WALLACE: . . . went to the other side of that house [601 West Truman Road]. There’s a fence there. Not too many years ago we made the entrance in there so the tenants there could come and go. There’s never been a front entrance to my house and there wasn’t any to that one. Of course the people who lived and rented there didn’t want to go through this gate, so we made that driveway on the other side of the house. Mrs. Hecker, who lives in the house, has a station wagon that she keeps on the other side of the house. I’ve 7
always used the back gate to came in. I don’t knew what I’ll do if they close that off.
COCKRELL: You called the garage a barn. Why is that?
WALLACE: Oh, it was a barn. Yes. Stylish writings about it call it the carriage house. But it really was not a barn. I mean, I don’t remember it as a barn. It was always where they keep the cars. Mr. Gates, let me see if I’m right about this, he bought a car before his death, and Bess, and the younger brother. Fred, drove it. It was kept in there. Frank Wallace kept his car on this side where Mr. Truman’s car is now. After I had a car, we built my little garage. It was an Essex. My parents bought it with the idea my mother would drive, but she didn’t take to driving at all. So I had a car with all expenses paid.
COCKRELL: So the second garage was built sometime in the 20s?
WALLACE: I have to date by [when] my mother and father went to California to be with my older sister, when my nephew Bill, Bill Carnes, was born in California, when my parents went out there. She was driving, but she didn’t care about it anyway. I was the family chauffeur and I drove her wherever she wanted to go. So that would have been around 1922, because they still had the big car then up at the house.
Have you seen that picture of the picnic that we were on with Frank Wallace holding the bucket out to the side and Mr. Truman driving the car? [see Appendix, number 1]
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COCKRELL: Yes, I’ve seen it.
WALLACE: That was his old Stafford. He was the only one that had a car for a long time in the family. So whenever we went on a picnic we all piled into it. [See appendix.] That’s too bad that young people don’t have to make their own fun any more. We had so much more fun. But my garage must have been built in the early 1920s. My husband used to drive a county car. He used to work for the county and drove a county car for years and kept it out here under this tree.
COCKRELL: Do you remember any alterations on the big garage? Did it always look like it does now? Did it have different doors on it?
WALLACE: Yes. I think they put up those up and down doors on; I think maybe they were an improvement.
COCKRELL: Was that after he came home in 1953, or was it during his presidency?
WALLACE: Well, now you’ve got me. I don’t know. Frank Wallace kept his car on that side of the barn and Harry kept his car on that side of the barn and Harry kept his car on that side of the barn because the big car was on the other side. I had my little garage so we had a lot of garage space than we knew what to do with. But I know those up and down doors were an improvement because I don’t think they could have had them in the early days. That gate out there that 9
goes out of my yard, Mr. Truman always went out and locked that gate every night.
Woe be unto you if you were out. He always checked to see that everyone was in, but that was one of his jobs. That was at a time when people were very curious, coming in and seeing things.
I’ll tell you a funny story about how curious people are. I was sitting here one day and a woman came to the door. She said, “I want to ask you something. Is that the Truman yard?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “Well, I’d like to get some dirt some soil. I collect soil from famous places.” I said “Well, just take some out of my yard, it’s all the same.”
She said, “No, that won’t do at all.” So, I let her through the little gate out there and she took her little container and with a spoon, scooped. If it had been Roosevelt’s house in New York or something like that I might have done the same thing, but the idea of collecting soil was too much for me!
COCKRELL: I’ve seen pictures of the back of the house where the little rose garden used to be with the big white trellises. Do you know the history of that? Was it always there?
WALLACE: It was there in Mrs. Wallace’s time. She was a flower—lover and had flowers in the yard. There were steps that went out; I guess those steps are still there on the north side. You could go in and out 10
there. They had a croquet set out there in the side yard and we used to play croquet out there.
COCKRELL: Was the rose arbor built by Mr. Gates?
WALLACE: Oh, no. That was after Mrs. Wallace took over after they died. After the grandparents died, and their estate was divided, Mother Wallace took the house as part of her part of the estate because she wanted to continue living there.
COCKRELL: Did she have to pay for the interests in the house?
WALLACE: I have no idea of the business part of it, but they appraised the house and took that much off her part of the estate. I don’t even remember what we got out of it, or the other three. The older brother was very much the businessman and a bookkeeper. He took care of all her business affairs. He worked down in his later years at the Waggoner-Gates Mill.
COCKRELL: Is the Waggoner-Gates Mill still operating today?
WALLACE: No. The house is still there, and it’s been made an Independence landmark and we have tourists going through it. That hasn’t been in business for a long time. Their product was Queen of the Pantry flour and it was a soft wheat flour. In my childhood, my mother just didn’t think she could cook without Queen of the Pantry flour! I have—you might like to see it if I can lay hands on it—a poster that John Carnes got for me. It’s a picture of the Waggoner-Gates product. Just hold everything while I look for it. [At this point in 11
the interview, Ranger-In-Charge Tom Richter enters the house; the tape recorder is shut off while Mrs. Wallace goes to find the Waggoner-Gates poster].
WALLACE: Here’s the poster of the Waggoner-Gates Queen of the Pantry flour. Here’s a picture when we were all at the White House, and this was when the Bridge Club was in Washington. The picture was taken while we were at Williamsburg.
COCKRELL: You said earlier that you didn’t really remember what the original color of the house was; that you always remember it being white.
WALLACE: I don’t remember that it was any other color, but if they say it was, then maybe it was a light color.
COCKRELL: You also said that the carriage house was called “the barn.” Do you think the Gates ever kept animals in there?
WALLACE: No, no. It was just a carriage barn. They had a cow, Susie Dam! My husband, when we were courting, always had to go home and milk the cow so he always called it “Susie Dam” so he could cuss at it! But that was back when the place was fenced up. We picked asparagus in my front yard. This was the garden before Mr. Gates gave the two lots to his two grandsons.
COCKRELL: Where did they keep the cow then?
WALLACE: Well, this was pasture then and garden.
COCKRELL: Did the cow not have a barn then?
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WALLACE: The cow must have had some kind of shed. I don’t know about that. You see, there were no automobiles. In my time, they didn’t have horses and carriage. In 1916, when I was married, they had the car for Bess and Fred to drive. This was Blue Avenue at the time. They had put the pipes in here across the road for drainage. When we built the house, it rained and it rained and it rained like Noah and the Ark. My sister and George, the man I was to marry, went uptown to pick up some things. We lived where the Carson’s undertaking is now on fifteen acres. They were driving in Mr. Gates’ car and it dropped down into the weakness of this where the pipes had been put in and the top was all loose, you know. So there the car sat. The family had to use cabs to get to the wedding. And it rained and rained. We picked the 24th of October because October in Missouri is always a beautiful time. And it rained and rained! Those things happen.
COCKRELL: This was called Blue Avenue. Was it also called Van Horn Road?
WALLACE: Yes, Van Horn Road, named after Mr. Van Horn. When it was paved, I don’t know. Then they named it Truman Road.
COCKRELL: Has it always been this wide? Or have they widened it?
WALLACE: No, they’ve widened it. We used to have trees along both sides, and we lost our trees when they widened it. It was just like a double dirt road would be in those days.
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COCKRELL: Do you remember when it was widened? It was after you were married, wasn’t it?
WALLACE: Yes. A number of years after we were married. It was after we put Van Horn Road clear through to Kansas City, and I can’t recall what that date would have been.
COCKRELL: Would it have been sometime after Margaret was born?
WALLACE: Yes, I imagine so. She was born in ’24. We were married in ’16, just before the ending of the war—that war! We lost all our trees there. We have to give way to progress. I guess. Evidently the maple trees were back further in the Truman yard because they didn’t take them. The cyclone that we had two or three years ago took some of the trees. There was a big tree up there that crashed right across the driveway, an old soft maple.
They took the strip off the other side. They didn’t take much off of our side, but they took quite a strip off the north side and took some trees up there on the corner. That lady was very indignant, too, but it was made a State Highway, so there wasn’t anything anybody could do.
TOM RICHTER: You can’t fight the state!
WALLACE: They just go ahead and do it!
COCKRELL: Do you remember when Van Horn Road was called Truman Road?
WALLACE: It was after he was in the White House.
COCKRELL: Was it before he came home to stay?
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WALLACE: It must have been because it’s been Truman Road awhile. [Pointing across the street]. There was another house there where that brick house is now before we were married. It might have been in the way of the road and that may be why it was taken down. It was for years the parsonage for the Baptist church so we had to behave ourselves! My husband was a heathen, and he liked to work on Sundays because he didn’t have much other time. He was painting the house on Sunday morning. The rope broke, and trying to grab it, the thing and everything fell and the green paint went all over everywhere. The preacher said it happened because he was doing it on Sunday! He came right in the house and called a painter and gave him the job of painting the house. He didn’t want to paint it anymore!
These house were always these colors, they were stained. But that green stain—I can remember how he looked with green stain dripping off of him. He was a great one. He was the one who did everything for the rest of the family. When Margaret was little, she was running down the driveway, and she was about two or three years old. The driveway then was gravel. She slid on the gravel and skinned her knee. She got up and she called my husband, “Da!” she said, “Da fix!” She wanted Da to fix her knee! He could fix everything else, so he could fix her knee.
COCKRELL: Do you remember when the driveway was finally paved?
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WALLACE: I couldn’t give you a date on that. Let’s see, Margaret was born in ’24, she was a pretty good sized girl at the time I’m talking about. I think it was after Mr. Truman was, well, I don’t know. Dates are too much for me.
COCKRELL: Yes, they are for a lot of people.
WALLACE: It was after he was in the White House that this gate was put up for protection. He used to go out and lock that gate every night that goes out into the alleyway.
COCKRELL: Did he want the gate to be put up? Did he resist it for awhile?
WALLACE: No, he didn’t care. We all had keys to the gate, and between the houses there was a fence that went clear across and there had to be a gate there because people could come in there and wander around just like the other place. You see, when that gate was closed and this side gate was closed, we were completely fenced in. You’d be surprised the silly people who would want to come in and wander around.
RICHTER: They’re still here today!
WALLACE: I’m sure that’s true.
COCKRELL: I don’t quite understand. Are you saying there was another fence to separate these houses from the main house? Or was it a whole complex like now?
WALLACE: No, it was a whole complex. The Government did all this when he went into the White House to protect it from sightseers. We gained 16
the fence off of the Government anyway. The Frank Wallaces had a key to the gate so they could get out that way. There’s a gate there with a key to it on my side, but I never did use it too much because it wasn’t necessary, but the fence fences in the whole area. They had to do it to protect it.
COCKRELL: Was there a wooden fence in the back here where the alley is?
WALLACE: No. Well, there must have been some kind of.... No, that was open back there because they were talking once to moving the alley, of widening the alley and going clear across to the next [street], but there would’ve been no outlet there, just another dead end. They decided there wasn’t any use doing that. So it was open space as I remember it. After they fenced in the whole thing, then they had a fence between our houses with a gate. Mrs. Frank Wallace had a key to that, and I guess I have a key to it, although that isn’t my side of the property.
They died in, oh, when was it? They died within a couple of months of each other. Margaret was in Europe. The property was left so that Mrs. Truman and I—we wanted to own it—so we bought the house. The colored segment of Independence at that tine was just about half a mile north of here. They’d come up the alley and we thought they might just creep into here, and if it was just sitting, and nobody owned it or cared for it, someone might sell it to colored people, and we didn’t want that. We still own it—
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Margaret and I own the house next door. We’ve always had nice tenants in it. Mrs. Heckler has been there about ten years and she’s a great help and comfort to me. When I fell and broke my leg in ’76, I called Doris. She had a key to the back door: she called an ambulance. Bess couldn’t figure out what was going on down here. We didn’t call her because we didn’t want to worry her. Don’t ever do that! Tell people! They’ll worry anyway. She called the Presbyterian preacher across the street. He called Doris to ask what was going on, and she told him that I had fallen.
Margaret was born in ’24 and it was during the awfullest snowstorm. It was one of those awful Februarys we have.
COCKRELL: She was born in the house, wasn’t she?
WALLACE: Oh yes! Mrs. Truman wouldn’t go to the hospital.
COCKRELL: Did the birth take place in the Trumans’ bedroom?
WALLACE: Yes, upstairs in that south room which was always her bedroom, and then when Margaret was old enough to be in a room by herself, that’s when they made that passageway. I’ll never forget how cold it was that February. Of course that old house, at that time, it wasn’t heated as well as afterwards—they put in two furnaces. The halls were cold.
COCKRELL: Was it heated by fireplaces and gas?
WALLACE: Oh, no. They had furnaces in the basement.
RICHTER: Were they coal furnaces?
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WALLACE: Yes. I shoveled a lot of coal in this house, too. Of course our furnace was small as this house has only four rooms. Anytime we were away we had to hurry home and put coal in the furnace. Then, of course, we all put in gas heat.
COCKRELL: Was that all done at the same time for all of you?
WALLACE: Oh. no, no. I can’t remember when they put it in up there, but it was wonderful because that house was cold.
COCKRELL: Do you remember when the slate roof was taken off?
WALLACE: No, somebody was asking me that the other day. Bill Carnes, my nephew, is sixty, and he said that when he was a boy about twelve years old, he shot pigeons. They had pigeons that would came and roost up in it and they had some of them bring their rifles and shoot a quantity of pigeons. They were just lying there and there was this n[...] man that came down the alley. He wasn’t anybody that belonged to any of us. He said, “Mister, what are you going to do with those pigeons?” Bill said, “I guess we’ll just throw them away.” He said, “Oh, can I have them? They make good eating!” He came in and collected the pigeons. So if Bill was twelve, that was a good while ago. You see, the slate roof was on even then. Hasn’t it always been on?
RICHTER: I think so. I think it was in the 50s when they took the roof off.
WALLACE: That’s possible. As I say, time goes so fast, I can’t remember.
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RICHTER: When they made the passageway into Margaret’s room, did that used to be part of a porch, or was the sleeping porch larger then?
WALLACE: Yes, they took part of the porch to make a passageway.
RICHTER: Yes. That’s what it looks like. There’s an old mirror in the music room over where the piano and fireplace is, do you remember that?
WALLACE: Now which do you call the music room?
RICHTER: The one with the piano.
WALLACE: That’s over north, that was the parlor where the gas jets are.
RICHTER: Yes. Are there any family stories about the mirror? Does it go back to the Gateses?
WALLACE: That mirror has been there ever since I can remember, but now they’ve modernized their living room there on the other side. Will they want to put that back to the way it was?
RICHTER: We haven’t decided yet.
WALLACE: You see, Fred Wallace was quite an architect and a designer. The mirror in the living room had the side things that went up like the one in the parlor, you know, the little things on each side. He took those down, had those taken down and modernized that fireplace on that south wall in the living room.
RICHTER: Yes, on the south side.
WALLACE: I was wondering the other day whatever became of those. Has anyone ever investigated the basement?
RICHTER: I’ll have to look for that. It might be in the attic.
20
WALLACE: In the attic? Well, Mrs. Fred Wallace and I went through the whole deal just before you all took over. She was here for Mrs. Truman’s funeral. She said, “Let’s go up there and go from the attic to the cellar.” She lived there for six years when her children were small. We went over the whole house, we went—we didn’t go to the basement—but we went from the attic clear down to there, but I didn’t see those in the attic, but I wasn’t looking for them. So, they might be up there. There were a whole lot of his hats up there.
RICHTER: When you come in the front door, there’s mirrors on the left wall. Two mirrors. They look old also. Have they been around a long time?
WALLACE: They have gold on them? Yes, they’ve been there a long time.
RICHTER: Did they go back to the Gateses?
WALLACE: Must’ve. Must’ve gone clear back to them because Grandfather Gates, when they lived there, the Gates, after Mother Wallace moved here from down the street, the Gateses practically lived in their quarters, that living room and the bedroom and they built on that bathroom in the back. Grandfather Gates had a big leather chair and before we were married, my husband used to tell me about it. He would sit down in his chair with change in his pocket. Some of it would spill out and go down, and the boys took turns. Each one of them had days which one of them could go down and hunt for Grandfather Gateses change.
21
He died in 1918. Bess and Harry were supposed to be married, I think, he didn’t get back from the war as soon as he thought he would, and then after Mrs. Gateses death, they waited another year. He was quite a joker. Mr. Gates had a keen sense of humor. She was English. Mrs. Gates was sent over here. There was a plague in England at that time and her family died off. They sent her over to be with relatives in the East, in America. She was put in the charge of the captain of the ship and came across. She was only six years old, something like that. Now, Mother Wallace was born in Moline, Illinois, and I have never found out why they ever came to Missouri! But I do know that Mr. George Gates, who was the grandfather, had a brother, Ed Gates. They lived over here on.... And he had come West at that time, and the story is that he wrote to them saying it was nice and to come on out to Missouri.
I asked Mother Wallace one time how they ever got to Moline, Illinois. She was born in Moline, Illinois. She said, well, she guessed they were just edging back away from the coast and coming back this way. She was only two years old when the Gates moved out here. So her sister must’ve been born—let’s see, the Gateses had five children. Mrs. Wallace was the oldest and lived the longest of any of than. She was ninety or ninety-one when she died.
22
COCKRELL: So when Mrs. Wallace died, did she leave the house to Bess, or to all of her children?
WALLACE: She left the estate, I don’t remember exactly how it was divided, but as I told you, Mrs. Truman took the house as part of her share of the estate. Because she wanted the house and we [didn’t care about it. We had our own houses]. [At this point in the interview, the tape cassette reached the end of the first side and was flipped over.]
[End #4061; Begin #4062]
COCKRELL: She [Bess Truman] took the house because she wanted to stay there?
WALLACE: Yes, that’s right. As I told you, Mrs. Truman came back to take care of her when she had sciatic one time and they just lived there all their married life and Margaret was born there.
COCKRELL: What happened when the Trumans went to Washington when Mr. Truman was a senator? Did someone stay in the house?
WALLACE: Well, no. Mrs. Wallace went into an apartment. One of those little
apartments over on Maple Avenue. I think maybe she spent one winter there. When they came back, then she came back and the next year I think they took her back to Washington with the.
COCKRELL: Why did she not live in the house? Why did she move into an apartment? Was the house too big for her?
23
WALLACE: Oh yes. It was too much for her and she wasn’t physically able to do it. They didn’t want her to do it; everybody had scattered by that time. When did they go into the White House for the first time? He was a Senator when they first went to Washington. That was when they closed the house and she went to live with them in that little apartment.
COCKRELL: And the house stood empty?
WALLACE: The house stood empty. All the pipes had to be drained and everything to keep them from freezing and then after—when did she go back to Washington?
COCKRELL: The Trumans went to Washington in 1935, in January.
WALLACE: Anyway, she went back and lived and died there in the White House. They used to come back here in the summers.
COCKRELL: What happened to the house when Mrs. Wallace was living with them in Washington? Was it empty the whole time?
WALLACE: It was just closed up.
COCKRELL: Wasn’t there anyone here to look after it?
WALLACE: My poor husband had to go up and drain all the pipes. He was the fixer in the family. Like Margaret said, “Let Da do it.”
COCKRELL: So did he have to go up and drain the pipes every time they went back to Washington?
WALLACE: Well, it wasn’t very long because then she—well, yes, I guess he did. We went there for Christmas a time or two and I was trying to 24
think if they came back here for Christmas. I can’t remember, but I know the house was closed up. It was after they came back that they built the porch on, I’m sure. There used to be a cistern there just as you came out the kitchen door. I wonder if it’s still there.
RICHTER: I think it’s still there.
WALLACE: It was supposed to be water that came from a park, Fairmont Park that we have over here. It was supposed to be very fine spring water. Mr. Gates always thought it was the same water that came out here that was over there. We used that system when we first lived here, but then they built so many houses that we felt like it could be contaminated, so they closed it.
COCKRELL: So you remember when the city of Independence hooked up their water system to the house?
WALLACE: No.
COCKRELL: Maybe it was after you were married, then.
WALLACE: Well, they had running water up there, before that. Because they had that bathroom upstairs. Oh yes, they had running water, I’m sure. Maybe as far back as the Gates’ time. We had running water. I know when we moved over on Park Avenue in 1910, if you requested city water, you could get that hooked up.
COCKRELL: You had running water in this house when you moved in here?
WALLACE: Oh, yes, we had city water and all the comforts of home.
COCKRELL: Which means electricity, too!?
25
WALLACE: Yes, we had electricity! We had hardwood floors. My husband worked with wood all his life. We had a leak up there. That mirror, by the way, don’t tell anybody, but it came from up there. It came from the big house. We had a leak from the chimney that we could not locate and he used to go up and sit up there when it was raining. He could not locate that leak. It was papered with wallpaper, and it stained and was so ugly, so he made a hole back there for the water to run out and paneled the whole thing. If we have one of our floods, you can still see some water. But that mirror, that must be the mirror that came out of the living room. Don’t tell anybody because they might want it back!
RICHTER: Don’t tell me!
WALLACE: Don’t tell him because he might take it back. It has a wooden back and beveled glass on the front. It’s a very fine mirror.
RICHTER: Did that hang where the portrait of Bess is now, over the fireplace?
WALLACE: Well as I remember there was the same thing that went up as the one that was in the parlor, and then this mirror was in the middle. That’s the way I remember it. Are there any pictures left of the living room? Any Kodak pictures?
RICHTER: No. [Telephone rings; two-minute pause in interview].
COCKRELL: Do you remember when there was a fire in the attic?
RICHTER: Does that go back to the Gates?
26
WALLACE: I remember when we cleaned out the attic and threw a lot of things out the window, but I don’t remember it having to do with a fire. What year was it?
COCKRELL: We really don’t know.
WALLACE: I really don’t remember any.
COCKRELL: Do you remember there ever being a fire?
WALLACE: Well, once they put too much firewood in the chimney, in the fireplace in the living room and they had sparks coming out. It scared us all nearly to death coming out when the chimney burned out, the soot and all up there.
RICHTER: Up in the attic, you can see where there was a fire at one time, up on the roof.
WALLACE: They probably did, but you don’t have any year on it?
RICHTER: That’s what we were wondering, how old the fire was. Were there any stories about an earlier fire? Back with the Gates?
WALLACE: Yes. Yes. That was when Auntie Myra put on her theater hat and coat. She wanted to save them. That was before, that was when the Gates lived there, they had a fire. That was when the Gates family lived at home. There were two sisters: Auntie Maud and Auntie Myra. They all began with an “M.” There was Madge. Maud and Myra. They lost several children. There were several graves out at the cemetery where the Gates are. There were two brothers, so they evidently had eight or nine children. Never did count the graves 27
out there. She was a tiny person. He was tall and slab-sided like my husband. Frank Wallace was six feet, one and a half. My husband was six feet. She said she would look at all those big men and wonder how they all belonged to her.
Uncle Frank was an invalid. Uncle Walter was married twice; his son, Walter Gates who has a son who has a son, so that name is still in the State of Washington. He called me at the time that Bess died, Walter Gates did, and he said, “I’m not in good health.” And he died just about the time Bess did. He was the last of that generation. He had a son, George Gates, who has eight children, so the Gates name is out there, but we never knew any of them except Walter. He used to come back. Mother had two brothers, Walter and Frank. All the Gates and Wallaces were great family people, clannish people.
I don’t know about that fire in the attic. I remember seeing those burned things up there.
RICHTER: Yes, it must go back to the Gateses.
WALLACE: Oh, it could have been. I’ve forgotten it. Don’t trust my memory back that far.
COCKRELL: Didn’t Mr. Truman have a lot of reconstruction done up in the attic during the 50s?
WALLACE: Yes, he had the attic fixed up because he had a lot of stuff up there, and there’s still a lot of his stuff up there. Mrs. Fred Wallace was 28
here for the funeral, and she said, “I’ve never been up in the attic.” And I said, “Well, I have. Do you want to go?” So we went up in the attic. I had a key. Margaret had given me a key. That was before they [National Park Service] took it over and somebody told the Secret Service. That was when the Secret Service was still over there. Somebody told them there was a light up in the attic. So when we came back downstairs, there was this man pattering over wanting to know what we were doing. It was okay after we explained ourselves.
RICHTER: There’s some old trunks up in the attic. Do they go back to the Gateses? They look real old.
WALLACE: They probably do. There probably are some Wallace things there. There’s a lot of stuff up there. I suppose it will stay there as long as Margaret is concerned. She doesn’t care anything about it. I think she just doesn’t—I think it is so nostalgic with her that she just doesn’t want to go back. I know when she was here she called and said, “Can I stay with you?” I said, “No, Margaret, I’m sorry.” That was when I had the companion here. I said, “She’s sleeping in your bed.” Then she said, “Well, I’ll sleep over here with the rest of the gang.” That was during Truman Week in the spring. She came out, but she didn’t want to go up there at all. I think it was too close to her mother’s death; she just didn’t want to. It was just 29
the nostalgia that she just couldn’t. She’ll get over that. We have to. We all do.
Did I tell you the story about the fat doctor?
RICHTER: No.
WALLACE: This doctor was a great big man. Margaret was little. When Mrs. Truman was sick one time, he went upstairs. Margaret followed him up the steps. He said, “What are you coming up here for Margaret?” She said, “Well, I wanted to wait and see the step that squeaks that it takes a heavy man to make it squeak. I wanted to hear it squeak!” And there is one. It’s still there. I made it squeak when I was up there. He was a great big jolly old man. This was an old family doctor of the Wallaces, Dr. Crimmenger. I guess he borned Margaret because she was born there in the house. Bess wouldn’t go to the hospital.
COCKRELL: She didn’t trust hospitals?
WALLACE: She didn’t want to go. When she set her head to do something one way or the other, it stayed set! It wasn’t so unusual in those days. I was born at home, too. It sure was cold when she was born. Bess had lost one child, and she wouldn’t buy any furniture or anything because she was superstitious about it. Margaret always told them they didn’t think enough of her to have a bed for her. They put a pillow in a drawer and then put her in the drawer!
COCKRELL: Mrs. Truman had lost a child before Margaret?
30
WALLACE: Yes. You see, she was, they were married in 1919. Margaret wasn’t born until 1924, so it was along in there. It was a miscarriage. It wasn’t a full [term]. . . Of course, they weren’t very young. I guess Mrs. Truman was forty when Margaret was born, wasn’t she?
COCKRELL: Pretty close to it.
WALLACE: Yes, pretty close to it.
COCKRELL: Do you recall anything about the lamppost that sits in front of the house now next to the sidewalk before you get to the front gate? It hasn’t been there for very long, has it?
WALLACE: I don’t remember when it was put there.
COCKRELL: Are there any stories or anecdotes about the colored glass in the windows in front.
WALLACE: I don’t remember anything about them. I suppose it was the fashion then to have colored glass. A lot of old houses in town had colored glass.
COCKRELL: So did the Trumans especially like the colored glass?
WALLACE: I suppose they did, I mean they left it like that. Mrs. Truman would have been hesitant to change anything very drastically. Of course, oh, how old would she have been when they moved up there? Fred was a baby. After their father died, they moved up there.
COCKRELL: She would have been about seventeen.
31
WALLACE: Yes, about that. It was home to her. I don’t know. There were old houses all over town that had the colored glass in the windows. It was the style.
COCKRELL: Do you remember what was done to the kitchen when they modernized it?
WALLACE: [Chuckling] That kitchen was the coldest place in the world when we used to go out there in it. Yes, they modernized it. Of course, they put in a new sink and a new disposal and all in it in later years. There used to be a little stove. Is there still a little heating stove there?
COCKRELL: Yes, there still is.
WALLACE: That was the one warm spot in the kitchen.
COCKRELL: Was it the coldest room because the kitchen is the oldest part of the house?
WALLACE: It could be. It was always big, but of course they always had help. I know it was a fer piece from the kitchen into the dining room. The butler’s pantry was in between the kitchen and the dining room. They modernized. They put in a new sink and a gas stove is comparatively new. They had that other little stove. We used to use those back steps. Of course you can’t get up them now with all that stuff on them.
RICHTER: I’ve got to give a talk to the Kiwanis Club, so I’ve got to leave. Thanks a lot for having us.
32
WALLACE: That’s okay. Anytime I can help you, just holler.
COCKRELL: See you later, Tom. Well, we’ve talked about nearly everything. Is there anything else about the house that we haven’t talked about?
WALLACE: I can’t think of it. Of course there’s still those gas burners in the parlor. Lots of people when they put in electricity kept the gas burners because they weren’t quite sure what the electricity was going to do!
There’s some stuff down there in the barn, some wooden things, they must’ve come off of there someplace. As I remember, and don’t trust my memory, but it seems to me that it was similar to the one in the parlor. When they modernized it, the living room, they took that down. Is the portrait of Mr. Truman still up over the mantle?
COCKRELL: Yes, it is. When you say they modernized the living room, do you mean just the mirrors?
WALLACE: Yes. Well, there wasn’t anything else really to modernize. It was just a nice big room and I suppose it was repapered at the time and curtains and things like that. The only structural change was the mirrors. That’s the way I remember it. I don’t know where they could be.
COCKRELL: Then Mrs. Truman didn’t really want her house to change that much, did she?
WALLACE: She didn’t seem to object or she could have told them not to do it.
33
COCKRELL: Well, it seems to me that the house hasn’t really changed from the time that the Gates had it.
WALLACE: No, it hasn’t changed structurally very much because the dining room is very much the same. That old place that always fascinated me, the marble place where you kept the plates hot.
COCKRELL: Yes, that’s still there.
WALLACE: But, of course, the furniture is different because Mrs. Truman brought a lot of her furniture back from Washington. I think that dining room furniture now is what she had, but that old built-in place over there . . . Are the silver things still on the . . .
COCKRELL: Yes, I believe it is. Is that Gates silverware?
WALLACE: No, I think that was Mrs. Wallace’s. There’s something about that. I’ll have to ask Margaret about that, whether it was something Mrs. Truman had or, I don’t know. Most of the things in the house, as I remember it, were Wallace things than Gates.
COCKRELL: Oh, really? When the Wallaces moved in, did they have a lot of furniture that they brought with them from their house?
WALLACE: Yes, they did. Of course the bedroom furniture upstairs, they [the Trumans] had. I think the buffet and the dining room table, that’s the old dining room table. But they [the Trumans] brought back a lot of stuff. I have a lot of nice wooden boxes that I used to keep stuff in down in the basement.
COCKRELL: In your basement?
34
WALLACE: I just have the boxes. I won’t throw them away. They were nice storage boxes. I said, “Can I have some of those boxes?” and Harry said, “Yes, we were just going to make kindling out of them.” So we brought them down. They’re nice. One always has junk that one has to keep. When they left the White House, they had accumulated a lot of things. He had all of his books, and most of them have been moved over to the Truman Library.
COCKRELL: Do you remember what the sleeping arrangements, the bedroom arrangements, were when the Trumans came back from Washington? Did they live in their same bedroom?
WALLACE: Oh, yes. They had the same bedroom, and then they used that room across the hall where he had his clothes, where they’re still hanging. He got up early in the morning and he’d use that for a dressing room because he didn’t want to disturb her because she didn’t like to get up quite so early. So he’d go in there and dress and go out and walk around and pick up the papers out of the yard.
COCKRELL: What was done with those other bedrooms? Did they just stay empty?
WALLACE: Well, yes. You see, Mother Wallace by that time had moved downstairs, and Margaret used that north room. Isn’t there stained glass there in that window?
COCKRELL: No, I don’t think so.
WALLACE: Well, it’s that big room…
35
COCKRELL: There in the corner…
WALLACE: Yes. The one with the steps going up to it. For the last few years, she’s used that. I believe she slept in that, well, I can’t remember. Mrs. Truman, of course, moved downstairs. I think it was when she fell.
COCKRELL: Was that the first time?
WALLACE: Yes. And it was very handy. Grandmother Gates had the bathroom built off the downstairs bedroom, too. The Gateses had built that for their own convenience.
COCKRELL: So that bathroom wasn’t there before?
WALLACE: Originally, no.
COCKRELL: Would you know when that was built? Was that before you were married?
WALLACE: I can’t remember. No, that must have been after. I think they built it, but I think Bess, Mrs. Truman, modernized it and put in new fixtures in it when she moved, when she had to stay downstairs.
COCKRELL: That bedroom then, was that always a bedroom?
WALLACE: Well, I think the Gateses used that downstairs. That was their quarters. The bathroom and the bedroom and living room. I’m pretty sure they built that bathroom.
COCKRELL: Probably after the Wallace family moved in? Because didn’t they used to live upstairs?
WALLACE: Now you’ve got me. Did they used to live upstairs? 36
COCKRELL: I would think so at one time.
WALLACE: I don’t know. My recollection of them is living downstairs. That was their bedroom and the living room was theirs. Mrs. Wallace made the sitting room upstairs where we used to congregate. The Gates went to bed early and they weren’t used to having all our rattling around. That was back when we were married back in 1916, and it wasn’t too long until he died in 1918.
COCKRELL: I remember seeing an early picture, I think it was in the early 1930s, of the front part of the house. It had, well, you’ve seen them, these window coverings that come over the windows and then there was one that hung over the front porch. It looked like there was a dark stripe and white stripes. Have you seen them?
WALLACE: Yes, they were wooden awnings, weren’t they?
COCKRELL: Yes.
WALLACE: Yes, wooden awnings. That’s what those were.
COCKRELL: Did they put those up every summer?
WALLACE: No, the wooden ones, I think they stayed . . .
COCKRELL: They stayed? Well, I think I’ve only seen one picture of them, the awnings, being on the house.
WALLACE: I don’t remember. I know that later they had another kind of awnings on the house. I wouldn’t know. I’m sorry that I have to end this, but I have another appointment. I have to go see my eye 37
doctor. He’s going to give me some new glasses. I had a cataract operation.
COCKRELL: I certainly appreciate your time and patience in this interview, Mrs. Wallace. You’ve been a tremendous help to me.
[End #4062]

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH MRS. GEORGE P. [MAY] WALLACE

HSTR INTERVIEW #1983-4


RON COCKRELL: I thought we would start in this room since it is in the front of the house—the front living room. I was wondering if you could talk about some of the furniture in here, if you knew some of the background to some of it? Like this marble table here.
MAY WALLACE: I was trying to think where they got that marble. I believe they brought that marble from some other place and put it on that table. It makes a good, water-proof and liquor-proof [surface]!
Now, originally, as I remember this room, things went up to the ceiling [pointing to above the fireplace] and had those little notches where they put things. I could be mistaken, because there was a mirror. Is there one in the parlor?
TOM RICHTER: It’s like this now.
WALLACE: There used to be a round mirror there. I have one of them down at my house because they gave it to my husband. But they used to have these wooden extensions and a mirror in there [above the fireplace]. That’s what it was originally, but it’s been a long time. Of course when they modernized the room.
We always had the Christmas tree here in the window and wired it down to the cold air shaft.
COCKRELL: There’s a cold air shaft here under the sofa?
1
WALLACE: Yes, right underneath here. There’s a big wooden cross down there in the barn I guess that they made for it. Margaret always wanted it to hit the ceiling. She had to have the biggest Christmas tree, so that was put on it and wired down because it was top heavy. We each had a chair to put our things on, and you never saw so much trash, tissue paper, and ribbons in all your life.
COCKRELL: You always had quite a roomful of people then?
WALLACE: Yes. Yes. The Frank Wallaces lived next door and that made four of us, and Mrs. Wallace was still alive, and Margaret. Then Vietta, the colored gal, always came in and looked around. Margaret Truman, when she was Margaret Truman, was chocolate crazy. Vietta, the colored maid, always got her a sack of chocolate buds. That was her present for Margaret. Margaret always called her “Pete” and I don’t know why! Of course Margaret was real little when she first came to work here, but her name was Vietta, and maybe she just couldn’t say “Vietta,” so she just called her “Pete.”
But we each had a chair and had our things on that and we commenced pitching then.
Originally, when I was first married—in 1916, and that was a good many years ago—the grandmother and grandfather were still alive. They had those apartments in there [pointing to the first floor bedroom and bathroom]. I don’t know when that bathroom was built-on, under the porch upstairs. Do you have any idea?
2
COCKRELL: Not really. We’re thinking that it was around World War I, or sometime in there.
WALLACE: Well, I think it was in the grandparents’ time because that would have been the only access they had to a bathroom. They lived in here and Grandfather Gates had a big chair. He sat over there [pointing to the southeast corner of the living room]. He was a thin, skinny man, and he sat kind of back and the coins used to slide out of his pockets. The boys used to love going to get Grandfather Gateses coins.
COCKRELL: Has that bedroom where the Gates used to live changed very much over the years?
WALLACE: Well, yes. I would say that it has been completely renovated. Mrs. Truman, in her later years, lived in there. She and Mr. Truman had a bedroom upstairs. He’s been dead ten years, of course.
RICHTER: How long has this wallpaper been here?
WALLACE: Well, they renovated this room. Fred Wallace, the younger brother, was an architect and quite a designer. I think he’s the one who took those things down [the wooden extensions over the fireplace] and I always thought it was a shame. Let’s see, my husband has been gone twenty years. I don’t think it was papered. Mother Wallace died in ’52. I don’t think it’s been papered since then.
She died in Washington and they brought her back here the ninth of December.
3
COCKRELL: How about the carpeting in here? Is it pretty old?
WALLACE: No, it’s just mediumly old. It isn’t real old. The old things are the clock, and I told you the story about the tin hands, didn’t I?
RICHTER: I don’t think Mr. Cockrell has heard that one.
WALLACE: My husband made them out of a pie pan.
COCKRELL: You’re kidding! A pie pan?
WALLACE: No, I’m not kidding. He was a fixer. He was the one who fixed everything. He was on an enforced vacation between jobs one time so it worried him because the clock didn’t go, it didn’t have any hands. He took some real thin aluminum pie pans of mine and came up here and made a pattern. Then he made it out of cardboard and then he drew around it on the pans, cut them out, and painted them. He brought them back up here and put them on, and put a battery in down there. It hadn’t run for a long time. Is that battery, does it still run?
RICHTER: Yes, we unplugged it because of the wiring. How did the hands get broken?
WALLACE: I don’t know. They said that back, oh, quite awhile, that the young people were having—I wouldn’t call it a wild party—but some boy was investigating and he went in there and took the hands off. They got lost some way.
That clock is dated, what did I tell you? 1732. It must have come out from the East when they came. Grandmother Gates came 4
over here as a little girl from England. The family as I understand it—now, this is the way it was given to me—there was a plague in London and a lot of her family died. They sent her to America to avoid this plague. She was in the East there, but who was there to take her, I don’t know. Mrs. Wallace was born in Illinois. As I understand it, Grandfather Gateses brother, Mr. Ed Gates, wrote his brother and said this was a good place to come. Mother Wallace was born in Moline and so she was probably a baby when they came out here. They lived first—is that house still on Lexington Road where the family lived? There’s a big house out there where they used to live. How they got into the milling business, I don’t know.
There were three sisters—Maud, Myra, and Madge—and they all lived here. Now, the back end of this house burned at one time. Auntie Myra was trying to save her opera hat and coat, and she went out with them on! Was that when the extension was built on back there?
COCKRELL: Are you talking about the fire that was in the attic?
WALLACE: No, I don’t think so. It might have been and come down there, but they said there was a fire and it burned off part of the old house. There’s places in the attic where you can see where the fire was. Mrs. Fred Wallace went up there when she was back here.
5
Frank Wallace quit school so he never finished school, but my husband graduated from the Independence High School. We were going together, and I used to come up here. Every once in awhile Mother Wallace had a group of us come up here for dinner and I was terribly shy about that because—and she turned out to be my mother-in-law, and she was a lovely lady, I’ll say that for her.
This is where the Gates lived in the bedroom and bathroom when I was first married. Grandfather Gates died in 1918, and Grandmother Gates stayed here and with an unmarried brother, Frank, who lived in Denver someplace.
COCKRELL: Was he an invalid?
WALLACE: Yes. He had weak lungs and he lived in Colorado a good deal of the time for that. There was Uncle Frank and Uncle Walter, and Maud, Myra, and Margaret—there were five of them. There are other plots [in Woodlawn Cemetery] where they’d lost small children. Auntie Maud married a very wealthy man over in Platte City, Missouri. That was a coincidence, too, because he was an intimate friend of my father, Strother Wells. My Grandfather Proctor was the minister of the Christian Church here from ’60 to a hundred [1900], forty years. They lived in a big brick house. Do you know where the Carson Funeral Home is out on Lexington?
COCKRELL: Yes.
6
WALLACE: Well, that whole area, fifteen acres in there, was where they lived. We went up to Platte City, the whole tribe of us, for Thanksgiving the year of the flu, 1918. when Harry was still in Europe. After we came back, Bess had terrible flu and my husband had flu. It was just an epidemic that came through here. She was sick all winter.
COCKRELL: Do you remember the time that the Gates lived here, was all of this living room carpeted or was it all hardwood floors?
WALLACE: I wouldn’t think so. I think wall-to-wall carpeting has come in since then. They must have had rugs in here.
Grandmother Gates was a very small woman, but very much of a person.
COCKRELL: Did they use the fireplace much?
WALLACE: We caught the chimney on fire once! We decided to make a fire in it one day and the chimney hadn’t been cleaned out. The sparks commenced coming out the roof. Yes, they used it! This house was cold. It was always cold in here, until they got that double furnace in down there in the basement, then it began to get heated up. Then they made over that bathroom upstairs when Mr. and Mrs. Truman used the upstairs more.
COCKRELL: Did the Trumans use the fireplace much?
WALLACE: Yes, they used it.
COCKRELL: Even after they got their new heating system?
WALLACE: Yes, it was cozy. Then there’s a fireplace in the parlor.
7
COCKRELL: Did they use that one, too?
WALLACE: Yes, that’s more of a parlor and we didn’t sit in there much. There’s gas light and electric light both in there. That mirror in there was the same as in here, and I don’t know where they ever got to.
COCKRELL: Those were all taken down when the rooms were modernized in the early 50s?
WALLACE: They must have been, yes. I’m surprised, because this brother, Fred. who was the architect, was quite a lover of old things. So why they took those pretty things down . . .
COCKRELL: Is Fred Wallace gone now?
WALLACE: Yes, he’s been gone quite a number of years. His widow was here last fall at the time of Mrs. Truman’s death and stayed with me. Fred was quite a visionary person. He was always going to do something. He’s buried out at Woodlawn, and Mother Wallace is buried out there, and that’s where Mrs. Truman had her place all picked out, but they took her over to the Library. She didn’t have anything to say about that.
When Mr. Truman was first elected senator, they just had a little apartment there. Mrs. Wallace didn’t go back there. I don’t think she lived with them in the apartment.
COCKRELL: Do you know much about some of the other furniture in here, how old or recent they are?
8
WALLACE: These chairs with the wood trim around them are the old, old ones. Those stuffed chairs are modern ones they bought for comfort.
COCKRELL: The blue and yellow ones.
WALLACE: I have one of these chairs down at my house. Margaret wanted me to keep one for her. Are those chairs out in the hall still there?
COCKRELL: Yes.
WALLACE: Those are what are called a “parlor set” in those days. There was a settee and four or six chairs. Grandmother Gates gave me a chair and gave Mrs. Frank Wallace a chair, and I made needlepoint for it. It’s down at my house now.
COCKRELL: So those chairs all used to sit in the parlor?
WALLACE: I think they did, but I don’t remember them anyplace but in the hall. That bookcase [pointing to the east living room wall] was Mrs. Truman’s.
When they came back here, they had quite a bit of their own things that they brought here. Mother Wallace had died. So that secretary is something Mrs. Truman had.
I know that I’m a very queer person in a number of ways, and when things change, it’s hard for me to look back and see the way they were before!
This sofa has been recovered.
COCKRELL: This sofa [in front of the bay window] is an old one?
9
WALLACE: Yes. I think it was part of the set that goes with those old chairs. Now don’t quote me on that, but I believe it is.
COCKRELL: These lamps here built onto the walls, do they work?
WALLACE: I think those were part of what Fred Wallace did when he redid this room. They’re too modern to have been in here originally, aren’t they?
COCKRELL: Well, they look like it. Yes, they do look new. They do work.
WALLACE: There was a chandelier in here originally. We always used to have a chandelier hanging in the middle of these rooms. Then, when we put all these side lights in, we took all of them out.
COCKRELL: It looks like there are quite a few cracks here through the wallpaper and in the ceilings. While the Trumans were here in the 50s and 60s, would they usually repair things like that? If they saw cracks in the walls or the ceilings, were they pretty quick to repairs things?
WALLACE: I don’t remember that the walls were cracked then.
There used to be green curtains. You see the brass things where there used to be a rod across there? When you were heating a house of this size with more or less primitive heat, you had to have something to get cozy with, and there used to be green portieres that hung down. You could pull those over when it got too cold.
10
COCKRELL: It looks like those brass holders are on all the door openings in this room. Would all of them have had the portieres?
WALLACE: Yes. They were green, as I recall.
COCKRELL: They haven’t hung that up since the new heating system was installed?
WALLACE: I can’t remember that they have.
COCKRELL: Do you know anything about these tables in here, the endtables at the ends of this couch?
WALLACE: All these tables are modern. I think Mrs. Truman had them in Washington. Those are too modern to have been the Gateses.
COCKRELL: How about these lamps in here; the gold one with the shade and the one here on the table?
WALLACE: I think these are all Mrs. Truman’s. I guess they had an overhead light, they must have had in here. I wish my memory were better, but when you get to be a hundred, you can’t remember like you used to.
COCKRELL: Well, you’re not quite a hundred!
WALLACE: I’m getting there. I had a birthday last week. I was eighty-nine. [Mr. Richter re-enters the room]
COCKRELL: Mrs. Wallace was saying there used to be a chandelier here in this room.
WALLACE: Wouldn’t there have been? They must’ve had one because they didn’t have all these fancy lamps and things in those days.
11
RICHTER: Did Mr. Truman have a favorite chair in here?
WALLACE: Mrs. Truman sat in that one when she lived in here in her last years.
COCKRELL: The yellow [gold] chair.
WALLACE: I don’t think they did. They really lived pretty much upstairs. They had the bedroom fixed pretty well.
COCKRELL: Do you recall when this couch was recovered? Has it been long?
WALLACE: Yes, it’s been years. This is an old piece. There used to be a smaller one.
RICHTER: There’s one in the music room.
WALLACE: Well, let’s go look. [Moving into the foyer, by the staircase]. This chair with the needlepoint is an old chair.
COCKRELL: Did Mrs. Truman ever do needlepoint?
WALLACE: No, she didn’t. That’s mechanically done, it’s not handmade. As children, we used to run across this area here and slide and it would just spark!
COCKRELL: This decorative statue lamp here on the end of the banister, did there used to be a globe on the lamp?
WALLACE: Yes, there was one of those round clear white ones. I mean, not clear glass, but one of those milk glass ones.
Now, Mother Wallace had I don’t know how many of these tables [examining the drop-leaf table beneath the portrait of Margaret Truman in the central hallway]. I have one, and she gave
12
the Fred Wallaces one. So many of these drop-leaf tables around here. And that mirror is old [pointing to the mirror near the portrait].
COCKRELL: Do you recall what was hanging behind this portrait of Margaret before?
WALLACE: No, I don’t know. There may have been an old wall picture. Now this is old [pointing to the wainscoting].
COCKRELL: What do you call that?
WALLACE: I couldn’t tell you now. That was quite the style. They did it because I expect it was because the chairs were pushed against it and it was more practical to have something there to withstand it.
COCKRELL: Or even with little kids around it might have saved the wallpaper.
WALLACE: Yes. We always used this door over here and went over the back way [pointing to the door beneath the staircase]. When the Gateses were alive, Mother Wallace had that room over the kitchen because it was nice and light, made into a sewing room. She had a little automatic machine up there. We used to come in at night when the Gateses were alive—we couldn’t bother this end of the house—we’d come up that back stairway from the kitchen. That was when Fred was still in school.
COCKRELL: Did Mrs. Wallace do a lot of her own sewing then?
WALLACE: Yes, she did. She did the curtains and she helped me make curtains for my house. She was a very sweet person. I told her once, 13
“You’re so good to us,” and she said, “Well, you’re taking care of my boys.” Mr. Wallace’s death was tragic, and she had been a widow so long that she had just devoted her life to her children. She really was a little too “wantin’” to know what we were “doin’” sometimes. [The group enters the parlor/music room].
COCKRELL: Do you know much about this fireplace? It looks like these tiles surrounding it are North African.
WALLACE: That was just the style at the time. I’ve gone through a lot of old houses in the East and they nearly all have a little story going around the fireplace.
COCKRELL: I’ve talked to one of the workmen and he seems to remember in the early fifties that there was a different tile on here.
WALLACE: There might have been.
COCKRELL: He seems to remember that there was a little boy going fishing.
WALLACE: Probably so.
Now, I know that in here and the living room, above the fireplaces used to be extensions with shelves like down below here [pointing to the decorative wooden shelves surrounding the tile around the hearth]. I know there used to be mirrors here because I’ve got one of them down in my house. After they were renovating, they took it down and it has a wooden back.
COCKRELL: They don’t make them like that any more.
WALLACE: No, they don’t make them like that no more!
14
COCKRELL: Did Mr. Truman play piano much in here?
WALLACE: No, just when somebody would ask.
COCKRELL: So he didn’t practice everyday then?
WALLACE: Oh, no, but he would come in here and sit down. Margaret was a little thing and they gave her this piano for Christmas; she wanted an electric train. She was so disappointed. She didn’t care anything about the piano. A cousin over in the city had this marvelous electric train in the attic of the house that went all over with all these tunnels and lights. She was just fascinated with it. She wanted one. She had lots of ill-health. They carried her downstairs to see the piano, but she wasn’t interested in it!
COCKRELL: How about the library in here? Has it changed?
WALLACE: Yes, it’s changed.
COCKRELL: Was it always used as a library?
WALLACE: No.
COCKRELL: I know that the shelves were added.
WALLACE: Yes, that was a Truman addition. Mrs. Truman made a work room out of it, really, and they built these bookcases after the Trumans lived here because there was no room for all of their books.
COCKRELL: So, before it was made into a library, what use did the room have?
WALLACE: That’s some kind of music thing, isn’t it? A record player. It was probably something that was given to him.
COCKRELL: This was never used as a bedroom or guest room was it?
15
WALLACE: No.
COCKRELL: It was always a reading room, then?
WALLACE: The den, we called it. We called it the den. In later years, Mr. Truman used it as a study.
COCKRELL: Did he ever have a desk in here instead of this table? Did he have a desk with a chair? Or was it always like this?
WALLACE: He had something that he used to write on. I don’t think it was a desk, it may have just been this table that he used because he did quite a bit of work in here.
That’s another one of those old chairs from the same period [pointing to the wood trim chair in front of the east wall bookshelves].
COCKRELL: Was this his favorite easy chair here by the window?
WALLACE: Yes, that’s the one he sat in. He had a good light there, of course his eyesight was never very good.
COCKRELL: Can you negotiate the steps okay so that we can go up the steps?
WALLACE: Oh, yes. I can go anyplace as long as I’m careful. [Looking at the door off its hinges]. What does this door go to?
COCKRELL: I think it goes here on the doorway to the dining room. I don’t know why it’s off its hinges. [The group moves into the dining room].
WALLACE: [Looking into the built-in china cabinet. That pattern is what they used in the White House [china with presidential seal]. These vases 16
on the upper shelves are Wallace, that’s a Gates tirade; I’d like to have one of those old pitchers.
COCKRELL: These green-stemmed glasses?
WALLACE: Those were Mother Wallace’s. We used them for sherbet on the table. That table has had twenty people at it. This is not the old table; this was Mrs. Truman’s table. We had an old table here at first. We often had twenty-two people when we had the Platte City people, and all of them and a huge turkey.
COCKRELL: Would everyone get together here at Thanksgiving?
WALLACE: Yes, at Thanksgiving, but sometimes we went over to Platte City for Thanksgiving dinner, but after they all got families, we preferred to be here.
Now Margaret sent that fixture from New York, and I know that we had to wash all those prisms when it came and unpack it. Uncle George had to do that. She bought it in some place after they moved back here. It was just a very ordinary fixture that was up there before.
COCKRELL: What about these silver pieces?
WALLACE: They’re modern. They belong to Mrs. Truman. I think that’s her silver set, too. Yes, that was [for] coffee and tea.
COCKRELL: So these aren’t family heirlooms then?
WALLACE: This is. This is old. It’s a caster, they call them. It’s vinegar and olive oil.
17
COCKNELL: That’s real handy. A place for salt and pepper and mustard.
WALLACE: I have one that’s old too that has “Wallace” on it, that Mother Wallace gave me.
COCKRELL: Did Mrs. Truman just buy these things in Washington?
WALLACE: Yes, she brought these back from Washington.
COCKRELL: So, the Gates had that?
WALLACE: Yes. I don’t know how much that chair goes back.
COCKRELL: It looks like it has had quite a bit of wear.
WALLACE: Yes. It’s an old, old child’s chair. And that thing is a heater. There’s a register in there and you can keep things hot on that marble.
COCKRELL: So you could set bread and other things on top of that?
WALLACE: Yes.
RICHTER: Even inside, there’s a little platform inside.
This is a wedding gift to Mrs. Wallace. Do you know what this is?
WALLACE: It’s called an epergne “e—p—e—r—g—n—e.” An epergne was a fancy dish that you put fruit in. This is an old table that it’s on.
COCKRELL: Is that another of Mrs. Wallace’s drop-leaf tables?
WALLACE: It must’ve been. Those old pictures are very valuable. There were six of them.
RICHTER: There’s some in the attic.
18
WALLACE: Well, they can stay there as far as I’m concerned! They were very fine things, but I’m not an artist enough to appreciate them.
COCKRELL: Whose pictures are they? Are they Wallace or Gates?
WALLACE: They were the Gateses.
RICHTER: And this chandelier is from Margaret?
WALLACE: Yes, that was the one that we had to wash all the prisms and
everyone helped to put it together. We all stood around here and told my husband what to do.
The paper in this room is fairly new.
COCKRELL: This room has been redone recently?
WALLACE: Yes, I imagine this all was papered at one time.
What is this called, the covering that goes all around here by the stairs? It has a name.
RICHTER: Wainscot.
WALLACE: Wainscoting, yes. I think that mirror is old [pointing to the mirror on the first landing on the staircase]. This is a beautiful old stairway. Is that walnut? It’s not red enough for mahogany.
COCKRELL: Were these steps always carpeted, or were they wood?
WALLACE: No, they were wood. Here’s the step that squeaks.
COCKRELL: Yes, the second one from the top, before you get to the second landing. Whose desk is this?
WALLACE: I imagine that’s one the Trumans had. Mrs. Truman used to sit here and do quite a bit of work here.
19
COCKRELL: Did she used to answer her mail here?
WALLACE: Yes. She never got caught up. These are all modern books here on this cabinet. Christmas paper and Christmas cards are inside here. A lot of old junk that’s been sent to them. They didn’t know where to put it so they put it in here. Everything [is] in here, but the kitchen stove. [The group goes into the Trumans’ bedroom].
WALLACE: This is a good place to fall down if you don’t know the steps are here. You come out of there and pitch.
COCKRELL: Is this a common thing to do, to have these steps here into the bedroom?
WALLACE: No, I think the house was built at different times. It burned, and it was built, and I imagine it just got that way. And that was cut [pointing to the passageway to Margaret’s childhood room]. When Margaret was a baby, the Trumans—this was their bedroom—and when she got big enough to sleep by herself, she had a little bedroom there. That’s when they cut that passage so they could get to her without going clear around the vinegar jug.
COCKNELL: So this used to be just a solid wall then?
WALLACE: Yes. There’s a little step there, too, that could throw you.
COCKRELL: Is most of this furniture here in the bedroom things that the Trumans had in Washington? Or do these go back to Mrs. Wallace?
20
WALLACE: No, these were things that were put in here. She originally had an entirely different set.
COCKRELL: Did these rooms have carpeting?
WALLACE: No, they were all just boards painted with rugs on them.
COCKRELL: Painted floors?
WALLACE: Yes, it was painted. Probably it was originally carpeted and then taken off and painted because there was an era there when it was considered that was the way to have your floors.
COCKRELL: Would the color of the floor match the color of the walls, or would it be a different color?
WALLACE: It would be just brown, like an oak floor.
COCKRELL: This sink, what about it? When was it added?
WALLACE: It was added. They had a white one, and I don’t know when that blue one was put in.
COCKRELL: This wasn’t here when the Gates lived here, was it?
WALLACE: Well, it was a white marble. Of course there were so many people and only one bathroom. He could shave here or things like that.
She had this furniture, I imagine, came back from Washington, the two beds and the dresser and the mirror. This picture on the wall [Margaret Truman and the President with big smiles] was taken at the airport one time when she went to meet him. Someone snapped the picture. I always liked it. [The group goes into the northwest bedroom].
21
This is Margaret’s white furniture that she had in Washington. She fixed this room up with all her white things. The last time I was in here, there were a bunch of Mrs. Truman’s dresses hanging up in the closets. They’re not here now.
COCKRELL: Did Margaret come and take them away?
WALLACE: She gave them—Valerie [LaMere] or someone came and took them to the Salvation Army. She said she didn’t want to see them. Now that’s a robe of Harry’s. That’s a shoehorn.
COCKRELL: How about this chair? Is it recent?
WALLACE: That’s an old chair, you can see that it’s been recovered. It has that wood underneath it. They have old chairs with new covers put on them. She used to do quite a bit of writing in here.
COCKRELL: Mrs. Truman?
WALLACE: Yes. She would use this table to write at. I wonder where that other thing of Margaret’s is that I made a cover for. It was a long thing. She wanted it quilted, so we had to mark it off and make it on the machine. That kid could think of so many things for somebody else to do! [The group goes into the alcove].
WALLACE: Books, books, books.
COCKRELL: It is kind of an odd little nook in here. Do you notice how the corner goes in to avoid the window?
WALLACE: Yes. That’s an old chest; no telling what might jump out of that.
22
COCKRELL: What did this little alcove use to look like? Was it just for odds and ends?
WALLACE: No, it had curtains and a chair, maybe a little table or something like that. As I told you—see, there’s steps every place—it was built at different times.
COCKRELL: Is that what the Gates said, that the house was built at different stages?
WALLACE: Yes. [The group moves into the large front bedroom with colored glass windows].
WALLACE: This secretary is real old. I imagine it was a Wallace desk. Margaret used this room some, so she had a television. There’s all the dolls. Here’s the bench [pointing to the vanity table adjacent to the colored glass windows]. It’s faded and it matches the top of that. [Note: This is what Mrs. May Wallace had made for Margaret Truman]. She slept in here quite a lot when her mother was ill downstairs.
COCKRELL: This is a nice, big bed. Does this go back in the family?
WALLACE: No, no. That’s new. That’s an old black rocker. I’ve always wanted to have that clock [above the mantle]. The fireplaces downstairs were very similar to this style here. This cradle is an antique. I don’t know who it belonged to.
COCKRELL: It’s not one that Margaret would have used, would it?
WALLACE: Margaret slept in the bureau drawer!
23
COCKRELL: Surely not that long! Didn’t she outgrow the bureau?
WALLACE: Yes. Mrs. Truman was superstitious. She had lost a child, had a miscarriage before Margaret was born, and she wouldn’t buy baby bedroom furniture until Margaret got here. They just pulled out a drawer.
She always held that against them: “Didn’t have anything for me, but put me in a bureau drawer!” [The group again moves into the second floor landing].
These attic steps caused my husband’s badly broken legs. He and Harry…Somebody had given Harry a liquor serving thing and just before they went back to Washington one time, he and George decided they’d take it up to the attic. My husband was underneath it and when they got three or four steps from the top, Harry let go—his hands let go of it—and it came down and chased George down. It hit here [against the wall] and broke both of his legs, above the ankles. One of them never did regain its proper size. We thought the world was coming to an end when that thing crashed down! [The group stands by the linen closet at the base of the attic stairs].
WALLACE: This is a linen closet.
COCKRELL: That is a nice big closet.
WALLACE: And that’s unusual because most old houses didn’t have closets. [The group moves into Margaret Truman's childhood bedroom].
24
This was Margaret’s room at one time and they could come through from there. They built that cabinet there for her.
COCKRELL: So these closets were added.
WALLACE: Yes.
COCKRELL: Were they here when she was a little girl?
WALLACE: They would have come later when she got big enough to want more space, I guess. It’s full of hangers. She used this as a young girl.
COCKRELL: Is this the original furniture in here?
WALLACE: Yes, that’s what she had. Of course it isn’t old, but Margaret’s fifty-nine. It’s old enough. This chest is something valuable.
COCKRELL: That’s a fine old piece. It looks like that’s looked.
WALLACE: [Pointing to passageway] They opened this up when she was old enough to sleep by herself. They wanted to get to her.
COCKRELL: Were these doors the original doors that went into the sleeping porch, or were these added when the room was opened up?
WALLACE: They must have been added because this was a solid wall. That ceiling lamp was added; it’s modern. [The group moves into the small, north bedroom].
COCKRELL: This was Mr. Truman’s dressing room, wasn’t it?
WALLACE: Yes. This was his dressing room. He got up early in the morning, about five o’clock and [would] come in here and dress, then go out in the yard and pick up the papers and walk around and take walks.
25
Mrs. Truman was not an early riser. They’d eat breakfast around eight o’clock.
There was a hole here someplace where there was a snake. My husband insisted that he saw a snake.
COCKRELL: Where would the snake have came from?
WALLACE: I think from his imagination, more than likely. But he insisted he saw a snake came up here because this was his room for awhile. They all graduated from room to room.
COCKRELL: Do you remember the wallpaper having been here for very long?
WALLACE: No, it’s not new because it’s cracked up there. [The group moves into the passage to the storage room].
This was Mrs. Wallace’s sitting room. The back steps came up there and we would come up that way without disturbing the Gateses, the grandparents. Mrs. Wallace was very possessive. She wanted to know what her children were doing at all times. What a mess! What a mess! She had her sewing machine and chairs for all of us.
COCKRELL: Look at the old floor, how it’s coming apart.
WALLACE: I can’t remember if it was carpeted or had rugs. I think it was just painted. That’s what they did with old floors when they took the carpets up, they painted [it].
COCKRELL: These boards in the wall, do you know why that’s like that? [Boards nailed to the wall in the passageway to the bedroom].
26
WALLACE: A bad place maybe and they covered it over.
He had lots of ties; people always kept him in ties. He would give my husband and Frank Wallace the ties because he couldn’t possibly wear all those ties that were sent to him. [The group moves into the second floor bathroom].
This bathroom was completely done—over.
COCKRELL: What color was it before this?
WALLACE: White.
COCKRELL: Isn’t this where Mr. Truman fell?
WALLACE: Yes, he fell in the bathroom. They then put handrails all around the thing. [The group moves into the hallway, out of the bathroom]. That’s fairly new paper, too. This upstairs must have been papered.
COCKRELL: Do you know if the Trumans have had that attic fan very long? WALLACE: No, they haven’t. Have you seen all you wanted to see?
COCKRELL: I think I have. I sure appreciate you taking the time to come over here for the interview. [After the tape recorder was turned off, Mrs. Wallace and Mr. Cockrell entered the kitchen. Mrs. Wallace said that the small box-like structure to the right of the stove with two round openings was used as a warmer or crisper. The round stones at the bottom of each container were heated and then lowered to the bottom of the containers. The heated stones helped keep whatever food was deposited in it from getting cold].
[End #4063]
27

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH
MRS. GEORGE P. [MAY] WALLACE

HSTR INTERVIEW 1984-2

COCKRELL: First of all I want to show you some pictures. There are just two of us. The first one is a little child inside one of the rooms [Truman Library Photo Archives Number 82—59—101].
WALLACE: That’s David Wallace, the nephew. Or Fred. When was this taken?
COCKRELL: We think it was around 1905 to 1910.
WALLACE: Well, it’s Fred Wallace, Mrs. Truman’s brother.
COCKRELL: Good. Now these two gentlemen are out in the backyard and we don’t know who they are. Do they look familiar? [Truman Library Photo Archives Number 82—59—114].
WALLACE: Yes, I think, well, let me get my reading glass to see better. The one is Frank Wallace, but I don’t know who the other man is.
COCKRELL: It’s an interesting picture of the house in the background because, if you’ll notice, there are some steps there at the side.
WALLACE: Is that 219?
COCKRELL: Right. You can see the colors of the house are different.
WALLACE: Yes. I don’t remember it when the steps were there.
COCKRELL: It might have been before that back bedroom was built.
WALLACE: I’ve been here since 1916, but before that, I don’t remember.
1
COCKRELL: Last time that I was here, if you’ll remember, I had a lot of questions about the house and how it changed. Today I’d like to deal in depth about the people, your family, your life. I’d like to start first of all with yourself, if you could give me some of your background and how you came to be married to George Wallace.
WALLACE: [Laughter]. Well, now the reason I’m laughing is that Sue Gentry is having something on television in a few weeks and she had me write my life history. So if I had it, I’d just give it to you!
I was born here in Independence. My grandparents were the Proctors on my mother’s side. He was a minister here for sixty years in the Lutheran Church down on Pleasant Street. The Southerns, my father’s people, Mr. Southern was a newspaperman with the Independence Examiner, and the family lived out west of town. Do you know where the Carson Funeral Home is? That whole area west of that, there were fifteen acres that my grandfather and father owned. The big brick house that was in the center of it, across the street from the Woodson house which is still there, was where I was born and where my mother was born. I lived there until about 1910 and then my grandmother died. My grandfather died in 1900 and my grandmother in 1908. After my grandfather’s death, my father wanted to move the family out because the house wasn’t heated and it didn’t have a bathroom. Anyway, grandmother, like a lot of us old people, didn’t 2
want to be moved. After her death in 1908 or 1909, he built the house over on Park Avenue and we moved over there.
I went to school over at the Ott School across the street from where the Catholic Church used to be, then to Independence High School. That’s where Mr. and Mrs. Truman went, where they graduated in the first graduating class. Then I went to the University of Missouri for one year and stayed home. In those days, girls didn’t feel they had to go out and get a job. We just had a good time. My sister was interested in teaching and so she taught kindergarten. My mother thought one of us should stay home, so I stayed home.
Mrs. Truman was quite athletic as she had been raised with three brothers. For my sister’s and my graduation present from high school, we got a tennis court instead of a diamond ring. Most of the girls were getting diamond rings. We got a tennis court down at the end of the park which is Park Avenue now. As I said, Mrs. Truman was quite an athlete, having had three brothers she had to defend herself, I guess. We all played tennis down there and went on picnics and just had a good time.
I was married in 1916 to George Wallace, who is Mrs. Truman’s middle brother. There were Frank and George and Fred. We had been sweethearts for a long time. I suppose that is an old fashioned word. But Grandfather Gates, when Frank Wallace was married in 1915. He gave them the fifty foot lot on that side. This was all the 3
backyard and garden then. In1915. They built this home. So George built this house before we were married and we moved into it in 1916 and I’ve been here ever since.
COCKRELL: Did they hire people to build these houses?
WALLACE: Oh, yes. There were in those days a man who was an extra good carpenter and he would take on the building of houses—a Mr. Shaupe, I think was the man who built this house. But my husband was always interested in lumber and building and doing things like that, so he superintended it. The house as was built was just a four-room house. This [pointing to the living room] was a living room and dining room, and that [pointing to the dining room] was the bedroom. And then the kitchen was back there and we had a little sleeping porch. Well, in 1928, we built on the west room and enlarged the west end of the house.
COCKRELL: It gave you a little bit more room.
WALLACE: Yes, there was a little maneuvering room. He died in 1963.
COCKRELL: How about the Frank Wallace house. Is that the original layout?
WALLACE: Yes, that’s the original house.
COCKRELL: There were no additions to it then?
WALLACE: No, except in those days we didn’t have air conditioning and Mrs. Frank Wallace was a great sufferer from the heat. One of those summers they put windows all around the back bedroom, but there’s no difference in the structure.
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COCKRELL: What was the background of Mrs. Frank Wallace [the former Natalie Ott]?
WALLACE: Her father was a banker in Independence at the Chrisman-Sawyer
Bank and her mother died when she was a little girl. He married a Bryant. Professor Bryant was the head of schools here for years and lived out on Waldo. [His daughter] was Mrs. Frank Wallace’s stepmother. She had a stepsister and a stepbrother. She was a small person and a very industrious person. She was an immaculate housekeeper. We lived here in peace and we got along fine. I helped her and she helped me. They both died the same summer. I never can remember the date of that. George died in ’63 and it must have been in the late 50s because they both died before he did.
COCKRELL: They never had any children, did they?
WALLACE: No. We had no little ones until Margaret came along. She was born in the house up there.
COCKRELL: I had an opportunity to talk to Margaret last November for about three hours. She is a very interesting person.
WALLACE: Yes, she is, and spoiled because she was the only little one. The Trumans weren’t young when she was born so she was a treasure. We all spoiled her, her uncles especially. She used to run down here. This driveway was gravel, and she ran down here one day and she fell and knocked the skin off both knees. My husband was the “fixer” of the 5
family. He did all the little jobs. She called him “Uncle Da.” So she got up and said, “Let Da fix!” As if he could fix her knees!
When they went back to Washington, she must not have been more than ten or twelve. I can see her now sitting out in the car holding Raggedy Ann. Raggedy Ann was her favorite doll. Raggedy Ann’s hair was yarn and it was pretty well bedraggled so I had to take a needle and yarn and fix Raggedy Ann’s hair. She went out holding Raggedy Ann! They never were as a family here until they came back [in 1953]. Of course Margaret went on to New York after Washington. She was back some, but it wasn’t quite the same.
She was crazy about chocolate ice cream. There was a place down at Lee’s Summit where we used to go where they had such good chocolate ice cream sodas.
COCKRELL: What do you recall about Margaret’s early childhood here? In the back yard, she told about her swings and toys.
WALLACE: She had swings and a slide. She knew some little girls who lived over on Maple Avenue, two sisters, and they used to play circus. I don’t know quite how they played circus, but they played circus. She was quite an imaginative person. You can tell that by the way she has imagined things afterwards—readers all of them, Mr. Truman, Mrs. Truman, and of course Margaret.
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She liked to play shoe store. She loved shoes. That was when she was just a little thing. She used to come down here and we’d get all the shoes we had. She’d came in and buy shoes!
COCKRELL: Was she a pretty popular little girl?
WALLACE: Yes. You mean with boys?
COCKRELL: Well, with the little girls she played with.
WALLACE: Yes, lots of little girls. Her group didn’t seem to have too much boy—partying. Of course when she went back to Washington, she had that kind of a social time, but here they just had girl parties.
COCKRELL: Do you remember the incident of the attempted kidnapping of Margaret Truman?
WALLACE: I remember that very well. She went to the school over here and fortunately the teacher was a girl that lived here on Delaware and was a personal friend. When this man came in and said that Mrs. Truman had sent for Margaret, she immediately sensed that there was something wrong. So she went out and called up and it was somebody that wanted to kidnap her. After that, they sent someone with her every morning to school.
COCKRELL: Who do you think would want to do that?
WALLACE: Well, crazy people who thought they might get one hundred dollars or something. It frightened us. My husband and Frank Wallace were very devoted. We all were; Margaret was just special to all of us. The Wallaces all were just very vehement people. They were just going to 7
go out with a gun and get the man who was going to kidnap Margaret! That’s a good thing, I guess.
Mrs. Truman had a lot of spunk, too, but then she didn’t blaze out with it. I guess high-tempered people are just born that way. It. Wallace died in 1903, and that’s when they moved up here with the Gates.
COCKRELL: What were the circumstances behind David Wallace’s death, the cause of why he killed himself?
WALLACE: He committed suicide. Nobody ever knew the cause. It was not talked about. After that Mrs. Wallace, Mother Wallace, was almost a recluse. Back in those days, it was kind of a stigma, kind of a disgrace item people killed themselves. Now they just shoot!
My father knew him very well. He always thought it was money troubles. Mrs. Wallace had been a very rich woman and he just had a courthouse employees salary. Pop thought he just got in too deep with money and he liked to drink which is bad.
COCKRELL: Would you say he was an alcoholic?
WALLACE: No, he wasn’t. In those days there was what they called the Courthouse Exchange. They had a bar as I understand it real close to where he worked that’s just hearsay, I don’t know.
COCKRELL: Your mother-in-law never really talked about it?
WALLACE: No. I think, personally, that nobody kills themselves when they’re in their right mind. They lose it at least long enough to kill themselves. I 8
don’t think anybody would take their own life unless they do. He was in so deep financially and at that time he just couldn’t see any way out. That’s just Mrs. George Wallace’s opinion.
COCKRELL: That’s probably pretty accurate.
WALLACE: That’s as near as we’ll ever get. My husband found him. He heard the shot and went in. He was born in ’92 and he would have been about ten or eleven years old. He went in there. I think it affected his nervous system the rest of his life, it was such a shock. They were all, all of them were pretty high-strung people, geared-up pretty tight. My father always said that Mr. Wallace was more like my husband in disposition, more friendly, that kind of a person. I of course never knew him. I don’t suppose he left anything but debts. I don’t know about that, but they moved into the big house. At that time, the Gates grandmother and grandfather lived downstairs where Mrs. Truman had her bedroom and living room. That was the Gates’. The Wallaces lived upstairs and on the other side. Mrs. Wallace had the room over the kitchen, where the steps came up from the kitchen. We could go up there at night and go up the back steps and she had her little sewing machine there. That’s where the family congregated at night because we didn’t want to bother the older people.
COCKRELL: Were Mr. and Mrs. Gates fairly wealthy?
WALLACE: According to that time, yes. He was with the Waggoner-Gates Milling Company. They made Queen of the Pantry flour. My mother thought 9
she couldn’t make biscuits without Queen of the Pantry flour. It was a soft wheat flour and most of the flour through Kansas and this part of the country was hard wheat flour. After the Gates family died, Mother Wallace received her part of the estate. She had two sisters and two brothers. There were five Gates. Mother Wallace was the oldest; she was Madge. And then Myra and Maud—they seemed to like M’s! And then Frank and Walter. Mother Wallace outlived all of them.
COCKRELL: Was she able to live pretty comfortably?
WALLACE: Yes, they did. They always lived well and always kept their standards up. I mean even when she didn’t have too much. After the Trumans were married, let’s see. They were married in 1919 and they were engaged before that, but he had to go to war. The war interfered. After he came back, it was quite awhile before he got out of it.
COCKRELL: There have been some people who have said that Harry Truman and Madge Wallace never saw eye to eye. Is that true?
WALLACE: I’ve heard that too of course, but you’d have to know Mother Wallace to know that nobody that Bess married, no man was good enough for Bess. I don’t think that she had anything against Harry and I think that she finally became fond of him. They had to move in when she had that severe illness that summer. Bess came home and then they just stayed. I still contend that it was a difficult place for Mr. Truman because it is for any man to move into somebody else’s house, but you would have never have known it. He was just a perfect gentleman 10
always. When they went to Washington the first time Mother Wallace tried to stay here. Fred at that time was at Columbia [University of Missouri] at school and she went down there and stayed some and then she came back. She eventually went with them and she died in the White House.
Bess stayed home every summer when it was not so busy there and he would come and spend a month at a time.
COCKRELL: Did Bess want to come back in the summers or was it Mrs. Wallace who wanted to be here?
WALLACE: She felt like she was needed. Mrs. Truman never did, well, I won’t say she didn’t like Washington. She loved lots of the things about Washington, but it was too much. She didn’t like the limelight. She didn’t like it, but of course she did her part. We visited there several times and it was quite interesting. We spent one Christmas in the White House. No, I guess it was two Christmases. The last one was sad because Mother Wallace had just died that December. They came back after that. They had seven years there, three on the first term and four on the last one. In a way, I think Bess was glad to get back. When they built the library over here, that was another big deal.
COCKRELL: Would she come back for the entire summer?
WALLACE: She’d come back for a couple of months.
COCKRELL: Wasn’t that hard for her to leave her husband in Washington and for her to come out here?
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WALLACE: I’m sure it was, but she had a divided duty between her husband and her mother. Of course, Harry was busy and those letters that were published were from when he was there alone in Washington. I don’t think they should published people’s personal letters like that.
Bess was a very private person. She could be just as sweet and cordial and friendly, and she could just…Well, one night when the Bridge Club went to Washington we went to the circus. We were all in the box and she was down close. This clown went over and thought he’d be kind of cute, but she just froze him right up. She could put on that look!
COCKRELL: Who were the members of the Bridge Club? Can you recall?
WALLACE: Mrs. Frank Wallace and I were two of them. Then there was Edna Hutchinson; Mary Shaw; Lucy Peters, who is still alive; Thelma, then Pallette, she’s now Sibel and lives in Amarillo, Texas. There were ten of us. Mag Knoll who lived down here. I’ve got a picture of us somewhere. Have you seen the picture of the Bridge Club taken on the White House porch? Well, that’s the outfit. I’m entertaining that Bridge Club next week and I’m the only one that’s left—we’ve filled in for the several of them that died. Lucy Peters moved to California. Thelma moved to Amarillo, Texas. The Minors, who lived up here on Spring Street, Mrs. Grace Minor, lives in a retirement home.
COCKRELL: How did your Bridge Club operate? Did you take turns meeting in different homes?
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WALLACE: Yes. We met about every two weeks.
COCKRELL: So you would alternate between homes?
WALLACE: We go alphabetically. So they’re down to Wallace again! During the wars, I can’t remember if we quit playing and made bandages or if we played and cut down on our refreshments. There were also Claudine Ford and Helen Crow.
COCKRELL: Would you simply play cards and talk?
WALLACE: Yes. Bess was a good card player. We went on the [presidential yacht] “Williamsburg” for a ride down to Mount Vernon. We did a lot of things.
The five of us drove. We took my car. I was driving a Hudson at the time. We drove. We got almost to the outskirts of Washington and these two men stopped us. We wondered what we had done, but it was two of the Secret Service men who had been here with Mrs. Truman and they came out to meet us and guide us into Washington so we would get to the White House. We wouldn’t get stopped the next time, but we were kind of scared for a minute. We thought, “Oh, what have we done?”
We were there five days. Mrs. Truman who lives down the street was another one of them. She’s an invalid now.
We used to play bridge up here on the enclosed porch. Harry never would play. He liked poker. He never would play bridge and 13
Frank Wallace never would play bridge. But my husband was a pretty good bridge player so if we could shake up four, we’d play bridge.
COCKRELL: So during good weather, you’d play on the back porch? How about when it was cold or windy?
WALLACE: Inside, yes.
COCKRELL: In the dining room?
WALLACE: And the living room. It was always a very useable place. That’s where Margaret’s Christmas tree always was in that front window that looks onto the street. It had to touch the ceiling. It had to be that tall, the biggest Christmas tree you could get! We all went up there on Christmas morning. I think she was about ten or twelve when she got her piano. She wanted an electric train because her cousin in Kansas City, this boy had one in the attic. She was just fascinated with this train. Mr. Truman wanted a grand piano. Of course he was very musical.
COCKRELL: Is that the same piano that’s in there today?
WALLACE: That’s Margaret’s paino
COCKRELL: Was that taken to the White House?
WALLACE: No.
COCKRELL: It was always here then?
WALLACE: Yes.
COCKRELL: Did they like to do duets together: would he play and Margaret sing?
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WALLACE: Yes. Some. Her musical career didn’t begin until after they were away from here. She came back and had a concert in Kansas City. We went to it. She went to New York from there.
COCKRELL: When you had family gatherings, was it just the Wallaces and the Trumans or would his relatives from Grandview also come?
WALLACE: No. Not very much. One of Mother Wallace’s sisters lived over in Platte City and they used to come over some. They’d come over for Thanksgiving and we went over there a time or two. I never saw so much food in my life. I have seen twenty-two at that dining room table. Not the table that’s there now, but the other one. I don’t know what they did with the old table that had leaves in it. Grandfather Gates sat down on one end. In later years we had Thanksgiving dinner there more and some of them had Christmas. I went to my own family for Christmas and went there for Thanksgiving. Had to divide myself!
COCKRELL: Was Madge Wallace the head of the household or was it Bess?
WALLACE: Well, she was head of the household until her health failed, but Bess was a strong right arm, always. She was a great help to her mother.
COCKRELL: Did she and her mother do most of the housework or did they have women came in and help them?
WALLACE: They always had help. They always had a n[...] woman in the kitchen and there was a n[...] man who worked for them. They could do it, but back then you could always get help. Vietta, the n[...] woman that Margaret always called “Pete” and I don’t know why, but Vietta Garr 15
was there for years and cooked for them. Mother Wallace nearly always had someone. I don’t think Bess ever liked to cook. I don’t think Mother Wallace did. Now, I like to cook. It doesn’t worry me. I cook because I like to cook. I guess because I like to eat!
Bess read a lot. She and Harry were always great readers. She liked whodunits and books like that.
COCKRELL: Were these hired black helpers treated like members of the family or just employees?
WALLACE: No, that hadn’t come in. They were still “help.” No, they didn’t eat with the family or anything like that if that’s what you’re getting at. No, they loved them. Margaret loved Vietta when she was just a little thing. We all did. That was an understood thing. It’s within my lifetime that they’ve begun to be socially acceptable. I still, well I wish them every good thing they have, but I don’t particularly want to deal with them.
COCKRELL: Were they allowed to use the facilities in the house?
WALLACE: You mean the bathroom and things like that? There was a bath in the basement. No, they didn’t use the upstairs bathroom.
There’s an upstairs bathroom and a downstairs bathroom. The downstairs bathroom was built on for the Gates’. After Mother Wallace moved downstairs, it made it nice for her.
COCKRELL: And then there’s the bathroom in the basement.
WALLACE: There’s just a stool…is there?
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COCKRELL: Yes, just a stool.
WALLACE: I don’t think there’s a tub down there, but there was water where the washing was done and I suppose you could have taken a spit bath!
COCKRELL: Was that always the laundry room then when you were first acquainted with the house? Was that always done in the basement?
WALLACE: Yes, it was in the basement. There’s stairs from the kitchen into the basement. In those days when you hung things out in the yard, you could come out through that back door.
COCKRELL: Were there clotheslines out in the yard then?
WALLACE: Well, you could. I don’t remember too much about that. Then, there was an arbor there. I can’t remember what happened to the arbor. I guess it fell to pieces and they took it down.
COCKRELL: I believe Margaret said it blew down in a windstorm.
WALLACE: We had a croquet grounds out there, too, where we used to play croquet.
COCKRELL: How about badminton? Did you have a badminton court?
WALLACE: Yes. When was the porch moved out?
COCKRELL: It was in 1950.
WALLACE: I knew it had been a long time. After Mr. Truman was back here and they lived there. They just lived out there. I can see him now with his light over his book reading.
COCKRELL: So that was their favorite place to be?
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WALLACE: Yes. They had an ice cream store fan on the ceiling. In those days we didn’t have air conditioning. I think the first air conditioner was put in one summer that Harry had a very severe illness. He was taken ill out at the ball game [Note: Starlight Theater, Summer 1954]?
COCKRELL: Yes, his gall bladder.
WALLACE: Yes, I think one of his rich admirers put in an air conditioner in that downstairs bedroom and I think that was the first air conditioner that was put in up there. But the house was high-ceiling and cool. I know when Mother Wallace was sick, that was before Bess was married, she had a very severe thing in her back. She had to have an operation on her back. Some kind of a growth had to be taken off and it was such hot weather. Mrs. Frank Wallace was working down at the ice plant at that time running it. They brought some containers that the ice plant had and put cakes of ice in it and put [unintelligible] fan in back of it so that it cooled the room off real well. The house itself had high ceilings and I suppose they got up and did what they had to and pulled the shades down. We never thought about it being hot.
COCKRELL: You were used to it.
WALLACE: We were just poor in that way. We always had picnics down in Mrs. Frank Wallace’s yard. She had a flat place over there where we always had family picnics. We couldn’t put onion in the potato salad because Harry couldn’t tolerate it.
COCKRELL: He didn’t like onions?
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WALLACE: No, he wouldn’t eat anything with onion in it. The Wallaces all liked onions! My mother wouldn’t let any onions on the place, but my father was real fond of them. So he got some onion salt.
COCKRELL: Did you have a lot of family picnics out here?
WALLACE: Yes, quite often in the summertime.
COCKRELL: Would you barbecue?
WALLACE: No, no, we never did. The men folk in the family weren’t cooks. They wanted the women to do the work. We cooked our steaks and things in the house and then had a salad, potato salad and sometimes we had ice cream and sometimes we had something else. Well, there weren’t so many things to do. You had to make your own amusements.
I have written for Sue Gentry a history of my life. I don’t know what she’s going to do with it; it’s going to be on television, I suppose. It’s on sometime at the end of this month. It’s for the AAUW [American Association of University Women]. She said, “I want you to write a story of your life.” And I said, “Sue! I can’t write stories!” So I did, but she hasn’t used it yet. I don’t know how it’s going to come out.
It’s real interesting because I have lived through the most interesting [period]. I was born in ’94, and I have lived all through the most interesting [periods]—more inventions, two wars, and all the things that have happened that I have lived through. I consider myself quite fortunate that I have lived through it. You tell a kid now that you
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didn’t have radios or automobiles and they look at you like they can’t imagine living.
The first radio we had up there was a little transistor that Harry had with earphones. When you had a ball game, there were two of them, one of them would get one in here and listen to the ball game. But it really is, I consider, that I have lived through the most interesting time in the history of the United States. Because there’ve been more inventions. We didn’t have…well. Mr. Gates finally bought an automobile. That was about the time I was married, about 1915 and ’16. He would buy it, he said, if my husband and Mrs. Truman would drive it. So Bess learned to drive and then Fred afterwards, but he was too young then. Bess drove that. That was when we got stuck out here. Oh, that awful rainy day. When we got married, it rained all day.
COCKRELL: And you got stuck in the mud!
WALLACE: Oh, I got stuck in the mud, and the car stayed there. They couldn’t get it out! They had been putting pipes in for the water, out across the street, and it was soft and the car dropped down in it. Mr. and Mrs. Gates were still alive and they came to our wedding. They had to get, well, there weren’t even taxis. But there was one person who had a big six-passenger car that drove. It was considered a taxi: it was available. They came to the wedding, but, oh, it was a nasty night. We thought we would be so smart. We went to Kansas City. Have I told you all this before?
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COCKRELL: No.
WALLACE: If I have, stop me. Hold up one finger! But, we went to St. Louis on that midnight train. We went to St. Louis so the kids wouldn’t, we knew that they would came down here and throw rats and shoes at us. One friend took us to Kansas City and we got into the sleeper. George had a lightweight coat, a raincoat that would do as a topcoat, too. So we looked like we’d been married for years. We were in this big car. He got up to put his coat up into the top shelf up there and the rice just poured! Mother Wallace and Natalie had filled his pockets with rice! And the rice was all over that whole car! I was so embarrassed, I wanted to kill them! We had a nice family.
COCKRELL: What do you remember about Harry and Bess’ wedding?
WALLACE: Yes, I remember it very well.
COCKRELL: What was it like?
WALLACE: It was over at the little church and it must have been in the daytime.
COCKRELL: It was in the afternoon.
WALLACE: Yes, and at that time—this is all in my memoirs that I wrote for Sue, too—we had a row of hollyhocks clear across the back of these two lots here. Bess was crazy about those hollyhocks. So, Mrs. Frank Wallace and I cut them and seared them. You have to sear the stem of a hollyhock if the juice comes out. We put them in umbrella stands and took them over to the church for decorations. I don’t remember too much about the actual [ceremony]. Frank Wallace was in the wedding 21
and I guess my husband was an usher and Bess’ two cousins, one from Kansas City and one from Platte City. And then Harry had…
COCKRELL: Ted Marks?
WALLACE: Yes, then they went on. Frank had a car then. He took them to Kansas City to the [train station]. [Telephone rings and Mrs. Wallace leaves the room]. [The interview resumes on a new tape. Mrs. Wallace shows the interviewer a picture of herself as a small girl].
[End #4063; Begin #4064]
COCKRELL: You’ve changed quite a bit!
WALLACE: Yes, but I still have my round face! Isn’t that a sweet little picture? A friend of mine who is a photography bug found it at a friends. It’s a queer thing about resemblances. My sister had two sons one is Bill Carnes who is so good to me and her other son lives in Joplin, Missouri. He has a daughter who looks very much like my sister. Isn’t that funny how likenesses go through families? I look like I was mad.
COCKRELL: Yes, you were a pretty feisty little girl.
WALLACE: I guess I was feisty. Bill Carnes made that for me and gave it to me for my birthday. Well, have you learned all you want to know?
COCKRELL: Just a couple of more questions. First, about Harry and Bess’ wedding…
WALLACE: Oh, yes. We were getting them married, weren’t we? I suppose it was a straight Episcopal, just the regular, formal [ceremony].
COCKRELL: Was Mrs. Wallace there?
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WALLACE: Oh, yes.
COCKRELL: Was Mrs. Gates?
WALLACE: No, Bess wasn’t married until after Grandfather Gates died.
COCKRELL: He was dead, but Mrs. Gates lived until 1924.
WALLACE: Yes. I can’t put her at the wedding so she may have been there or she may not have felt [well]. Of course we wouldn’t have felt old at her age. But she was a little old lady. She was a very, very dignified little person, very small. She came over to this country as a child. She was English, and her people were all taken off in some kind of a plague that they had in England at that time. The captain of a ship took care of her and brought her over to some relatives in the East. Mother Wallace was born in Moline, Illinois, and I never have found out yet why they came to Missouri. I think that Grandfather Gates’[brother], Mr. Ed Gates, came out here first and maybe he told him it was a good place to start a flour business! But anyway, they ended up out here. She was a quiet, small woman. Grandfather Gates was in his years, before he got too old, he was full of fun. He was always teasing us about something.
COCKRELL: Didn’t the Gates have two small little girls who died?
WALLACE: Yes, they’re out in the cemetery. I think Mother Wallace lost one. Frank and Bess were about two and a half years apart and then there was five years until my husband. I think she lost at least one child, maybe two, in between. I think they were girls. She ended up with four 23
pretty nice kids. You know, the cemeteries are just full before they had all these wonder drugs and things, they had to have about six or eight kids to get just a couple going.
COCKRELL: That is kind of hard to go through, to lose some children.
WALLACE: Oh, my, yes. My mother lost one little girl. My father always wanted a boy, but he never did get one. Just before I was born, I was a big, husky baby, the doctor told him that finally he was going to get a nice, big boy. But it wasn’t a nice, big boy. He loved his girls. My father was one of six, three males and three females.
COCKRELL: Did the Gates ever have a farm around here?
WALLACE: No. This was all garden around here before we moved in. They had a cow. Poor George named the cow Susie Damn. He hated it. When he was off on Sunday. we got to go home and milk Susie Damn! Cows had to be milked at certain times. I dug asparagus out of my front yard the first year after we were married. During the war, the first war, Bess and Natalie had a big, what do you call that, war gardens?
COCKRELL: A victory garden?
WALLACE: Yes. They grew a lot of beans and canned them. Bess loved to work outdoors. Mother Wallace nearly always had flowers out here.
COCKRELL: Wasn’t Bess a Gray Lady, a nurse, during the war?
WALLACE: No, she wasn’t a nurse.
COCKRELL: Or a volunteer?
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WALLACE: Yes, she did some special kind of work when Harry was gone. We did Red Cross work but Bess did a lot of war work. I think it was more clerical work, the things she did.
COCKRELL: Didn’t she have the influenza?
WALLACE: Oh, yes. I always think it was aggravated by, it was the year he was in the war and she was sick all winter that winter. That was the winter we had that virulent—1918 or ’19. Oh, so many people died here. My husband had it and I have never had it. Bess was sick. She was puny all winter. I think it could have been worry about him because you never knew what the next telegram was going to be.
COCKRELL: I think Margaret told me that her mother was deaf in one ear from the influenza.
WALLACE: Well, I didn’t know that, but it’s conceivable. It did all kinds of things to you.
COCKRELL: Margaret also said that the influenza was what to her grandfather’s death, Mr. Gates. Is that possible?
WALLACE: It may have been. I don’t remember that. She’d know more about that than I would. They were both so old to me. I just thought they died of old age! They probably had something. I don’t think Mother Wallace had it. Frank had it. Natalie had it. George had it. May didn’t have it.
We were over in Platte City, it was at Thanksgiving, and we came back. That’s when George and Bess got it. They either got it over there or had it when they went there. When we came home, we 25
had to come on a train line up to Kansas City and then caught a streetcar out here. We were standing up shivering. George came in and I knew he had a temperature. The doctor said, “Put him in bed and circle him around with hot water bottles.” I said, “Doctor, I’ve got but one hot water bottle.” He said, “Well, have you got some mason jars with good rubbers on them?” So, I filled them and just surrounded him to make him break out in perspiration. He was so sick. He said, “Doc, I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.” This doctor was a good old family doctor. He was the one that Margaret wanted to try the step to make it squeak.
COCKRELL: You told me that.
WALLACE: He said, “All right George. if you feel like it.” The next morning George couldn’t even lift one finger. He said, “That old Doc knew I couldn’t go to work!” I said, “Yes George, he did, but if he had of told you that last night you would have had a feverish night!” He was sick about a week. He had real bad influenza. Bess was sick. She had it real bad. That was a queer thing. Was that an Asiatic germ or where did we get it?
COCKRELL: I think it was.
WALLACE: They blamed it on that. They had a funny rector over at the Episcopal church. The churches even closed. He wouldn’t close. He said the Lord wouldn’t let anyone get influenza who went to church. I really think the Lord is too busy to worry about things like that!
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COCKRELL: Now, Mr. Gates was a Presbyterian.
WALLACE: He and Mrs. Gates, yes. Mrs. Wallace was until…
COCKRELL: What made her switch?
WALLACE: Mother Wallace got mad. They let an old minister go. You can get into a church row over a preacher. They had an old man by the name of Dr. Madera that was the preacher over there. They thought it was time for him to retire and I expect it was and so did the younger members of the church. She got mad at them and left the church. Well Frank and Bess got interested in a young Episcopal minister that was here at the time. So Bess and Frank started going over to the Episcopal Church. Afterwards, I don’t know how long it was, Mother Wallace went over there. Then my husband did. And then they all got into it. Well, Fred Wallace was a Catholic when he died because he married a Catholic girl.
COCKRELL: How did that go over in the family?
WALLACE: Lord, it’s so close! As Harry Truman and I said one day, we were out there and he said, “There’s not much difference, you go to the Episcopal Church or the Catholic Church.” He said, “Henry VIII didn’t do too much there.” Harry and I used to have a lot of fun about it because he was a Baptist and I’m a Christian Church Cambellite. We had a lot of fun about it but they all ended up in the Episcopal Church over there. Natalie Ott Wallace was a Presbyterian.
COCKRELL: Did she still go there?
27
WALLACE: Yes. She never changed. Frank used to go with her to the Presbyterian Church. My husband would go occasionally. He lost interest in it along the way.
COCKRELL: Mr. Truman wasn’t a very steady church-goer was he?
WALLACE: He told me one time, I said, “Harry”—he’s a Baptist—”you don’t go.” He said, “I can’t.” This was after he was in a prominent position. He said, “It’s just too much, everybody looking, ‘Why, there’s Mr. Truman!’” He couldn’t get out without everybody wanting to speak to him. He almost just quit going.
COCKRELL: Wasn’t his life a lot like that, too much public attention?
WALLACE: Yes. He took it, but neither one of them wanted the publicity of it. I think Harry enjoyed lots of it, but I think Bess Truman didn’t. There were lots of things about it she enjoyed, too. I don’t mean to say she didn’t. They were just forced into a position and they did their best.
Margaret was confirmed in the church here. Margaret was married there. It was a pretty wedding. I guess it was in April. It was a nice day which was a good thing because they had a lot of people at the house afterwards and they spilled out into the yard because it was [a large crowd].
We’ve always been very fond of her husband. He’s a very fine man. Have you seen her new book yet? Probably not. It’s not due out until April. She sent me something on it.
COCKRELL: Is it, Murder on Embassy Row?
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WALLACE: Yes, I think so. He has one coming out. Clifton has written about his experiences as a newspaper correspondent all over Europe. That will be intensely interesting. They both won’t be until April.
COCKRELL: Does Mr. Daniel write any about his life married to Margaret Truman?
WALLACE: No. I don’t think so. He mentions in one place that he’d met all these heads of state, among which was his father-in-law Things like that. He’s never tried to take advantage of the fact, lie’s quite a bit older than Margaret. He must be what? late sixties?
COCKRELL: Early seventies. Isn’t he about thirteen years older than she is?
WALLACE: I think so. He must be seventy now.
COCKRELL: She’s sixty now. How does she feel about being sixty?
WALLACE: I don’t think she’s stopped to worry about it. She’s been kept busy with her boys. She still has the youngest boy that’s still in school and the little one that had the birth problem. He’s just behind himself and they have him in a school now which is the place for him.
COCKRELL: Did he have a physical defect?
WALLACE: Yes. We were there for Christmas one year, and in ’63 I went back with Mr. and Mrs. Truman the year my husband died to spend Christmas with Margaret. She didn’t have room for us so we stayed in that nice hotel right near her. We were over at the house a lot. He was just a little baby then. If he didn’t look like a picked chicken, I’d never seen one. I think he’ll always have to be taken care of, that’s the idea I get.
29
COCKRELL: He is diminished mentally, then?
WALLACE: Well, he’s slow. I don’t think he’ll ever get past a certain place in learning. He’s in a special school now down in Carolina and they’re giving him the things that he can do. Her oldest boy wants to be a newspaperman like his father and he’s working in Carolina. I don’t know what Will’s doing. He graduated from Yale. Then the next one, and then Thomas. I think he graduates from high school this year.
COCKRELL: There have been a lot of people who have been critical of Margaret, within the past ten years or so when her mother was living here alone, that she didn’t come back to Independence very often.
WALLACE: Not very much. She had her own life and her own things. If she came, it was just to stay a few days. They kept in constant touch over the phone. They were very close. They’re not very demonstrative people at all like some people. I know I was up there after Mrs. Truman died. They had gone over to Holland to give the Queen Mother some kind of peace prize and that’s when they got the news. Dr. [Wallace] Graham had told her over the phone to go on. Mrs. Truman was just at the place where she could go any minute or she could last a little longer. They were in Holland when they got the news and she came back. It was hard for Margaret to realize that her mother was gone. She just felt that she was still there and I felt awfully sorry for her. She couldn’t go in the house the first time she came back at all. She stayed down here 30
with me. They’re not a demonstrative family and they’ve never been, but they have very deep feelings.
COCKRELL: Was it Margaret’s idea in her mother’s will, the section that talks about the second floor being closed to the public? Was that Margaret’s idea or Bess’?
WALLACE: I don’t think so. I don’t know. She may have told her mother that she felt like she’d always like to have a place to come upstairs. It was Mrs. Truman’s idea to leave it to the Government, I’m sure, because her will was made when his was, wasn’t it?
COCKRELL: Tom Richter wanted me to ask you a question. Do you know what pictures preceded the paintings on the walls of the music room?
WALLACE: I don’t remember the pictures. They had those great big round pictures in the dining room. The things I miss, as I remember it way back in the early days, both of those fireplaces had the little things that went up the side. Did they find those in the attic?
COCKRELL: I think they found one in the garage or barn and the other one somewhere else.
WALLACE: Are they going to put them up?
COCKRELL: I don’t think so. I think they’re going to leave them there because of the portraits.
WALLACE: I know, but that’s part of that house. It looks very handsome and it’s his picture in the living room there, but that wasn’t the way it was in the early days!
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COCKRELL: You have to compromise somewhere.
WALLACE: It doesn’t make any difference to me, but I wondered the first time I went up there, “Where were those?” They had pillow shelves, little what-not shelves, and they had little knick knacks all over than.
COCKRELL: I asked Margaret about that and she said they were taken down because the family thought they were ugly.
WALLACE: [Laughter].
COCKRELL: That’s what she said.
WALLACE: Well, they were very attractive. Modern kids might have thought that, too. Now that fixture in the parlor is part gas. When people first put in electricity, they didn’t trust it!
COCKRELL: Tom Richter also wanted me to ask you, when Harry and Bess were living here alone, where would they usually eat their meals?
WALLACE: In the dining room.
COCKRELL: In the dining room?
WALLACE: Oh, yes. Well, I think maybe they ate breakfast in the kitchen. But, oh yes, they ate their meals in the dining room.
COCKRELL: When I spoke to Rufus Burrus just the other day, he said he can recall going to the house around lunchtime and Mr. Truman would be sitting at the kitchen table having a snack or something and he would invite him Rufus to sit down and eat with him.
WALLACE: They didn’t do much about breakfast and lunch, but they always had dinner in the dining room.
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COCKRELL: Margaret also said that there were always a lot of tall plants around the house. Do you recall that? Live plants in big pots sitting around? She indicated that we should put some plants in there.
WALLACE: Yes. Well, Bess had boxes of them in the summertime out on the porch.
COCKRELL: How about in the house, around the windows?
WALLACE: I don’t remember anything like that. They could have. She’d know more about it than I would. I never paid any attention to it. I don’t think it’s necessary. If you’ve got people going through there, they’ll probably want to pull a fern leaf off! I’ve been through that.
COCKRELL: Right! A souvenir from the Truman home!
WALLACE: Did I tell you before about the woman who wanted some dirt?
COCKRELL: Yes.
WALLACE: That’s my pet story.
COCKRELL: I think it’s priceless.
WALLACE: I think so, too. She wouldn’t take mine because that wasn’t in the Truman yard! Is there anything else Tom wants to know?
COCKRELL: No. I think that just about does it. That does it for me too. I sure would like to thank you for your time and trouble today.
[End #4064]
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1915 photo of Harry Truman in his car with Bess Wallace and others.
Harry S. Truman Library photo #84-37. HSTL description reads: From left to right: Bess Wallace, Harry S. Truman, possibly Nellie Noland, and Mary Jane Truman riding in Truman's Stafford car, probably around the Grandview farm area. Mary Jane appears to be holding a fishing pole. Date ca. 1915.

Truman Library

  • May Wallace Oral History December 20 1985 Part I


    Part I Transcription below

    Credit / Author:
    NPS Funded by Eastern National
    Date created:
    04/07/2022
    Audio Transcript

  • May Wallace Oral History December 20, 1985 Part II


    Part II Transcription below

    Credit / Author:
    NPS Funded by Eastern National
    Date created:
    04/07/2022
    Audio Transcript
May Wallace with Park Ranger
May Wallace with Park Ranger Lisa Bosso

NPS

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH MAY WALLACE: DECEMBER 20, 1985

INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI
INTERVIEWED BY LISA BOSSO

ORAL HISTORY #1985-16
This transcript corresponds to audiotapes DAV-AR #3107-3108

HARRY S TRUMAN NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

May Wallace and Lisa Bosso
NPS Photos

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.
Jim Williams reviewed the draft of this transcript. His corrections were incorporated into this final transcript by Perky Beisel in summer 2001. A grant from Eastern National Park and Monument Association funded the transcription and final editing of this interview.

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.

ABSTRACT

May Wallace, (July 9, 1894—May 18, 1993) wife of George Wallace and sister-in-law of Harry and Bess Truman, discusses the Wallace and Truman family members. Wallace discusses the family clock, the movement of the Gates family to Independence, Madge Gates Wallace’s relationship with her family; domestic help and cooking; Christmas in Independence, New York, and Washington.

Persons mentioned: George Porterfield Wallace, George Porterfield Gates, Elizabeth E. Gates, BessW. Truman, Ed Gates, Patty Gates, David WillockWallace, Frank Gates Wallace, D. Frederick Wallace, Natalie Ott Wallace, Albert Ott, Natalie Ott, Julia Ott, Harry S Truman, Mike Westwood, Margaret Truman Daniel, E. Clifton Daniel, Clifton Truman Daniel, Vietta Garr, Edward Hobby, William Southern, Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, and Pat Boone.

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH MAY WALLACE

HSTR INTERVIEW #1985-16

STEVE HARRISON: This is an interview with May Wallace, or Mrs. George Wallace, at her home at 605 West Truman Road, in Independence, Missouri. It was recorded on December 20, 1985. Conducting the interview is Lisa Bosso and Steve Harrison.
LISA BOSSO: Now he’s got you hooked up. Do we need to have her sign this now?
HARRISON: No.
BOSSO: Okay. What we’ve been doing is, we’ve been interviewing different people who have known the Trumans, just getting more information about them. So, I said, “I’ll bet Mrs. Wallace would be a good one.”
MAY WALLACE: [laughter] I’m the only one left.
BOSSO: That’s right. You’ve got all those good stories. We just want to get your stories that you tell on tape, so someday if we do a movie or something . . .
WALLACE: Or I’m dead or something. [laughter]
BOSSO: So, you know, they would be on tape and it would be your voice. Okay? I’ve kind of gone through and thought through what stories I could remember, but I’m sure there’s a lot more, right?
WALLACE: [chuckling] Well, maybe I can’t remember them anymore.
BOSSO: Okay, well, I’ll kind of help you out, okay? [laughter] So do we need to have her start out with her name and all that gizmo?
HARRISON: No.
BOSSO: Okay. I think the most famous one is, of course, when your husband fixed the clock, the hands on the clock.
WALLACE: [chuckling] Oh, made them out of the pie pans?
BOSSO: Yes.
WALLACE: Well, do you want me to tell you that?
BOSSO: Yes.
WALLACE: Well, my husband was always interested in . . . He was the family fixer. And as I told you, when Margaret fell down and skinned her knees, she got up and said, “Da fix!” [chuckling] She thought he could fix anything. But that old clock came out here in . . . must have come with the Gateses from the East. I don’t know whether it ran for awhile or not, but some kids were having a party up there one time, and they got to fooling with it, and it never did run after that, and the hands got lost.
So George was home on an enforced vacation from the mill where he worked, and he was one of these people that had to be doing something all the time, which was real good when it was something useful. [chuckling] When it wasn’t, why, it wasn’t so good. So he took two of my very lightweight aluminum pie pans and went up to the house and made a pattern that he wanted to make, of the size and all where the hands would go out. Then he came home and laid that out and made a pattern and cut the hands out of the pie pans, painted them black, and put them back up there. Then he put that electric connection so that they’d run. Does it still work?
BOSSO: Uh huh, it sure does.
2
WALLACE: Well, wherever he is, he would be pleased, [chuckling] because he never wanted anything to be . . . If it was supposed to be doing something, he wanted it to be doing something. So that was the story of the clock. There’s a date on that clock someplace.
BOSSO: Yes, inside the front cover there’s a whole list of dates. I assume that’s when it was serviced.
WALLACE: And it kept on after he electrocuted [sic] it, it kept on working. Now what else do you want to know?
HARRISON: When was the last time that it worked mechanically?
WALLACE: What?
HARRISON: When was the last time that it worked mechanically with works and so on?
WALLACE: Well, some of the works . . . Well, it just is run by electricity now anyway, isn’t it? So it doesn’t make too much difference. Doesn’t the cord go clear down by the side there?
BOSSO: Yes, but you don’t remember when it would work mechanically?
HARRISON: With the pendulum and all the original works that were inside the case?
WALLACE: No, I don’t remember anything. That was before my time, I guess—I mean, before I was in the family. Because all I can remember of it is that it didn’t work. But I suppose when the Gateses lived there, when Grandmother and Grandfather Gates, you see, lived in those . . . That side of the house was their part of the . . . and what was Mrs. Truman’s bedroom was their bedroom, and then that great big room was their sitting room.
Grandfather Gates had a big chair that he sat in there and spilled pennies out of . . . I guess I told you that, didn’t I, where he spilled pennies 3
out of his pockets and the boys would take [unintelligible], [chuckling] going in and reaching down in the chair to get . . . they were dimes, I expect. But Grandfather Gates was a man of very keen humor. He loved to joke with you.
Grandmother Gates was a little person—I mean, a short person—and a very dignified little person. She was English, and she had come over here during one of the plagues over in England. Her family had been practically wiped out, and so they sent her over to relatives in the East of the United States, so that she wouldn’t get this plague. Evidently, that is why. Now, the Gateses came out here from the East, and evidently Mother Wallace was born in . . . Where was she born? One of the places there, one of those states in the East there.
BOSSO: In Illinois?
WALLACE: And I asked her how come one time, and she said, well, that was before the family came out. Then one of Grandfather Gates’s brothers, Mr. Ed Gates, came out here, and he thought he saw a good place for a flour mill. That’s when he wrote his . . . I guess, wrote. I guess they didn’t call up over the telephone much in those days, for them to come out here. So Grandfather and Grandmother Gates came out, and they first lived out east of town here, out on one of the roads going down there. The old house was there for a long time. I have seen it, but I think it’s been torn down.
The Ed Gateses lived up here on Spring Street, right next to the Minors, and she was Aunt Patty and Uncle Ed. I don’t know where they first lived when they came out here. It must have been out in one of those 4
places, because . . . When was this house built?
BOSSO: Well, the second addition was built in 1867. The kitchen is the oldest part.
WALLACE: Yes, I know it is.
BOSSO: Maybe they lived in another place and then decided to move in there and added on?
WALLACE: Well, part of it was burned off at one time, wasn’t it?
BOSSO: Well, that’s what we’re not real sure about. There are charred boards throughout the house. And then how the house is now was built in 1885.
WALLACE: It was after Mr. Wallace died that Mrs. Wallace and her family moved up there, because they didn’t have any money and no way of getting any, really. She had Bess and Frank and George, and Fred was a baby, and so they moved in up here and lived with them. Then afterwards Mother Wallace, of course, took over the management of the house—I mean, technically—and that saved them.
But Grandfather Gates was quite a joker and liked to . . . and the boys took days about fishing down in the back of his chair to get the dimes out, because he’d sit down and spill the dimes out in the chair. [chuckling] Oh, shoot!
HARRISON: You mentioned about the Gateses using the living room as kind of a sitting room. Would they have that area closed off with drapes or the sliding doors or . . .
WALLACE: Well, is there a place for sliding doors up there? Well, they probably had sliding doors, because, of course, it was . . . The house never was warm until they got the real big heating elements in the basement. I know I’ve 5
been cold up there even in . . . See, I was married in 1916, and Grandfather Gates died in what, in . . . ?
BOSSO: I don’t know.
WALLACE: Well, anyway, it was after we were married. I believe he died in 1918, because Bess and Harry were going to be married that year, and Harry had to go to war, and then Grandfather Gates died and they put it off. They weren’t married, what, 1919?
BOSSO: Yes.
WALLACE: And Grandmother Gates, after he died, she lived there technically, but she visited some of the other . . . She had an unmarried son out in the West, and she always loved Colorado, and she’d go out there some.
HARRISON: When you talk about Mother Wallace managing the house, what . . . ?
WALLACE: Well, I guess she took it over then.
BOSSO: Didn’t you say she spoiled the children?
WALLACE: What?
BOSSO: Didn’t you say that she used to spoil her children?
WALLACE: Mother Wallace? Oh, yes, she spoiled them. [chuckling] I had to take it out of one of them. [laughter] Yes, she got up at five o’clock in the morning to make their oatmeal because they liked old-fashioned oatmeal, you know. I told her . . . She said something to me about it, and I said, “Well, I don’t do [that]. I just cook it in a double boiler and reheat it the next morning, because I don’t like to get up at five o’clock.” And she said, oh, she just loved to wait on them. And she really did. I think that was her life after her husband died tragically, and she was a recluse, really, but then she just 6
lived for her children. In some ways, it was a beautiful idea, but it was kind of hard on some of the in-laws because she kept pretty much of a watch on us. [chuckling] Now, I don’t mean she did it in any . . . but she just had that feeling that she wanted to know that we were all in here and all safe.
I told you about Mrs. Frank Wallace coming over here one day and telling me she was going to Kansas City, “But,” she said, “I’m not going through the yard up here to get the car down there. I’m going to Pleasant Street. I’m not going to do anything I shouldn’t, but I don’t want Mother Wallace to ask me where I’m going or what I’m going to do.” [chuckling] Oh, dear! She was a spunky little soul. There’s a good picture of her. I was going to show it to you.
HARRISON: Of Mother Wallace, or Natalie?
WALLACE: Hmm?
BOSSO: Of Natalie, Mrs. Franks Wallace?
WALLACE: Yes, Natalie. She was Natalie, and she was an Ott. The Otts still live out on Marriott and . . . Well, she had a half-brother Albert that lived out there. Her father was married twice. His first marriage was to their mother, Natalie and Julia, and then he married a Bryant—the Bryant family was a very prominent family here—and she had half-sisters.
BOSSO: So Mother Wallace was pretty strong then? She wanted to know where people were?
WALLACE: You mean healthy, that kind of strong? Strong-minded? Yes, she was strong-minded. [chuckling] And she used to wait until they all got in. My George had a good man friend who used to come to town, and they liked to
7
go downtown and go to see a gaiety picture or something like that. I didn’t care, but it kind of worried her, and she’d stay up and wait till he got home because she didn’t trust me to get him home. [chuckling] But I won’t even say that about her. She was a sweet, good woman, and I think she would have stood on her head for her kids if it would have done any good. But she really was too cloying a person after she didn’t have anything else to do, and, of course, Fred was spoiled rotten.
BOSSO: Did she say he could plant trees in the living room if he wanted to?
WALLACE: Oh, yes, and she wouldn’t have said anything. [chuckling] He was quite an architect and designer at one time, and that’s when a lot of the old . . . when those things were taken out of the living room, which I don’t think should have ever been taken—the little do-dabbers like there are in the parlor that go up on each side.
BOSSO: Right, over the fireplace?
WALLACE: Yes, because they belonged to the house. But he wanted to modernize things, so . . .
HARRISON: And Mother Wallace would let him do that?
WALLACE: [chuckling] Oh, if he’d wanted to cut a hole in the front hall and put in a cistern, she would have let him do it. Well, he was the baby, and he was only a couple of years old, I think, when the father died, and so she just . . . And he was a frail, young . . . I remember when he had whooping cough, and that was before they had the serum for whooping cough. She used to have to open the window up there and stick his head out so he could breathe. I mean, whooping cough before the serum was . . . you all don’t 8
remember it, but I had it. Really, the only serious childish disease I ever had was whooping cough, and I had a lulu! But we got raised in spite of it. Now what?
HARRISON: Did Mother Wallace treat the boys differently than she did Bess?
WALLACE: Oh, no, she depended on Bess. Of course, Bess really took over the housekeeping after her mother . . . Well, Mother Wallace had a severe illness one summer, and that was after Bess was married. She and Harry intended to spend their summer out on the farm that summer, but she became quite ill. It was some back trouble and some kind of a thing that she needed help, so Bess came home that summer and then she never did leave. They came home there to live and, of course, lived in her bedroom upstairs.
BOSSO: Now, is that the blue bedroom right at the top of the steps? It’s not the great big one, right?
WALLACE: It’s the one on the south as you go up the little steps. And the big front room was . . . I guess that was Mother Wallace’s room, and afterwards when she moved downstairs it was a spare bedroom. Bess and Harry had that big room, and then the little room over on the north where a lot of his clothes were, he used for a dressing room, because he got up at five o’clock in the morning and Bess didn’t like to get up that early. She liked to have breakfast about eight o’clock. So he would get up and dress, and then he’d walk around and pick up . . . He had a cane with a nail in it, and he’d go around picking up papers in the yard. [chuckling] I told you the story about the little girl over by the church when they were walking there?
9
BOSSO: Oh, yes, that’s a good one. Do you want to tell that?
WALLACE: Yes. He spoke to this little girl over there, and she didn’t speak to him. And Mike Westwood, who was the Independence policeman that was allocated to walk with him, and he said to this little girl, he said, “That was Mr., President Truman that you didn’t speak to.” And she said, “My mama and papa told me not to speak to strange men.” [chuckling] And he said, “You’d be just as safe as in the arms of Jesus.” [laughter]
Anyway, they walked nearly every morning, walked around. He walked around. He’d talk to people. A woman came to see me—oh, I guess it’s been a couple weeks ago—who used to live over here, and her husband was quite a friend of his. She said he used to walk around and her husband would talk to him when he was walking around. I can’t remember what her name was, but they lived over on Maple Avenue.
HARRISON: You mentioned Mother Wallace moving downstairs. Did she use that downstairs bedroom then?
WALLACE: Yes, she did. After the Gateses left, then she used it, and then when she was . . . She had a sick spell. What did she have . . . one summer when it was so hot? Oh, I know. She had a lump on her back that they had had an operation on it, and she recuperated from that. But that’s before we had any air conditioning. Frank Wallace at that time was working down at the ice plant and in charge of a lot of it, so they brought a big container up and put ice blocks in it to cool off that room. It seems queer to us now, but then it was all they could do.
BOSSO: So Mr. and Mrs. Truman then lived in that one bedroom upstairs then,
10
right?
WALLACE: Yes, and he had the little room over at the north for a dressing room.
BOSSO: Do you remember, were there always twin beds in there? Was there a double bed, do you remember, anything?
WALLACE: Well, there was a double bed in there when Bess used it as her own room, but I don’t know whether there was . . . I can’t get a mental picture of whether they were . . . Of course, when Margaret was little they had that opening where they could go around into her bedroom.
HARRISON: When you say Bess used it as her own room, what time would that have been?
BOSSO: Before she was married? Is that what you’re saying, when Bess lived there, before she was married?
WALLACE: Oh, yes.
BOSSO: She had a double bed in there?
WALLACE: Yes, because my husband made it. [chuckling] He was quite a carpenter, too. They had manual training at high school and he made her a set of furniture for that room, very, very plain. What do we call that kind of furniture? Anyway, it was just very straight. He made the bed, and it seems to me like there was something else. She used that until . . . I guess, until they were married. Time just sort of meshes together and you can’t remember it. But she . . .
BOSSO: Then when Mr. Truman got ill, he moved downstairs to the downstairs bedroom, to the Gateses’ bedroom?
WALLACE: Yes, but they both lived upstairs. I mean, he was there when she still lived 11
upstairs.
BOSSO: Right.
WALLACE: No, they never moved downstairs. Mother Wallace moved into that back bedroom after she was . . . Her last years were spent in that back bedroom. Then they made a bedroom out of that big north room upstairs, where the clock is that I want. If you ever get a chance to steal that clock, why, bring it down to me. [chuckling] It’s an old Seth Thomas, real old. Margaret used that room one time for a while.
BOSSO: The big bedroom?
WALLACE: The big bedroom on the . . .
BOSSO: With the fireplace?
WALLACE: Yes. She had a dresser set. Oh, the things I have made for that infant! [chuckling] She wanted a pad for her dressing table, and there was a long bench that you sat on. Well, she wanted it with some kind of blue . . . it wasn’t silk, but she wanted it stitched across in a pattern. So Aunt Beufie had to make the pad for this. [chuckling] She used that room quite awhile, when she’d come back. Of course, that was when she was away from here. In fact, she and Clifton really never lived in the house up there.
BOSSO: Right.
WALLACE: Of course, Harry had the den over on this side of the dining room. The parlor never was used, really. They had a television in there at one time. Is there still a television up there?
BOSSO: Yes.
WALLACE: And the picture is still on the piano?
12
BOSSO: Yes.
WALLACE: [chuckling] Oh!
BOSSO: Do you ever remember going over there and hearing Mr. Truman play the piano?
WALLACE: I have heard him play the piano. [chuckling] Margaret was so disappointed the year they got the piano. He bought the piano because that’s what he thought [she] would want, and she wanted an electric train. [chuckling]
HARRISON: Do you remember anything about them getting the piano, or it being delivered, or . . . ?
WALLACE: No, but I know they got it for Christmas. I guess they had it . . . No, I don’t remember. I know that Harry just loved the piano. Margaret could have been a very good musician if she’d have practiced, but she never would work at it very hard. [chuckling]
I had a letter from her this last . . . well, I guess it’s been a week or two ago. She sent me the picture of the girl [to whom] her oldest son Clifton is engaged to be married. She thinks it will be probably next spring, something like that, but she sent me a picture of the . . . real pretty girl, and the announcement the girl’s parents had made. Well, he’s old. Clifton must be twenty-eight or twenty-nine. He’d have to be, wouldn’t he? He was a good-looking kid. Well, he looked like his father. He’s more like Clifton Daniel. The second boy is big and blonde, more like the blonde . . . that side of the family. Margaret is illiterate. She can’t write. At least she can’t write letters. [chuckling] She writes plays and things like that, but she just calls you up, she don’t . . . But we all spoiled her, so we have nothing to
13
say about it.
BOSSO: You were telling me a story—gosh, I don’t even remember, this was probably last summer—that you were in Washington, D.C., with Mrs. Truman, and you had gone to the circus?
WALLACE: When what?
BOSSO: You had gone to a circus, you and Mrs. Truman, and there was a clown there? Do you remember that?
WALLACE: Oh, yes, that was in Washington. Yes, the bridge club went to Washington, if you remember. That was one way she entertained for the bridge club was to take us all to the circus. The seats were considered very good, and so they put us down pretty close to the thing. That’s when the clown thought he’d be a little bit familiar with Mrs. Truman. [chuckling] He got glared at, and I don’t remember whether . . . The Secret Service must have been around handy, so . . . But she put him right back in his place. She could do that, too.
BOSSO: Just with a look, right?
WALLACE: Yes. She was a very sweet, nice person, but she was a very . . . And I’ve always thought—and this is not for publication, of course—but I’ve always thought that she was good for Mr. Truman because he was inclined to be . . . well, lenient, I guess, is the word. I think she was a big help to him, really, in all of his . . . I don’t think she wanted him to go into politics, but when he did, why, she was there. [chuckling] Is the table still set in the dining room?
BOSSO: Yes, it sure is.
14
WALLACE: Why don’t you have a luncheon someday? [chuckling]
BOSSO: And you can come up and cook it. [laughter]
WALLACE: And I’ll come up. I’ll come up and make some bran rolls.
BOSSO: Right. Steve needs to change the tape here.
[End #3107; Begin #3108]
WALLACE: . . . because I sometimes forget to put it on, but I do. [chuckling]
BOSSO: Now what was this about the bran muffins?
WALLACE: Well, they were still in the White House and they wrote to her and wanted a recipe. So she wrote to me and asked me if I would write out the recipe for these. One of her favorite recipes was my bran rolls. So I did. Well, they wrote her back and asked her how many it would make. Well, of course, she had no idea. [chuckling] So she wrote them back and told them it depended on what size the pan was. [laughter] I thought that was pretty quick. She never heard any more from them, so I guess they made them.
HARRISON: Was she pretty quick like that?
WALLACE: Oh, yes, she was hair-triggered. But she made scalloped oysters. That was one of her things that she liked to make, and made, and there was something else. Well, there were two things that she . . . She never liked to cook. She did it when she had to, but they nearly always had help. Let’s see, there were oysters and something else that she liked that she specialized in. And Mother Wallace never did . . . She was raised in an era when they had . . . well, mostly black help.
And Vietta, you know, was the one that Margaret called “Pete.” We never knew why. [chuckling] Her name was Vietta Garr, and Margaret 15
was a little thing and she called her Pete. I guess she couldn’t say Vietta, very probably. And [she] died very tragically. Did you ever hear the tale about what happened to Vietta? She got up back of the gas stove to do something on the wall, and there was a burner lit on the stove and her clothes caught fire, and she ran out in the yard instead of rolling up in a . . . What do you do, in a carpet or something?
BOSSO: In a blanket, yes.
WALLACE: And she burned so badly that she died in a hospital. But she worked for them for a long time.
HARRISON: Did Mother Wallace have help to cook?
WALLACE: Oh, yes.
HARRISON: What kind of people, how many, or . . . ?
WALLACE: Well, they always had help, as far as if she could get anybody. In those days, there was quite a Negro development over here a little bit north and east of here, and you could nearly always . . . They could come up the alley here. Vietta, I think, lived over in there. No, Mother Wallace didn’t cook unless it was . . . She got breakfast. She made the oatmeal that she got up at five o’clock and made. But Bess didn’t like to cook.
BOSSO: So they would have servants then come for lunch and dinner?
WALLACE: Well, as I remember it, the lunch proposition didn’t amount to too much. Mother Wallace got up early in the morning and made breakfast. Then, I guess, the help came about ten or eleven o’clock.
BOSSO: But no one ever stayed at the house?
WALLACE: No, they didn’t have any place for colored help. They did have . . . it seems 16
to me like there was a place down in the basement. A Negro man that worked, the Reverend . . .
BOSSO: Reverend Hobby?
WALLACE: Reverend Hobby. [chuckling] I know they put in some of these washing things down there and a toilet so that they could go in and out of that . . . where we ate breakfast on my birthday. [chuckling] But she nearly always had . . . Well, they all did. My mother did, they all had . . . And my grandmother was just . . . she was just sunk if the help didn’t come, because they just weren’t raised to do that. See, I was raised in a house that didn’t have any conveniences, you might call them. The Chic Sale1 was out in the backyard, and we didn’t have water. Finally, they got a sink and some water in the kitchen. But just imagine! Just imagine that, and my poor mother with two baby girls having to . . .
BOSSO: At your birthday party, I guess a couple of years ago, you were talking about the church and how the Wallaces were Presbyterian and . . .
WALLACE: Mother Wallace got mad at the preacher.
BOSSO: So they were Presbyterian then, right?
WALLACE: Yes, they were. They never did change from being . . . Grandmother and Grandfather Gates never did. But Mother Wallace . . . The church, as they often do in Protestant churches, this old man got . . . well, he just got past his prime, and they let him go. Well, Mother Wallace took it upon herself to be mad because she was crazy about him, and she didn’t think . . . So then she quit going to church. Then Frank, the one in the pictures, got
1 Chic Sale – see definition from RH dictionary
17
interested in a young minister over at the Episcopal church and got to going over there, and then my husband, so then eventually they all got over to the Episcopal church. But they were originally . . . The family tradition was Presbyterian, and I think there’s still some mementoes and things of the Gateses over in the parlor over there at the Presbyterian church.
BOSSO: So they were very involved in the Presbyterian church then, right?
WALLACE: In the Presbyterian church, yes. Mother Wallace was a sweet, good woman, and I was very fond of her, but she was very positive—I guess is the word—when she wanted, when she thought something was . . . Well, see, old Dr. Madiera, well, now, he was the old man that she thought . . . And he had just lived his usefulness out, you know, and they let him go. Then they got over to the Episcopal church, and, of course, that’s all Margaret knew.
BOSSO: And that’s where the Trumans were married, right?
WALLACE: Yes, they were married over there, with the hollyhocks in the back, in the jars, the umbrella jars that we put the hollyhocks in.
HARRISON: You referred to Mother Wallace as a recluse?
WALLACE: Well, she got to be, yes. You see, Mr. Wallace’s death . . . a suicide in those days was kind of . . . well, it was just a little bit on the disgraceful side, you know. I think she just kind of went in a hole and pulled the hole in after her, because she was . . . and then their children were young, and Fred was a baby. But Mr. Wallace my father knew very well, and he always thought that my husband George was more like his father than he was more like the Gateses. Frank was a Gates, there’s no doubt about that.
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Pop was very fond of Mr. Wallace, but Mrs. Wallace, Mother Wallace, had been raised in a very wealthy family. She had always had everything she wanted, and, of course, when she married, Mr. Wallace was just a clerk in the courthouse up here. But he wanted to give her everything that she wanted, as husbands, nice husbands do, and he over . . . I don’t mean he took anything, but he just got so deeply in debt that he couldn’t get out of it. So he shot himself. You know, I think, and maybe I’m crazy, but I’ve got a right to think what I want to, I think that affected my husband’s nervous condition, because he went in and found . . . He heard the shot and went in and found his father there. That must have been quite . . . He was only nine, ten, eleven years old, and, you know, that would be pretty grim. That was before all the wars that everybody got to hauling dead people around, and they just . . .
BOSSO: Especially he being so young.
WALLACE: Yes. My father always thought George was more like his father than he was like the Gateses, that he thought he was more social. The Gateses were very . . . well, they were what you would say “exclusive.” [chuckling] Frank Wallace was a . . . I was very fond of him, but I never felt close to him because he was a . . . he was a Gates.
HARRISON: How do you think Mrs. Truman fit in? Was she a Gates or a Wallace?
WALLACE: She was a kind of a mixture. [laughter] Yes, she could be, she could be just as . . . I think I told Lisa about the time we were in Washington. Well, that was at the thing.
BOSSO: The circus.
19
WALLACE: It was at a period of time when seersucker, the material, was quite in style, and she had a nice seersucker suit. We were downtown in Washington doing something, and we were in an elevator. I heard a woman behind me say, “That’s Mrs. Truman.” And the other woman said, “Seersucker!” [chuckling] So disgusted that the first lady would have on seersucker. She thought she ought to have point lace and diamonds, I guess. But Bess got a big kick out of it. Bess had a keen sense of humor, and especially when anything was like that. But we had some mighty good . . . We spent some Christmases in the White House, too. That’s quite a . . .
BOSSO: I’ll bet that was something fancy!
WALLACE: That big tree down on the . . . oh, what is it? I can’t get my direct . . . Speaking of something different, did you watch the Christmas television that they had?
BOSSO: No.
WALLACE: Oh, that was a beautiful program! The Reagans at the White House, they showed at the White House, and they entertained these children and Pat Boone, and it was just a beautiful program.
BOSSO: Was that just recently?
WALLACE: Just this last . . .
BOSSO: Last night?
WALLACE: It was around Thanksgiving, I guess. No, it was after Thanksgiving because I wasn’t here. It hasn’t been too long. But she entertained a whole lot of foreign children and schoolchildren. Then, right at the end, she took them in to give them something to eat. But she’s a sweet, nice person. I 20
think Mrs. Reagan is just a darling. But that took me back to the White House.
BOSSO: Thinking when you were there, right? [chuckling]
WALLACE: Yes. Well, there’s a picture someplace, a picture of us all at the table in the dining room there at the White House eating.
BOSSO: Would you take gifts up there and then exchange gifts up at the White House in Washington?
WALLACE: Lady, if you had seen that living room on Christmas morning, you’d have thought a hurricane had taken care of it. [chuckling] Yes, we each had a chair. We all had to come up there at a certain time in the morning. We had taken our presents up, and we each had a chair, and then we would open them in sequence, you know. The room got full of tissue paper. Vietta had to pretty near bring a broom to get through there. [chuckling] Yes, they had several Christmases, and then we had several Christmases in the White House, and that’s quite a deal, too. We had to go on the train in those days, and then they would meet us over wherever the train used to go into Washington. We were changing in Saint Louis. We had to go down on the C & A to Saint Louis, and then get onto the B & O or whatever it is that goes to Washington. We heard a man behind us say, “That’s some of the Truman kinfolks. They’re going to Washington.” [laughter]
HARRISON: The story about the Christmas gifts and everybody passing them around in a circle, that was here at the Truman home or that was in Washington? The story you just told us about the room filling up with Christmas stuff?
WALLACE: Oh, that was here.
21
BOSSO: So that was right up at the house?
WALLACE: Right here up in the big living room.
HARRISON: Who was usually at the Christmases here at the Truman home?
WALLACE: Well, just family. But you see, there was Frank and Natalie, and George and me, and Fred, and Harry and Bess and Margaret, and Vietta. [chuckling] There was quite a roomful of us.
HARRISON: Can you recall any of the decorations or anything they had in the house, or any of the other . . .
WALLACE: Oh, yes, they had a Christmas tree. It was over on that end where the big . . . oh, that thing that goes . . .
BOSSO: The grate?
HARRISON: The register?
WALLACE: The cold air shaft I’m trying to say. There’s a big, metal, cold air shaft over there. Well, that’s what they fastened the Christmas tree to. Margaret had to have one that touched the ceiling, and that’s a nine-foot ceiling, I guess, isn’t it? It must be something like that. So there may be out here someplace a big spread thing that he made to put the Christmas tree on. Then Frank and Natalie, and I guess there must have been some more people around, anyway, they sat and bossed while George and Bess and I trimmed the Christmas tree. [chuckling] And then it would show. Then they’d open the front draperies and let the . . . People would go by, and they could see it from the street.
HARRISON: Would you decorate the tree at the same time each year?
WALLACE: Oh, yes. Well, yes, I don’t remember the . . . but not too far before 22
Christmas, and then we’d go and take all our packages and put them . . . On Christmas morning the paper was just like that. [chuckling]
HARRISON: Did you ever decorate on Christmas Eve or . . . ?
WALLACE: I guess we did our decorating on Christmas Eve, because we all had to be up there early because Margaret was young enough so that she’d get up and have . . . She knew Santa Claus hadn’t been there, but she had to go get up and see what was going on, have her presents. She was sick. Margaret was a frail child until she was, oh, nineteen or twenty. She was a spindly-legged little thing, and she got up . . . The year she wanted an electric train and got that piano, [chuckling] that was almost a tragedy, too. But we all took our presents up the night before, and then we opened them the next day. “Oh, isn’t this pretty! Open it! What did you get?” [chuckling] Oh, shoot!
HARRISON: And then, after that, how would the rest of Christmas Day be spent?
WALLACE: The rest of Christmas Day? Well, we had Christmas dinner up there. I know I had to trade some way. My family had Christmas dinner, too, and they thought I ought to be there, too. I don’t know what we did, whether we had it . . . whether I alternated and if I had Thanksgiving dinner with one and Christmas with the other or something, but they had the big dining room, and they had a big old table in those days. I don’t remember Grandfather and Grandmother Gates in the Christmas melee, but they must have been there because they lived several years after I . . . Let’s see, I was married in 1916 and they didn’t . . . he didn’t die till . . . Well, he died in 1918. It wasn’t too long.
BOSSO: When the Trumans came back from Washington after they had retired,
23
would you still have Christmas up there?
WALLACE: Oh, yes.
BOSSO: Would they decorate? Would they get the tree touching the ceiling?
WALLACE: Yes. Oh, Margaret always had a tree.
BOSSO: Even when she was married and away from home?
WALLACE: Well, I don’t remember them being . . . I don’t associate Clifton with the Christmases. Well, we all went to New York when . . . Well, it was when one of her babies was a baby—well, maybe the first one. My husband died in 1963, didn’t he, in the spring, and that Christmas Bess and Harry took me to New York with them on the special train. I got to ride on the special train! We had Christmas with Margaret that year, and she didn’t have room for all of us, so we stayed in a . . . well, you’d probably know the name of the place, but it was a real nice place right near them. Then I helped Margaret and I helped Clifton decorate the tree, and we had dinner at Margaret’s.
I don’t know how long we stayed there, several days, because Bess and I went over to New York. I had never been in New York at that time, and she wanted me to see some of the sights. Bess Truman was a very, very thoughtful person. She was just as kind as she could be, and as I said before, she wasn’t sloppy kind, she could be just the other way. [chuckling] But we had a good time that winter.
Let’s see, I’m trying to think of somebody that I wanted to meet, some celebrity. I was kind of a celebrity hound, and she took me . . . It was some man that was staying at the Waldorf-Astoria, and she said, “Well,
24
I’m going over . . .” I guess it was somebody who had been in the White House or something, and I can’t think who it was. Anyway, she took me over, and I got to shake hands with him.
BOSSO: And you’ve never washed your hands since.
WALLACE: No, I haven’t washed them since. [chuckling] Then we went to some of the galleries and all in New York. That’s the only time I was ever . . . I’ve been through New York many times, but not . . . Then one year, when I went through there going on some trip and we had to change in New York, Margaret and her family were out, they used to go out in the summertime they went out to one of those resorts up there when the boys were wanting to swim and do things like that, so I called her up and talked to her over the telephone. But what a time! So I’ve had a pretty interesting life myself.
BOSSO: I’d say so. Didn’t you all used to have a dog?
WALLACE: [chuckling] Spot! Spot’s the one that got the hairs on Harry’s good suit. [chuckling] And sitting right over there. There was a chair that Spot always sat in. Harry came down one night with his good dark blue suit on. Before we could stop him, he sat down in Spot’s chair. Well, I didn’t say anything more then. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. But when he got up and left, it just looked like he’d just been pasted with this . . . The dog was a black and white, mostly white dog. So I always figured that the air was pretty blue up there when he got home and took off his suit. [chuckling] Harry was a very meticulous dresser. He liked good clothes, and he . . . Of course, in Washington he had a valet.
One time when we were there at Christmas time and we were going 25
to have . . . I guess just with Margaret and this Jane . . . Jane, what was Jane’s other . . . her best friend there in Washington at that time. They were going to have a big dance at the White House in the big room, and they came down. It was so pretty. They came down the steps. There was a long stairway that came down and emptied into the lobby there of the White House. Jane . . . Lingo, that was her name. Lingo? That’s not right. Jane . . . Well, anyway, she was real dark, and she had on a red dress. And Margaret, of course, was a blonde, and I’ve forgotten what her dress was, but they came down the steps, these long steps together to come down in there and it was so pretty.
Then they had the dance. So my husband was alive at that time, and I said, “Now, George . . .” He didn’t like to dance, and I did, and I said, “We’re going in there and take a few steps so I can say I’ve danced in the White House, whether you want to or not.” [chuckling] So we did. We danced around a little. But that was a nice Christmas.
BOSSO: Did you get to dance with Mr. Truman?
WALLACE: No, he never would dance.
BOSSO: He didn’t like to dance?
WALLACE: No. [chuckling] He liked to play poker. No, I guess he really was raised . . . Of course, Harry was raised on the farm, and Harry had worked all of his life, and I don’t think he had ever . . . Bess was a nice dancer, she had taken dancing lessons, but I never saw Harry dance. Maybe Margaret could have dragged him out on the floor, but nobody else could have. But that was a nice Christmas that we spent.
26
HARRISON: Did you ever see President Truman playing poker?
WALLACE: [chuckling] No. He wouldn’t even play cards with us. We used to play. Bess and my husband and . . . Bess and Natalie and May and George, [chuckling]we used to play cards up on the back porch there at night. Frank Wallace didn’t care anything about it, but my husband was a real good bridge player, so we used to play bridge up there.
HARRISON: Would President Truman be sitting out there reading or anything, or would he be inside?
WALLACE: Yes, he had him a good light out there. If he could have a book . . . He’s just like my sister. If he could have a book and a good light, he didn’t care what went on. [chuckling] But he always had something to read. Of course, they fixed a telephone . . . They had a telephone so they could move it out there. Is there still a . . . out there?
BOSSO: There’s a little connection, yes.
WALLACE: But, see, that was all built on. The original house, they just had that funny little porch that went all the way around. They didn’t have that big porch that’s built on the back. I can’t remember, when was that porch built?
BOSSO: In the early fifties, wasn’t it? I think it was like . . .
WALLACE: After the Trumans . . . ?
BOSSO: It was around the same time when all the . . . Well, they got the idea from putting the porches on the White House.
WALLACE: Yes.
BOSSO: Because he liked the porches. I think it was shortly thereafter is when it was added.
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WALLACE: Well, they used to have . . . It was just a funny little narrow porch across the front, and they did have chairs out there sometimes, but when you’ve got a chair out there, there wasn’t much room for anybody else. [chuckling] But that big living porch has just been a . . . I can see Harry now. He had a good light out there, and he’d sit out there and read. They’d sit out there and read. Both were avid readers, which was a good thing, because you might wanted to fuss if your husband was reading and you wanted him to do something else. [chuckling]
BOSSO: Well, we’ve got a tape change . . .
END OF INTERVIEW
May Wallace with Park Ranger
May Wallace with Park Ranger Lisa Bosso

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Harry S Truman National Historic Site

Last updated: April 15, 2022