Article

Thomas Richter Oral History Interviews

Old style tape recorder, green. — No photograph available
NPS

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER: NOVEMBER 11, 1985.

NOVEMBER 11, 1985
INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI

INTERVIEWED BY PAM SMOOT
ORAL HISTORY #1985-3
This transcript corresponds to audiotapes DAV-AR #3067-#3068

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.

Thomas P. Richter and Jim Williams reviewed the draft of this transcript. Their
corrections were incorporated into this final transcript by Perky Beisel in summer 2000. 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

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER

HSTR INTERVIEW #1985-3

STEVE HARRISON: This is a recording of an interview with Tom Richter, now chief
ranger at Harry S Truman National Historic Site. The interview is
being conducted by Pamela Smoot, historian with the National Park
Service in the Midwest Regional Office in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s
being conducted November 15, 1985, at the offices of the Harry S
Truman National Historic Site, which is located at 223 North Main in
Independence, Missouri.
PAMELA SMOOT: No, that’s cheating.
THOMAS P. RICHTER: Oh, that’s cheating? Oh, okay.
SMOOT: Just relax. We are not going to hurt you. This is not going to hurt at all. Oh,
Steve, this looks like it’s right down your alley. Look at him, doesn’t he look
good?
RICHTER: Yes, he looks pretty good there. Well, that slide show does just permeate the
building here.
SMOOT: Tom, how do you pronounce your last name, Richter?
RICHTER: Yes, like the earthquake scale.
SMOOT: Okay.
RICHTER: Hold on a second. I need to holler at Palma. [extraneous conversation
ensues—not transcribed]
SMOOT: This is Pamela Smoot, and we’re interviewing Thomas Richter. Today is
November 15, 1985. Mr. Richter, would you state your full name and
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address, please?
RICHTER: Oh, it’s Thomas Paul Richter, 1407 West Short Street, Apartment #4,
Independence, Missouri 64050.
SMOOT: Are you a native of Independence, Missouri?
RICHTER: Oh, no, I’ve only been here for about three years.
SMOOT: Three years? Prior to coming to Harry S Truman, where were you
employed?
RICHTER: Oh, I was at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis.
SMOOT: And how long were you employed there?
RICHTER: Five years, half a decade.
SMOOT: Half a decade? My goodness. So what was your position?
RICHTER: I was a historian when I left, although primarily I had served as a ranger in
charge of interpretation at the Old St. Louis Courthouse.
SMOOT: What were some of your other responsibilities?
RICHTER: Oh, some interpretive planning, writing new position descriptions—we
usually reorganize our division about every other year or so—editor of the
park newspaper, interpretive specialist in general, coaching the other
interpreters and their programs. Before that, I was a ranger trainee for two
years there with a variety of duties. Worked for the superintendent directly
for a while, which was very beneficial, in the superintendent’s office. Pretty
much a variety of things. Also, some time at the Gateway Arch in the
Museum of Westward Expansion as a supervisor down there.
SMOOT: I see. So you’re a historian? You were a historian. Do you still consider
yourself a historian?
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RICHTER: Oh, sure.
SMOOT: Okay, have you worked on any historical projects that you think are
extremely notable?
RICHTER: [chuckling] Oh, none recently. I did have an article published on an Indian
tribe in Nebraska called the Otoes, and I got a diary edited and published of a
couple of nuns in frontier New Mexico, their exploits in raising money and
running an orphanage and hospital and everything in Santa Fe.
SMOOT: So why did you come to Independence?
RICHTER: Well, it came about one day when the superintendent at St. Louis called me
into his office and let me know that I was being considered for an
appointment as ranger in charge at Harry S Truman. The reason he sort of
spilled the beans early was that I was also applying to a job in Alaska and he
was afraid I’d accept this job in Alaska before they got to me with this other
thing. That was in December of ’82, and early in January of ’83 I was
officially offered the job by Jim Dunning, the regional director in the
midwest region of the National Park Service in Omaha. And ten days later, I
was on my way over . . . Well, actually even quicker than that.
Superintendent Schoeber and I came over in early January and met with
Andy Ketterson from the Midwest Regional Office, and Lee Jamieson, who
was a restoration specialist from the Midwest Regional Office. We met with
Dr. Zobrist, the director of the Truman Library, Pat O’Brien, the historic
preservation officer for Independence. That was mainly an orientation visit,
and then ten days later I was over here permanently as the first person to be
assigned right to the site.
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SMOOT: So, Mr. Richter, did you really want to go to Alaska?
RICHTER: [laughter] Well, at the time, before I knew this was coming up, I was
interested. It would have been a regional office job up there as an
interpretive specialist. With all those new parks, it would have been sort of
setting the groundwork for interpretation in all those parks.
SMOOT: Okay, so as the ranger in charge of Harry S Truman, who did you report to?
Who was your immediate supervisor?
RICHTER: Okay, my immediate supervisor was Superintendent Jerry Schoeber at St.
Louis at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial National Historic Site,
and Mr. Schoeber in turn then reported up to the regional office. But in
practical terms, a lot of my communication went directly to the regional
office, particularly to people like Andy Ketterson and Lee Jamieson and Ron
Cockrell, the regional historian, at the regional office.
SMOOT: What was your first day on the job like when you got here to Independence?
RICHTER: [chuckling] Well, through the generosity of the Truman Library, they
provided me with an office at the Truman Library, plus the use of their Xerox
machine. They had a secretary that helped me out.
SMOOT: And what was her name?
RICHTER: Mary Jo Colley. The first day, a lot of moving into that office, going down to
the home to get to know the Federal Protective Service employees, who at
that time were in charge of security at the home. The federal protective
officers stood eight-hour shifts around the clock there, one person at a time.
Also, my first day I had the pleasant experience of putting the water
bill into the National Park Service’s name. Our first visit, we discovered a
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notice from the water company saying that . . . it was addressed to H.
Truman, and that if we didn’t pay our water in the next few days they were
going to turn the water off. Andy Ketterson had previously turned most of
the utilities over to our address, but forgot the water, so that was one of my
first things that first day was to make a trip down to the water company.
They demanded a deposit, even though I explained that we were going to be
here for an eternity and there was no danger of us skipping out on our bills or
anything. And as far as I know, that deposit is still there.
SMOOT: That sounds like a very exciting first day on the job.
RICHTER: Oh, yes. It was also snowing that day, so that added to the fun.
SMOOT: I see. So do you remember the names of any of the protective officers?
RICHTER: Oh, one of them’s name was Joel Chapman, Joe Katransky, Earl Perry.
Some of them I only know by their last name. There’s a guy named
Magruder. Several of them . . . They basically were being paid overtime. It
was an additional responsibility for Federal Protective Service, so these
people usually they were working overtime shifts. So I would say there’s
probably a good fifteen different people that were taking shifts down there.
Certainly, it was one of the things that a little concerned me because there
were so many different people down there. It was hard to develop sort of a
loyalty or pride among the officers there when they would only be there
maybe once a week or so, or once every two weeks. Andy Ketterson had
arranged this system with Federal Protective Service, with also another
arrangement that the Federal Protective Service would contract a private
guard company for us.
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SMOOT: So these federal protective officers, were they just sort of like federal police?
Is that similar?
RICHTER: Right, Federal Protective Service is sort of the law enforcement arm of
General Services Administration. They have moved more now into contract
administration. They used to stand the posts, and now they supervise the
contract guards. Our concern in the beginning was certainly just the physical
condition of the building. We had problem with leaks suddenly erupting.
Because of the primitive smoke alarm system, we were very concerned about
the threat of fire, so we had them make patrols every hour through the
building.
SMOOT: These federal protective officers, were they local people?
RICHTER: For the most part, they pretty much were; quite a few were even from
Independence. Some had certainly at least met Mr. Truman during his
lifetime. A wide variety of approaches. Some of them really enjoyed being
there. I know one in particular told me that the whole idea of a national
historic site was just a federal boondoggle, [chuckling] which concerned me
a little bit about how good he was while he was down there. It was certainly
one of my early activities, was really just getting to know the Federal
Protective Service officials better.
We were also concerned for the immediate security of the home, and
as a result, put in, improved the lighting system at the home, put up a couple
of modern light fixtures on the garage building to improve the lighting at
night. Also put in, temporarily—which just recently were taken out—
wooden bars over the windows in the basement, because many of the
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basement windows were sort of ajar where somebody could easily intrude
into the house through the basement.
SMOOT: When did you first improve the lighting? Do you remember what year that
was?
RICHTER: Oh, that was early in ’83, I would say about March of ’83.
SMOOT: What were your first impressions of the Truman home?
RICHTER: Oh, it was almost a feeling of entering like a King Tut’s tomb kind of
experience. Very much even back then—it was more than even today—the
idea or feeling of entering something that was still occupied by the
occupants, particularly upstairs. Entering the president’s dressing room was
a very eerie sensation. Also, I think my first impression, I was impressed
with just the architecture of the building. You know, let alone its connection
to Truman, just the fine handcrafted woodwork and the fixtures and so much
of that. I was impressed [with] 100-year-old fixtures and lincrusta and all
kinds of things in there that you don’t expect in most people’s houses. The
other impression was really a delight . . . [pause] I was favorably impressed
by the fact that the house was still in its old neighborhood. The urban
environment, you might say, was still intact, to the point Mr. Truman could
probably still find his way around on his morning walks in that
neighborhood.
SMOOT: What type of attitude did the community have toward the National Park
Service coming into manage or take over the home.
RICHTER: Oh, what a question! A good question. I would say overall it was sort of a
“show-me” kind of attitude. They were a bit apprehensive, to be quite frank,
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with their experiences with the Truman Library, which did not have good
public relations with the community. There was some fear that, “Oh no, here
comes another one of those federal agencies that’s going to act sort of above
the community and above community interests.” Certainly, there was
concern how the Truman home would impact their tourism program. The
city officials were very strongly interested in that. There was concern that
we would just align ourselves with the Truman Library, perhaps through a
shuttle, and thereby attract visitors only to the Truman home and the Truman
Library and sort of ignore the rest of Independence. The attitude also in this
community, I think to this day, is that the Truman home really belongs more
to Independence than to the nation, that there was sort of a feeling of, “What
are these outsiders coming in?” Our rangers still get questions to this day
about, “Are you from Independence? How long have you lived here?” and
that sort of thing. It’s hard for them to understand the national significance, I
think, of this site, even to this day.
I think the fact particularly, Andy Ketterson had already announced
that we were going to open the home to the public in time for the president’s
hundredth birthday in May of ’84, so there was a level of excitement about
that. Because, really, the Independence community really was going to tie
their whole centennial observation really towards that event of the opening of
the home and the expectation that that would draw a lot of visitors to
Independence. Also, because the Trumans were such private people, very
few Independence residents had ever set foot inside the Truman home, so
there was a lot of anticipation of Independence people just wanting to set foot
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inside and see what was really behind those four walls there.
SMOOT: Do you think most of the people were impressed by what they saw?
RICHTER: I think most probably were let-down a little bit. I think they were expecting
more of a . . . sort of a palace kind of effect, you know. I think, despite all the
stories about Mr. Truman being sort of down-to-earth and everything, I still
think they were sort of expecting a little more on the inside. I know from
touring some of the other older historic homes in Independence that some of
the others have even nicer fixtures on the inside than the Trumans’ home. I
think also there was sort of a shock as to the physical condition of the
building from the local people. I know they were expecting the park service
to do miracles overnight as far as fixing things up, and lots of questions
about, “When are you going to paint the place?” Of course, the paint would
be the last thing we would do after we had fixed up the structure itself. So,
anyway, that’s an involved question, but it’s a good one because it’s a unique
situation here in Independence with their attitude towards this historic site.
SMOOT: Did you receive any assistance or any support from any groups within the
community?
RICHTER: Several. At the time I arrived, the people that lived in the Harry S. Truman
National Historic Landmark District were pretty much together, and of
course very supportive in terms of historic preservation and very supportive
of what we were doing. I would say sort of the people that were interested in
promotion and tourism, particularly the city officials interested in tourism,
they were very supportive of the concept of us opening the home to the
public. Remarkably, to me, very little support or even contact with Kansas
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City people or interests. It’s sort of funny, certainly you understood very
quickly Independence is certainly not a suburb of Kansas City, a completely
different kind of politics and support networks and that sort of thing. The
Truman Library, of course, they were very much behind us from the
beginning, a very strong statement of support.
SMOOT: Mr. Richter, what type of problems did you encounter, or did you encounter
any problems, upon your arrival?
RICHTER: [chuckling] Okay, I think one thing was the anticipation of the community,
that we were going to do everything overnight, when they seemed to think
that it was even outrageous to think we were going to take even so long. I
mean, we thought we were doing pretty well to try to get the home open by
May of ’84, and a lot of people thought that was too long. There were some
problems in some ways, I’d say, with the Truman Library. There was
support for what we were doing, but it was sort of a big brother to little
brother sort of approach. I heard a lot of, “Well, I don’t want to tell you how
to do things here, but this is the way we think you should do them.”
[chuckling]
Some problems . . . Independence has so many rival little interest
groups, and it is very difficult to keep on the good side of all of them,
particularly in a town like Independence where public affairs are discussed so
openly, and sometimes twisted around by different groups to serve their
purposes.
I would say one thing that certainly concerned me from the beginning
was the fact that the Truman Library had in their possession a lot of objects
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that were in the home, and very hazy conditions of ownership. Dr. Zobrist
had always said though, anything that we needed for the home, that he’d
gladly loan us back. That was his statement, but it was a bit weird in the
situation, knowing that before the park service had taken over possession of
the property the Truman Library had had access for a month and a half or so
after Mrs. Truman’s death.
I would say the other problem I encountered was the fact that my
office was at the Truman Library, in terms of getting down to the home. I
don’t think I got down as often as probably I should have to have just kept up
with the guards. Once we went with the private contracting service on April
Fool’s Day in 1983, April 1, 1983, we had a very good guard on the day
shift. That was one reason I didn’t go down that often, because he was just
so trustworthy and would keep me up-to-date on any little problems down
there. But we did have the normal situation of contract supervision, that
some of the guards were not that productive or efficient, and we went
through several. One guard got caught watching the Trumans’ television set
one night, and another one was caught reading a collection of comic books
when he was supposed to be staying alert to his duties and everything. So
that was a little bit of a headache, particularly being the only one down there.
You know, essentially I was on-call twenty-four hours a day. If I wanted to
go off on a little trip somewhere, I’d have to leave word as to where I could
be reached, and so that was a little difficult.
SMOOT: So how many guards were on duty at one time?
RICHTER: Just one per shift. They would do eight-hour shifts, twenty-four hours a day.
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They would do an hourly patrol of the building and about three exterior
patrols during their eight-hour shift.
SMOOT: How did you solve the problem with the community, in terms of them
thinking that the Truman home was going to be ready for visitation [almost]
overnight? Or did you solve the problem?
RICHTER: [chuckling] I think I calmed it down a bit, just being very level with them,
talking to as many people as I could, going to civic groups. One thing about
Independence, because everyone loves to talk about such things, it was easy
to get the word out in a hurry. [chuckling]
SMOOT: That’s true.
RICHTER: Basically, also using the newspapers, explaining what we were doing, what
remained to be done. I think the word got out quite a bit in a hurry about the
physical condition of the building, that it needed to be rewired completely
with new electrical systems and needed a lot of repairs to the roof. There still
was a bit of a hesitation of the people thinking, “Well, this still can’t possibly
take so long as they’re talking about.”
The other thing that was so incredible was how long it took just to get
our enabling legislation passed. Our authority was based upon a presidential
proclamation that was signed on December 8th in 1982. The proclamation
was an emergency measure giving us authority to protect the property until
Congress officially passed a law giving us our enabling legislation. There, I
think, people were losing their patience with Congress over how long that
was taking, because it didn’t really come to pass till May of 1983. It took a
while.
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SMOOT: What were the names of some of the civic groups that you addressed?
RICHTER: The Optimists Club of Sugar Creek, the Kiwanis Club of Downtown
Independence, and also another Kiwanis Club a little bit west of here. I
forget their official name. I talked to what’s called Independent Study Club,
a group of elderly ladies that get together once a week. Also, the Junior
Service League of Independence, I talked to them, which is a service
organization of ladies. Lions Club. In fact, that was my first public
appearance, the Lions Club of Independence.
SMOOT: I’ll bet it was a major disaster, wasn’t it? [chuckling]
RICHTER: Well, what was funny was I was given about fifteen minutes before . . . I had
agreed to address them in the future, and it turns out their speaker had turned
ill at the last moment, so they called upon me to pinch-hit. And again, I
approached these really trying to get feedback from the community. I wasn’t
basically going there and saying, “Here’s what we’re going to do,” but
always offering them the opportunity to give us suggestions. The big
questions always were: How much are we going to charge? Which it turned
out it was free. What are we going to do about parking? And, when are we
going to be open? Those were always the three questions. With the fact that
we’re within this national historic landmark district and a neighborhood that
still was intact, you know, from the beginning we tried to let the community
know that we wanted to develop a plan that would not severely impact the
way of life of that community right around the home.
SMOOT: So were these civic groups responsive, receptive to what you said?
RICHTER: Oh, pretty much so. Without exception, very good response. Oh,
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Independence Chamber of Commerce, a big meeting there. I sort of was
surprised by the turnout there. Of course, that one was a slide show, so extra
people showed up for that, the first look inside the home sort of thing.
Almost without exception, a very warm reception. Some surprise at the cost
that it was going to take to do all these renovations, which again, in a local
community like this, is hard to just explain the way the federal government
does business and certain requirements on contracts that up the wages and
thereby up the price of these jobs.
SMOOT: What newspapers did you utilize in trying to explain the renovation and why
things were taking so long, or would take so long?
RICHTER: Well, especially the Independence Examiner, and then the Kansas City Star
and Kansas City Times. At that time, we had a really good news reporter for
the Kansas City Star named Brent Schondlemeyer, who was really interested
in the project, and he really helped things out. We went through a variety of
reporters with the Independence Examiner; they kept changing their
assignments as to who had the Truman home beat. And as I said before, you
know, just a lot of word of mouth. It is sort of a miracle how things get
around here in Independence. Also, it was sort of funny though, that some of
the city officials, in tourism especially, were perhaps the most impatient as to
why we couldn’t get this thing done faster.
SMOOT: Have you ever met Margaret Truman before?
RICHTER: Oh, on a couple of occasions. She paid a visit . . . Well, she always comes
out in May during the birthday week celebration the first week of May,
celebrations of her dad’s birthday. She also made a visit for the filming of an
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episode of “Smithsonian World” TV show. Particularly her first visit in May
of ’83 was very important, because that was really the first opportunity the
National Park Service had of direct contact with her, talking about our plans
for showing the home. She was very reluctant to even have the home open to
the public. Her idea at first was we simply would preserve the home without
opening it to the public, because she felt the house could not withstand the
wear and tear of all these visitors. We used our powers of persuasion to
convince her that we would do whatever was necessary to preserve the home
as well as show it to the public. [chuckling]
SMOOT: The wonderful power of persuasion.
RICHTER: I would say that it was interesting, though, that when she did finally agree
that the home should be open to the public, then she was very helpful, even
had her own ideas on what the tour route should be, had ideas about . . .
certainly wanted the table, the dining room table set as it would have been on
a formal occasion for dinner. She also agreed to certainly answer any
questions that our historians might have, or anybody, about the way of life
there.
SMOOT: So, on an overall basis, would you say that she was very cooperative?
RICHTER: Overall. It was sort of a winning her over process. Each meeting was more
beneficial as she got used to us. I think you need to remember that until that
time she had always dealt with the Truman Library, National Archives
people. National Park Service was a total unknown quantity to her. In fact,
her only contact was a friendship of one of President Roosevelt’s sons, where
the National Park Service nearly let the Roosevelt home burn down with
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defective wiring. So that was about her only contact. In fact, that
Roosevelt’s son even told her that there was no way that the Truman home
could be opened to the public successfully, so . . .
SMOOT: I see, so that is one of the reasons why she was so reluctant?
RICHTER: I think so, and then just personally I think that you’ve got to remember that
was her home for all those years, and all those memories. And the idea of
70,000 people a year going through, I’m sure, had a negative impact on her
feelings. Also, in terms of cooperation, if you recall that the way Mrs.
Truman wrote her will, it said that the objects inside would go to the
government, except Mrs. Daniel’s personal property, but it didn’t define what
that meant. So I think if you look overall at what little Mrs. Daniel did take
out of the home, then I think again you’d have to say overall that she was
cooperative, because she really had carte blanche to just about anything that
she claimed was her property.
SMOOT: I see. Mr. Richter . . .
HARRISON: Let me change the tape.
[End #3067; Begin #3068]
SMOOT: Mr. Richter, do you know of any objects that were removed from the Truman
home?
RICHTER: Well, that’s a good question. Well, let’s see, to begin with, one day Dr.
Zobrist came in and said that Margaret had just given permission to . . . I
think it was the chamber of commerce. Some fund-raising group was going
to auction off one of the president’s canes, and that Margaret had given
permission for them to get a cane out of the attic that they could . . .
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SMOOT: Oh, really?
RICHTER: So we really didn’t have much choice in that one. So I went up there and
found the most common looking, plain cane that I could find. Most of the
objects I know that left the house left as a result of Mrs. Daniel’s May of ’83
visit, in which she went through the house in a thorough fashion from the
basement to the attic, a very odd way of doing it, also. Superintendent
Schoeber and I were there, and Dr. Zobrist. Well, she practically ordered
Superintendent Schoeber and I out of the house while Dr. Zobrist and Mrs.
Daniel went through the house from the basement to the attic, developing up
this itemized list. She gave her aunt Mrs. Wallace, our next-door neighbor,
quite a few objects, dishes, a chair out of the study, and some mementoes.
She picked out some things for herself that were to go, that the Truman
Library was to ship back East, china pieces . . .
Of course, I know the big objects, a couple of them left the premises
before I ever arrived: an original painting by Winston Churchill of
Marrakesh and also a Grandma Moses painting, original.
Also, there was an icon from Europe, either Hungary or Bulgaria—I
don’t think it’s ever been really established which. President Truman
referred to the icon as probably the most valuable item in the house, and it
apparently was a gift of state, because the president described it as a gift from
Hungary in gratitude for relief after World War II. Anyway, the icon used to
be on the west wall of the study, and originally Mrs. Daniel had the icon
removed to the library for safekeeping. I thought I had sort of an
understanding with Dr. Zobrist that if it was ever to go to New York that we
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would be informed first, because we basically had simply agreed for it to go
to the library, with the understanding it would be a safer place for it to be
kept. Well, to make a long story short, it eventually did go to New York, and
we were informed sort of after the fact that it was in Mrs. Daniel’s possession
in New York.
She claimed a couple of other things that she said belonged to her
sons. Like I remember a little child’s chair that was in the study. That was
shipped off to New York.
SMOOT: Were there any other items, that you know of, that were shipped to the
Truman Library that were in the home?
RICHTER: Again, most of that had already happened before I arrived. The Chinese
vases that are now back in the home in the living room, they went up to the
library for safekeeping, but they eventually came back once we opened to the
public.
SMOOT: Mr. Richter, when was the rest of the staff hired for Harry S Truman?
RICHTER: I came in January of ’83. Around the first of October, Norman Reigle was
hired as the superintendent of the park, which then made me the chief of
interpretation and resource management. Shortly thereafter, we hired Joan
Sanders as our administrative assistant—administrative technician, I guess, is
her official title. She came from Lincoln Home National Historic Site in
Springfield, Illinois. Mr. Reigle came from Ozark National Scenic
Riverways in Missouri. We also about that time, in the fall of ’83, had an
offer—really almost an offer we couldn’t refuse—of a temporary loan of a
curator from Morristown National Historical Park in New Jersey, a lady
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named Susan Kopcyznski. The idea was that she would be on loan for six
months to start out our basic curatorial operation, pending our hiring
eventually of a curator. So she came along there in due time on her detailed
assignment. Of course, then we eventually hired a secretary for the park,
Jennifer Hayes here from Independence. Then, as we got closer to our grand
opening, we did then hire our permanent museum curator Steve Harrison,
who came from St. Louis from the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
Then we hired our interpretation staff, our original staff of Palma Wilson-
Buell, who came up from Ozark National Scenic Riverways, our lead park
technician. We hired Rick Jones and Cindy Ott-Jones, who came out from
Lava Beds National Monument in California. They were our other two
permanent interpreters, and then we hired some seasonal employees for the
first summer.
SMOOT: How many seasonal employees did you have?
RICHTER: Had five the first year.
SMOOT: Were they all from the Midwest?
RICHTER: Oh, let’s see, I guess you could say . . . Let’s see, we hired two from St.
Louis, one from southern Missouri, one from just east of the River, over in
Illinois side of St. Louis.
SMOOT: So overall how large was the permanent staff at Harry S Truman?
RICHTER: Okay, the permanent staff would have been eight.
SMOOT: During that time, did you also hire a facilities manager?
RICHTER: Oh, yes. Oh, I forgot Skip. Yes, okay, make it nine there. Thanks for
reminding me. Yes, I can’t forget Skip from Virginia. [chuckling] Yes, in
20
fact, a very important assignment that he had as a facility management
specialist, particularly in getting the home ready for the grand opening.
SMOOT: What do you mean, “getting the home ready”? What does that mean?
RICHTER: Well, primarily our eventual plans for guided tours depended a great deal
upon the use of a special visitor carpet to get people through the home in a
restricted way, so that they did not just wander all over the downstairs area.
We were involved in getting that carpet laid. Skip was involved in such
things as reinforcing beams in the basement, especially on the porch, as we
found a lot of the porches had decking that was really not too safe for large
numbers of people to be walking on. Had the finishing of the rewiring of the
home before we opened, a lot of roof work. Skip had to get involved with
contracts for lawn care. Meanwhile, the park had moved its headquarters
down here to downtown Independence on the Independence square, so Skip
had to be looking for some kind of a janitorial service. He did have his hands
full.
SMOOT: So would you say that overall Harry S Truman had a good staff, a wellequipped
staff?
RICHTER: I would say not only that but a highly motivated staff. I think without
exception everybody just was so excited to be in on the ground floor. It’s so
easy to fall in love with a resource like ours. It’s, to my mind, one of the
more outstanding presidential homes, in that it is so intact. So much of the
original furniture is still there from the days when Mr. and Mrs. Truman lived
there. I think the extra advantage, that there was quite a level of excitement
in the community here in Independence, that that certainly spread to the staff.
21
SMOOT: After the staff had arrived, were all of you located . . . Did everyone have
an office in the Truman Library?
RICHTER: Well, by the time our, that did sort of get a bit funny here as Norm and Joan
showed up, and later on even Skip and Steve. We were all squeezed together
in a couple of rooms at the Truman Library.
SMOOT: Sort of like sardines? [chuckling]
RICHTER: Just about, just about. It was very particularly difficult with the telephone.
You know, we sort of had to wait in line to use the telephone. Then the city
of Independence was really generous in providing us office space here
adjacent to the Independence square, which is five blocks from the Truman
home, and we could sort of spread out a little more and have more of a
normal office routine.
The interpreters had to depend upon our facilities at the Truman
home. It was very primitive, as far as the space. They literally ate their lunch
on a little table underneath the back porch. They used the servants’ bathroom
in the basement, with a basement where the door didn’t even entirely close.
[chuckling] It was difficult for them because they were not really taking a
break from their job, because even when they were on break they were still
hearing tours going on. I mean, they really weren’t able to take thirty
minutes off and go off somewhere away in the peace and the quiet.
SMOOT: So when did you first move into the building located at 223 Main Street?
RICHTER: Yes, North Main Street.
SMOOT: North Main Street?
RICHTER: It seemed to me it was right around the first of May or so. It was real close to
22
when our grand opening was going to be, and there was a period of sort of
transition. Some people moved here right away, and then others sort of
stayed up at the library to keep answering the phone up there, as most people
still had that phone number as our phone number.
SMOOT: So eventually how long did it take before you settled into the building, I
mean, with equipment, chairs, furniture, what have you.
RICHTER: Oh, I’d say it was probably about a three-week process or so before we all
got settled in here. Sort of the way it worked out, I was sort of one of the last
to leave at the library—first to arrive, last to leave there. Also, we were all
running back and forth to the home so often, and also because our dedication
ceremony was going to be up at the Truman Library, we continued to
maintain some presence up there. Regional office detailed a man named
Dave Herrera to help coordinate the dedication ceremony, and Mr. Herrera’s
office was up at the Truman Library. So I would say really it was not until
after the dedication, about May 15 or so, that we finally cut the last strings to
our direct attachment to the Truman Library.
SMOOT: I see. How many people are on staff now here at the park office?
RICHTER: [chuckling] Well, let’s see . . . [pause] Let’s see, about eleven by my count.
Our facility management specialist position is vacant right now.
SMOOT: So, Mr. Richter, are yourself or Norm Reigle, do you keep in touch with
Margaret Truman on a periodic basis, or do you only have contact with her in
May?
RICHTER: Mr. Reigle does have periodic contact, usually initiated by Mrs. Daniel
through phone calls. He is involved presently in negotiating a written
23
agreement about the ownership of objects in the home, and I think that’s one
reason for his occasional contact with Mrs. Daniel.
SMOOT: I see. Was there or was there not a small fire in the Truman home recently?
RICHTER: Oh, yes, during our exterior rehabilitation. We had a problem that we were
removing paint with hot air guns, like oversize hair dryers. Particularly
woodwork around window frames had become so brittle that it was just very
easy for them to catch on fire. So there was a small fire up in the attic area
that was very quickly put out, particularly because of Mr. Skip Brooks, our
facility management specialist’s foresight in having a garden hose hooked
up, to be able to put it out in a hurry. But considering the amount of paint
that we removed through this process, we were probably very fortunate that
we didn’t have any other major incidents.
SMOOT: So was Mrs. Daniel contacted?
RICHTER: Oh, sure, right away.
SMOOT: What was her reaction? I mean, after having talked to Mr. Roosevelt about
the fire there?
RICHTER: Well, I’ll tell you, her actual reaction was very positive and very thankful to
Norm for calling her. She said, “Well, how thoughtful of you,” and
everything, to the point that she was about to go off on her annual summer
vacation up into upstate New York, and she gave Norm her extra-secret,
private number in case . . .
SMOOT: Impressive!
RICHTER: So, if anything, the fire sort of worked to our advantage because she was very
touched that he had taken that extra time to talk to her about it, so that she
24
didn’t just read about it in the New York Times or something.
SMOOT: I see. Well, that’s very interesting.
RICHTER: And I think it’s just another step in this process of her getting just more and
more used to us and our way of doing business, and having more confidence
in our professionalism.
SMOOT: Do her sons ever come to visit?
RICHTER: Their last visit was for Mrs. Truman’s funeral. And from what I understand,
they did not come that often after Mr. Truman passed away.
SMOOT: I see. So, Mr. Richter, I think this will conclude our interview, unless there is
something extra-special that you’d like to tell me that maybe you forgot?
Because as a historian, you know, sometimes I have a short memory, so
maybe your memory has gotten short, too. [laughter]
RICHTER: Well, I think one thing maybe we didn’t cover too much was the great degree
of support that the regional office specialists provided us.
SMOOT: Which regional office?
RICHTER: Oh, the Midwest Regional Office in Omaha, Nebraska. Not only in terms of
technical support through rehabilitation specialists and restoration specialists,
but also Ron Cockrell, one of the regional historians, provided a lot of help in
developing research on the home. He came up with so much new material.
When I arrived, I was depending mostly on family legends as to the history
of the home, and Ron just got right in there and dug through the records and
came up with a lot of additional information.
SMOOT: What types of things did you and Andy Ketterson work on? Did you ever
collaborate on certain issues?
25
RICHTER: One of the first things we worked on, at the time that I first arrived, the
federal government had initiated a special amount of funding. It was called a
jobs bill to put America back to work. We got funding through the jobs bill
for both a rewiring of the home and also some roof rehabilitation. So Andy
and I worked on that on estimates, and just a proposal on that, and we went
from there to more proposals through the PRIP program, the Park Restoration
and Improvement Program. We got a lot of funding through PRIP for
additional rehabilitation and improvements in the home. Andy also was very
helpful in our plans for how we were going to interpret the home. We had a
National Park Service team of experts that came in to develop what was
called an “interim interpretive prospectus.” Andy participated, as well as Jim
Schack, who is the chief interpreter for the midwest region, and then a couple
of individuals from the Harpers Ferry Center also participated in this
planning process. So I think Andy had a soft spot for us all along there. I
think one thing I didn’t establish was that before my arrival Andy had been
the midwest region’s representative down here. He would make periodic
visits.
In fact, Mr. John Kawamoto, the Midwest Regional Office, had been
the first contact going back ten years ago. The National Park Service started
informally developing a relationship with the Truman Library staff,
particularly about the fate of the home. There was a good indication that
eventually the National Park Service would take operation responsibilities for
the home.
SMOOT: When did you and Mr. Ketterson first begin drafting proposals?
26
RICHTER: Virtually from that first visit I made here in early January, we were scoping
out the physical condition of the building and making decisions on the
absolute high priority projects, which again were the wiring and the roof
repair. We had several leaks in the roof that were threatening the inside of
the building.
Andy and I discussed from the beginning also a site for office space
for us here. We originally had our eyes on the former headquarters for the
Secret Service across the street; however, in looking over the inside of the
building, it was quite small. It also had major problems with its foundation
and wiring and lack of insulation.
SMOOT: That would have been really convenient.
RICHTER: Sure. Sure, it just, I don’t think, really would have fit the bill too well.
SMOOT: I see. So do you have anything else you’d like to tell me? Just spill all the
beans.
RICHTER: [chuckling] Oh, I think another matter maybe for another time would be to
go into sort of the controversy within the national landmark district between
the so-called preservationists and then the forces of the First Baptist Church
of Independence, who saw the preservation movement as a threat, or at least
a restriction of their religious liberties and right to practice their religion.
They are a growing, expanding church, and they wish to remain within the
Truman neighborhood and not move somewhere else. We were certainly
caught in the middle of that one, and we still are to this day.
SMOOT: So are you saying that there are some conflicting factions here?
RICHTER: Tension. Very much.
27
SMOOT: Tension? Okay.
RICHTER: Lingering tension, which also gets involved with the politics of the city.
SMOOT: That sounds like it can really be . . .
RICHTER: A whole other tape could be made. [laughter]
SMOOT: I’m sure. So I really appreciate you allowing me to take up some of your
time, and I’m sure that we’ll get together again in the very near future.
RICHTER: Well, yes, I enjoyed it. It’s an important project, to get this all down.
SMOOT: I think so, and this has really been a grand experience for me. You know, I
never thought I’d ever end up in Independence, Missouri, or go through the
Harry Truman home.
RICHTER: [chuckling] That’s right.
SMOOT: Or even help develop an oral history program for the Harry S Truman
National Historic Site. So it’s certainly a joy for me.
RICHTER: Well, I know it’s in good hands with you. So good luck.
SMOOT: Okay, thank you.
END OF INTERVIEW

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER :AUGUST 27, 1990

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

INTERVIEWED BY JIM WILLIAMS
ORAL HISTORY #1990-4
This transcript corresponds to audiotapes DAV-AR #4124-4128C

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.

Thomas P. Richter and Jim Williams reviewed the draft of this transcript. Their
corrections were incorporated into this final transcript by Perky Beisel in summer 2000.
A grant from Eastern National Park and Monument Association funded the transcription
and final editing of this interview.

RESTRICTION

ABSTRACT

Thomas P. Richter served as the ranger in charge when the Truman home was transferred to
the National Park Service and was the site’s first chief ranger. He remained at the site until
October 1987, when he moved to an appointment in St. Louis. As chief ranger, Richter was
instrumental in developing the interpretive and administrative processes which continue to
be utilized by the rangers today. Richter provides an in-depth understanding of the problems
and their solutions encountered by the rangers in opening the Truman home to visitors. He
also gives detailed description of park, regional office, library, and Independence city
employees involved in the process.

Persons mentioned: Norman J. Reigle, Bess W. Truman, Jerry Schoeber, Jim L. Dunning, F.
A. “Andy” Ketterson, Jr., Ken Shaeffer, James Watt, Tom Eagleton, John Danforth,
Margaret Truman Daniel, Benedict K. Zobrist, Pat Kerr Dorsey, Elizabeth Safly, Donald H.
Chisholm, Warren Orville, John Kawamoto, Abraham Lincoln, Lee Jamison, Dave Given,
Jim Schack, Jill York O’Bright, Ron Cockrell, Steve Harrison, Ken Smith, Pat O’Brien,
Sarah Hancock, David McCullough, May Wallace, Maud L. Gates Wells, Myra Gates
Wallace, Ardis Haukenberry, John Hughes, Russell Dickinson, Sally Schwenk, Millie
Nesbitt, Molly Hankins, Tom Hankins, Sarah Grebb, Doris Hecker, Randy Pope, Mike
Martin, John Carnes, Barbara Potts, Bill Bullard, Keith Wilson, Al Swift, Palma E. Wilson,
Edward Hobby, Joan Sanders, Jennifer A. Hayes, Sue Kopcyznski, Cindy Ott, Rick Jones,
Brent Schondlemeyer, Charles Odegaard, Tony Gentry, Fran Krupka, Dave Herrera,
Winston Churchill, Grandma Moses, Larry Blake, Gentry Davis, Tom Danton, George
Porterfield Wallace, George Brett, General Dawson, Rufus Burrus, Robert E. Lockwood,
Dan Cortes, Lyndon B. Johnson, Madge Gates Wallace, Prince Charles, Genrose Welch,
Skip Brooks, Mike Healy, Denfred “Dink” Watskey, Shirley Wilt, Jane Hanna, Tom Gray,
Mary Jo Colley, Diane Farris, Vicky Alexander, Pauline Testerman, John Curry, Dennis
Bilger, Warren Hill, Harry Clark, John R. Fuchs, Phillip D. Lagerquist, and Neil Johnson.

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER

HSTR INTERVIEW #1990-4

JIM WILLIAMS: This interview is with Thomas P. Richter. It’s being conducted in
the conference room of the Old Courthouse, part of Jefferson
National Expansion Memorial National Historic Site in St. Louis,
Missouri, on August 27, 1990. The interviewer is Jim Williams, a
park ranger at Harry S Truman National Historic Site, and also
present is Michael Shaver, museum aide at Harry S Truman
National Historic Site.
First of all, Tom, I’d like for you to go over your experience
with the National Park Service before coming to Harry S Truman.
THOMAS RICHTER: Oh, from the very beginning? [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: From the very beginning.
RICHTER: Well, I started with the park service as a seasonal at Homestead National
Monument way back in 1973, and spent six delightful summers at
Homestead. I became a permanent park ranger “intake trainee,” as they call
it, in November of 1977 here at the Gateway Arch, Jefferson National
Expansion Memorial. And after two years as a trainee, normally we would
then move on to a new park assignment. However, a job came open as
supervisor of the Old Courthouse, so I stayed on as supervisor of the Old
Courthouse from March of 1980 until January of 1983, at which time I
moved on to the Truman home as ranger in charge, as they called it, and
2
served in that capacity until around the 1st of October of 1983, when the
superintendent, Norm Reigle, arrived, and at that point I became the chief
ranger.
WILLIAMS: When did you leave the Truman home?
RICHTER: Well, I left on a temporary assignment in October of 1987, for a threemonth
detail assignment. They were shorthanded. They had lost their chief
of . . . or their chief of interpretation. Their director of visitor services and
their park historian had left, they were very shorthanded, so I was on loan
with them for three months, and that was extended another month, and then
I got the permanent position over here as director of visitor services. So,
essentially I was no longer at the Truman home as of October of ’87.
WILLIAMS: And you are still the director of visitor services here?
RICHTER: To this day. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: How were you first made aware that the Truman home might be transferred
to the National Park Service?
RICHTER: Well, the first I heard was more in the media when I was over here in St.
Louis. I kept hearing some news reports about the situation at the Truman
home after Mrs. Truman’s death. And late in December, the superintendent
here let me know that I was being considered for the ranger in charge job,
and wasn’t officially appointed until very early in the New Year. I had just
come back from my Christmas vacation, and I can’t remember the exact
date, but it was in about mid-January of 1983 that I went over to the
3
Truman home for the first time.
WILLIAMS: What was your reaction to the possibility of the Truman home being
accepted into the park system?
RICHTER: Well, it was just overwhelming, the potential for the site, with the fact of so
much of the furnishings being intact, that you immediately could
understand how it could give a really quality experience about the
personality of a President of the United States, to give visitors a personal
glimpse into the life of one particular president. And as a historian also, I
saw a great value just in the fact that the home itself was sort of a time
capsule of 1950s culture, which in years to come is therein enough to, I
think, merit it being included in the national system of the National Park
Service.
WILLIAMS: So did you actively campaign or promote yourself for this position at the
Truman home?
RICHTER: Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. I would be candid that the superintendent, Jerry
Schoeber here at Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, was suggesting
me for that role to the regional director, who at that time was Jim Dunning
in Omaha at the Midwest Regional Office.
WILLIAMS: Did you know Dunning before?
RICHTER: Only had met him a couple of times in different times that he’d come down
here to St. Louis to superintendents’ conferences and that sort of thing.
WILLIAMS: So you didn’t get the job by applying or responding to a vacancy
4
announcement?
RICHTER: Well, no, it was called a “directed reassignment,” because it was a GS-9
that I was here to a GS-9 over there. As they explained to me, they needed
somebody over there in a hurry, that up till January . . . Mrs. Truman had
passed away in October and there had been that period where there was sort
of a . . . the question of ownership of the property was a little bit hazy,
whether to the National Archives or the National Park Service. So, for that
period from late October until January, Andy Ketterson, who is the chief of
cultural resources in the regional office in Omaha, was looking after things
sort of by long distance, or sort of by shuttle management. He would come
down periodically. Once, in December, after December 8th when the
Secretary of Interior did issue a proclamation proclaiming the site as a
national historic site, Andy came down and did such things as putting the
utilities in the name of the National Park Service and that sort of thing, and
he kept in touch with the regional director. But as I say, they were anxious
to get somebody in there on site very quickly. As I recall, it was about
eleven days from when I was officially offered the position until I was there
on site.
WILLIAMS: Did you understand this to be a temporary or a permanent position?
RICHTER: It was proposed to me as a permanent position. It wasn’t a loan type of
situation. I remember a conference call with me and Superintendent
Schoeber with Ken Shaeffer, who at that time was the assistant chief of
5
personnel in the regional office, and I remember that came up, whether it
was going to be a temporary or a permanent reassignment, and it was
decided it would be a permanent situation.
WILLIAMS: So once the park superintendent came into the park, you didn’t have to
apply for the chief ranger job in a competitive—
RICHTER: Again, because of it being a nine to a nine situation, Mr. Reigle called up .
. . As soon as he had been offered the position, then he called me an hour
or two later and did ask if I’d be interested in staying on as the chief ranger.
WILLIAMS: So you knew you would be there in some capacity for a while?
RICHTER: Right. It was a little hazy. I knew that it was going to be a permanent
reassignment in that I wouldn’t be going back to St. Louis. It was a little
hazy what would happen once the superintendent arrived and everything.
WILLIAMS: What is your understanding of the designation of the site by Secretary Watt
in December of ’82? Do you have any knowledge of how that came to be?
RICHTER: Oh, mostly by hearsay, I guess. I certainly wasn’t involved in any of that at
that time. I did understand there was a problem in the way the will had
been written. The will had granted the home to the Chief Archivist of the
United States, and the National Archives was hesitant to take on the project,
I think recognizing they have rather limited expertise in managing such
historic sites, outside of maybe the Eisenhower home in Abilene, and I
think, what I understood—it was more by hearsay—just the enormous cost
of renovation and rehabilitation and then operating the site, that they
6
quickly thought of the National Park Service as a likely recipient of the
property. Again, what I understood, then there was negotiations between
the executor of the will and the National Archives, which at that time was
part of General Services Administration, and the Department of Interior
representing the National Park Service. And out of that resulted the
December 8, 1982, proclamation that Secretary Watt proclaimed.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever hear of any reluctance on his part to accept the Truman home?
RICHTER: Well, I do recall one story, again it’s sort of by hearsay. I remember
Superintendent Reigle telling me that he had heard that there was a bit of
reluctance, and it was basically poor staff work, that when they gave
Secretary Watt a presentation on the situation, the staff people showed him
a map of the entire national landmark district, which included several
square blocks of private homes and so forth, and the secretary was not
willing to take on boundaries of that magnitude, and that that was part of
the reluctance, at least the stories that came out that we were reluctant to,
and a good example of how your staff can sometimes get you into
predicaments.
WILLIAMS: Before your selection and then movement to Independence, you’ve already
mentioned some things, but what other things had the National Park Service
done in the roughly month or so, in December and early January?
RICHTER: Well, they put on a new lock system. They also purchased a set of plastic
runners, to walk through the home, and with the theory that that would then
7
protect the flooring and everything. That was rather ironic because later on
the upstairs where the floors were not covered with carpeting, it turned out
these plastic runners, they had a little gripper, almost like little teeth
underneath, and they actually damaged the finish on the wood floors on the
second story. As I recall, Andy . . . basically it was through some lumber
company or something that he ordered these runners. It was rather curious
that he also paid for installation. Because I remember later on giving a
guided tour of the Truman home and somebody said, “Oh, I’d been in real
early on because I was in charge of putting down the runners.”
One of the controversies was the question of security of the home
during this time period where there was a debate as to where the home was
going to go, whether to the park service or the presidential library system.
And at that time, what I understood, the executor of the will had just . . .
was using the services of a rental security company, where they were not
even inside the home. The rental security man would sit in a car in the
driveway next to the garage, and that was the extent of the security of the
home. So that was one thing. Once things were settled with the
proclamation in December, Andy established an agreement with the Federal
Protective Service to station guards twenty-four hours a day in the home,
with the understanding that the National Park Service would reimburse the
Federal Protective Service for that. Most of it was overtime work that the
Federal Protective Officers were doing.
8
One ironic thing, later on the executor of the will submitted a bill
for this rental security man, and as I recall, someone in the Missouri
delegation, I can’t remember if it was Senator Eagleton or Danforth, put
through a rider to the appropriation bill for the park service to reimburse
this security agent, or reimburse the executor of the will.
WILLIAMS: So that was done by reimbursement?
RICHTER: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Before the December proclamation, are you aware of any activity in the
home by family members or Truman Library people?
RICHTER: My understanding is that the Truman Library, particularly their curator, had
been in the home. They had been on a long-term project of inventorying all
the objects in the home, and also, by the request of Mrs. Margaret Truman
Daniel, had taken some valuable objects out of the home for, quote,
“safekeeping.” There had been charges that the nurses taking care of Mrs.
Truman in the last days had been suspected of stealing things, and so Mrs.
Daniel worked out an arrangement with the director of the library, Dr.
Zobrist. The idea of the inventory, they’d then be able to more carefully
document if anything were to turn up missing. And my understanding was
that that went on even after Mrs. Truman’s death in October.
Now, they very carefully orchestrated things when Mrs. Truman
was alive so she didn’t know what was going on. They would work out
with the nurses where Mrs. Truman would be that day, so they would work
9
in a different . . . Say, if they were going to be working documenting what
was in the study, then they would have Mrs. Truman out on the back porch
or out in the living room, or somewhere where she wouldn’t realize what
was going on. The two staff members that were involved in this were Pat
Kerr and Elizabeth Safly.
WILLIAMS: Was there any other activity that you were aware of in that two and a half
months?
RICHTER: I do remember one thing that happened that did pose a bit of a dilemma for
us later on in terms of interpretation. In Mrs. Truman’s illness, they had her
in the downstairs bedroom, which had basically been set up like a hospital
room. They had a hospital bed and other such furniture for her to be
attended at home. After her death and, as I understand it, before the funeral,
the Library staff first of all arranged to have the medical facilities and
everything taken out, and then they moved down a bed or furniture from the
upstairs, and the question was in terms of documenting what furniture was
there before the illness. It seems like they brought the wrong bed or a
different bed down from the attic than had been up there to begin with, so
that was another bit of activity that happened. Also, my understanding was
that at the funeral Mrs. Daniel did stay at the home. I remember one
conversation with Dr. Zobrist where she took one last look around and
departed after the funeral.
WILLIAMS: Who was so-called in charge of the home before the park service assumed
10
control?
RICHTER: It’s sort of a hazy situation. I can’t recall the name of the gentleman who
was with a bank in Kansas who was the executor of the will.
MICHAEL SHAVER: Donald Chisholm?
RICHTER: Donald Chisholm rings a bell, yes. [chuckling] Yes, Don Chisholm.
Because I remember the first trip I made over there with Superintendent
Schoeber and Mr. Dunning and Andy Ketterson. We did have a meeting
with Don Chisholm downtown in Kansas City.
WILLIAMS: When was that?
RICHTER: That was very early in January. Basically, the scenario, I came back from
my Christmas vacation, and shortly, just a few days into January, they made
me an offer of this position. And just a couple of days later then,
Superintendent Schoeber and I flew over for the day to Kansas City, then
out to Independence, and we met with Dr. Zobrist. There was a news
conference arranged at the Truman Library where Mr. Dunning announced
what was going to happen, as far as I was going to be there and that they
would be advertising for a superintendent and that sort of thing. And after
that news conference . . . Oh, and of course that was my first vision of the
home then, too. We got to see the home, and then we did go downtown to
talk with Mr. Chisholm.
SHAVER: Do you remember the topics of the meeting or the subject of the meeting?
RICHTER: Well, I do remember actually even that early on Mr. Chisholm brought up
11
that idea about being reimbursed for the guard service. And at that time the
will had not gone through probate or anything, although Mr. Chisholm
stressed that in the law of Missouri that the will takes effect immediately
with the death of the person, and so that was another reason for the urgency
of figuring out what was going to happen between the Truman Library or
the National Archives and the National Park Service because of that quirk
in the law of Missouri.
WILLIAMS: What was your first impression of Benedict Zobrist?
RICHTER: Well, he was very enthusiastic. I remember our first meeting with him up
in his office. I remember he was really tickled. I came in my uniform that
day, and he reacted as if the cavalry had arrived or whatever. He seemed
very genuinely interested in giving us all the cooperation that we needed.
He had already offered, and Mr. Ketterson accepted, a space for an office
for me there right at the library, and secretarial help, free use of the copy
machine, which as a good bureaucrat I made a lot of use of. He was
enthusiastic early even in that first meeting about developing a joint
operation where the whole Truman story could be told between a visit to
the library and museum, a visit to the home, and a visit to the county
courthouse in Independence’s town square where they have “The Man from
Independence” audiovisual program. I remember even at that meeting he
brought up he was involved even at that time in the restoration of the
Truman farm home, which he also thought had a lot of merit as part of the
12
whole story, and he was enthusiastic about the fact that, as he told us, he felt
it was the most unique opportunity he knew of for a visitor to get a
complete experience of a president’s life and career and everything within a
small area of just a few miles. And as I say, he was very gracious about
welcoming me to the library from the very beginning.
WILLIAMS: It was his idea then for the park service to use a little bit of the Truman
Library for office space?
RICHTER: I would imagine it was sort of a . . . My understanding was that he offered
it to Mr. Ketterson.
WILLIAMS: Ketterson didn’t ask for it?
RICHTER: I don’t know. I don’t know really the fine points of that. I do know that by
the time of that first arrival I made in January the office was already cleared
out, an archivist by the name of Warren Orville was moved down the hall to
share an office with another archivist, and that things were ready to go.
WILLIAMS: So you actually displaced a member of the Truman Library staff.
RICHTER: I wouldn’t say displaced. He had to share an office with somebody else as
a result of that.
WILLIAMS: Well, you said you also went to the home that day for the first time.
RICHTER: Right.
WILLIAMS: What was your impression of the home?
RICHTER: I think the initial impression was the . . . Well, actually, to be honest, the
first impression was that it wasn’t as large on the inside as it seemed from
13
the outside, even at that point. I immediately began thinking of ways to
show the home, in terms of a tour and everything, but I guess I was almost
stunned by the complete nature of the furnishings. It truly did seem as if the
Trumans were still there and perhaps were out on a walk or so forth. And I
think the quality of this time capsule of the 1950s, I think even at that point,
sort of grabbed my attention also, and the fact that, as many people have
said, it reminds them of their grandparents’ house or whatever.
WILLIAMS: Well, if this job wasn’t really a promotion as far as the grade scale goes,
why did you accept the job?
RICHTER: Well, I have as a career goal to become a manager in the National Park
Service, and as ranger in charge, I could see it as giving me a lot of valuable
experience. Particularly being there by myself, it was going to require a lot
of decision making. Also, the opportunity to be in at the ground floor of
establishing a visitor services program for a national park site is almost a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Also, as I said, I just have an interest in sort
of the overall picture of park service operations, and as a historian I
particularly relish the opportunity to set a really excellent historic site off in
the right direction.
WILLIAMS: You’ve mentioned Andy Ketterson several times so far. Was he the main
contact with the Midwest Regional Office?
RICHTER: Well, once I was established there . . . Up until I arrived, he pretty much, as
I said, had been authorized by the regional director to manage the site.
14
When I arrived, I did most of my business either through Mr. Schoeber or
with regional office staff, not necessarily just Mr. Ketterson but sometimes
just with the regional director, or John Kawamoto took a particular interest
in the site also.
WILLIAMS: What was his position?
RICHTER: He was an associate regional director for cultural resources, historic
preservation, and maintenance. And planning. He had planning under his
area also.
SHAVER: Do you have any idea what may have been the source of his interest? I’ve
heard it referred to several times by other staff members, but what’s your
interpretation of what made John pay some interest in the site?
RICHTER: Well, I don’t know. I wouldn’t really want to speculate on that. I mean, he
certainly has a deep interest in cultural resources. He and Mr. Ketterson
many times said that this was a golden opportunity to demonstrate the
proper sequence of events in establishing and rehabilitating a historic site.
And many times, as I say, it’s a chance to do it right the first time. Mr.
Kawamoto seemed to have a particular interest in the whole Truman story
and so forth. I know at one time he made some comment to the effect that
he particularly admired Truman because he came back to his neighborhood
and his old home, unlike others like Abraham Lincoln. [chuckling] Well,
unfortunately Mr. Lincoln didn’t have much choice in the matter.
WILLIAMS: He went back to his hometown.
15
RICHTER: That’s right.
WILLIAMS: Were there any other regional office people actively involved in the first
phase?
RICHTER: Well, there were quite a few. From the very beginning, one thing very
quickly, you asked about initial impressions. Well, quickly I had an
impression of the state of disrepair of the home, particularly the roof. There
were some severe leaks in the roof, not so much the main roof but some of
the side roofs, the flat roofs over some of the porches. So I quickly got to
know a gentleman by the name of Lee Jamieson, who is a restoration
specialist who worked under Andy Ketterson. He had to make several trips
to the home. In fact, as I recall now, he also came down on that same visit
where Mr. Schoeber and I came over and Jim Dunning and Andy Ketterson
and Lee Jamieson all came down from region for the day. Anyway, as I
was saying, Lee Jamieson had to spend several trips coming down to make
some emergency repairs on the roof. Also, Dave Given, who was in the
planning division under Mr. Kawamoto, made many visits. Together we
prepared the first statement for management for the site. Jim Schack in
interpretation showed a special interest in the site. I think we had the
advantage that we were only a three-hour drive or a quick plane ride down
from Omaha, that it was an extra advantage to be that close to the regional
office. Jill York, who’s now Jill York O’Bright, also paid an interest in the
home. She arranged for Ron Cockrell, who started out, he was a seasonal
16
historian and worked his way into a permanent position in the regional
office. He did a lot of work on the history of the Trumans in Independence
and the history of the home. Andy Ketterson was interested very quickly in
getting the ball rolling on the funding and so forth for a historic structures
report on the home, particularly an existing conditions study of how the
home was.
WILLIAMS: How much were the regional office people actually in Independence?
RICHTER: The technical people, the people like Lee Jamieson and some of his cohorts,
Fran Krupka, who was a historic architect, was down there several times.
They spent weeks at a time down, or they would be down for a week and go
back for the weekend, as I said, doing either emergency work or starting to
do preliminary drawings for such things as putting in a new wiring system,
which was a prime concern. The antiquated electrical wiring system was an
old knob-and-tube-style electrical system with many splices. Ironically, in
Independence, the city code, knob and tube is okay as long as it’s not
spliced. Well, there were many splices in the electrical system.
WILLIAMS: You said Lee Jamieson actually fixed the roof himself?
RICHTER: He made some repairs. If the truth be known, there was one occasion
where he even talked me through. I was up on the roof one time with a
bucket of tar trying to patch things up until he could get down the next day.
And we did continue . . . Even after I arrived, we continued with this
arrangement of twenty-four-hour guarding of the home with the Federal
17
Protective Service. Eventually, by March or so, we had then negotiated a
contract for a contracted guard service in which the Federal Protective
Service would make periodic inspections of each shift of this guard service.
WILLIAMS: And these were temporary repairs, I assume?
RICHTER: At the very beginning, yes. Simply trying to stop particularly the leaks in
the roof.
WILLIAMS: Was there any damage to the interior of the home?
RICHTER: The most severe case was in the downstairs bathroom where a lot of the
wallpapering had flaked off. Also, a lot of the bathroom tile had come off
in that room. That really was the real troublesome area.
[End #4124; Begin #4125]
RICHTER: Oh, you were asking about early activity in the home even before I arrived
or after Mrs. Truman’s death. I did remember also that they had somebody
from the fire department in to inspect the home. As I say, they were the
ones that pointed out the inadequate electrical system, particularly when
they saw up in the little sleeping room of the president that they had simply
poked a hole through the wall of one of the other bedrooms and put through
an extension cord and that was the source of power in there. There is a
story that the fire department videotaped the home, which would have been
of great value to the curators to this day. Unfortunately, that videotape has
never seen the light of day. I know that Steve Harrison pursued that angle
but never came up with any verdict of where that videotape ever ended up.
18
WILLIAMS: I hadn’t heard that one before.
SHAVER: Was any particular concern of the wiring due to the result of the unhappy
experience at the Roosevelt home?
RICHTER: Well . . .
SHAVER: The fact that National Park Service people were now in charge?
RICHTER: We were a little concerned in terms that Mrs. Daniel did have a friendship
with some of the Roosevelt children. She was very unfamiliar with the
National Park Service. She was used to dealing with Dr. Zobrist and his
predecessor at the Truman Library. And what we understood, her only
knowledge of the park service was how things had been managed at the
Franklin Roosevelt home, and also the fact that she had a summer home on
Fire Island, and I’m sure she’d had some relationship then with the National
Park Service with the nearby Fire Island National Seashore. So I would say
there was a bit of concern that we certainly wanted to take care of that
wiring. Because I can’t remember the date, but it didn’t seem to have been
too far back before that when they had the fire at the Roosevelt home.
WILLIAMS: I believe you’ve already mentioned some of them, but could you list your
primary concerns in those first few months as the ranger in charge?
RICHTER: Well, I think, besides what I already mentioned, I did have a concern about
the quality of security with this contracted system coming in. I was assured
by the Federal Protective Service that this contractor would be good.
WILLIAMS: Was it?
19
RICHTER: I would say it was marginal. There was one excellent guard during the day
named Ken Smith who took a real interest in the home. In fact, he went so
far as to even water the grass. We had probably the best-kept lawn in
Independence that summer. In fact, Ken went on to even get a job with the
Federal Protective Service. Some of the other guards were not so diligent.
One was discovered one night watching the Truman television set in the
living room. I guess the bottom line is we didn’t have any incidents, as far
as things disappearing or whatever.
Another concern I had from the very beginning was in the form of
public relations in Independence. Independence was not familiar with the
National Park Service. The townspeople probably had an unrealistic
expectation of how quickly we could open the home. There were certain
political interests that felt that the home should be opened real quickly. I
was in an interesting situation, in terms of keeping on an even keel with a
lot of different interest groups in Independence. My marching orders while
I was there by myself were basically not to make any real firm
commitments in terms of policy or what direction we were going to take
with the home, but at the same time to keep friendships or develop
friendships and working relationships with these different interests. These
included such organizations as: the Jackson County Historical Society,
which managed the 1859 Jail and Marshal’s Home Museum in the
downtown area; developing a rapport with the Jackson County people who
20
manage the courthouse audiovisual program, “The Man from
Independence”; also developing a relationship with the city’s historic
preservation officer, Pat O’Brien; of course, working with the mayor and
the city council. Independence, their form of government, the city council
is very independent of the mayor. It’s sort of a weak mayor’s form of
government, so that could become tricky. Sarah Hancock worked for the
city as their tourism director. One city councilwoman in particular, Millie
Nesbitt, was very interested in seeing the home get open as quickly as
possible. A lot of these interest groups were concerned that we work
closely with the city so that in terms of the average visit of somebody to
Independence would not be simply a visit to the Truman Library, a quick
dash to the home, and then they’d be on their way. These different interest
groups were very vocal, and the idea that we come up with a system that
would encourage people to visit the other historic sites of Independence—
stay a little longer, you might say.
And, of course, my relationship with the library, I felt, was very
important. They had been very good, in terms of their hospitality. They
also had their point of view of how things should be run. They envisioned a
very close relationship between us and the library, and again their concept
of visits to the home was probably more in line with almost a joint visit.
The director was always interested in us working out some kind of
arrangement with the farm home, or at least being able to encourage people
21
to go down and visit the farm home.
WILLIAMS: Was there ever any thought at the Truman Library of making our
headquarters or ticket center within the library?
RICHTER: Well, actually, early on I remember one time that the regional director was
down for a visit, Jim Dunning, and he did approach Dr. Zobrist about
having office space—as you say, a headquarters area—within the Truman
Library and even using that as a staging area for a shuttle that would take
visitors then down to the home. One of the initial impressions that every
national park official saw about the home, one of the unique qualities, was
the fact that indeed the old neighborhood was still intact, and a living
neighborhood, and we wanted to come up with a plan that would give
visitors an opportunity to see the home but also not negatively impact the
lives of all our neighbors around there. So from the very beginning we
thought of some sort of a shuttle system to avoid the impact of all the traffic
and parking that would take place down there. And so, as I say, there was
an offer very early on. Dr. Zobrist even showed us to the east wing of the
Truman Library where there was another audiovisual room. It was
designed as a multipurpose room, primarily for use with a school program
operation that most of the time was not being used, and he saw that, and
that was also an alternate entrance to the library museum, and so he at that
time was proposing that we operate out of that end of the building.
WILLIAMS: Why was that option not taken?
22
RICHTER: I think later on perhaps Dr. Zobrist didn’t realize the magnitude of the staff
that would eventually come to the Truman home. And also at that time, by
then Superintendent Norm Reigle had arrived, and in our relationship with
the city we also saw the need to develop some sort of a system that we
would provide visitors the opportunity to see the slide program down at the
courthouse and work with our friends in Independence. Also, there was a
simple probably dollars-and-cents situation. If we were to develop a shuttle
ourselves from the library to the home, we in some way would have to fund
that, either through charging a fee or through large appropriations of money
every year. Well, at one point in conversations with the city officials, they
proposed to establish their own shuttle system for visitors to Independence,
and so we saw that as an opportunity to also save the taxpayers some
money. I would say that basically when we really got down at the library to
looking over office space, they really didn’t have enough office space really
to meet our needs, and so, at the same time, we decided to go more in a
little different direction where we’d be a little closer to the other city
facilities.
WILLIAMS: Was there ever any friction in the early days between the park service and
the library staff?
RICHTER: Well, I would say maybe something minor, like I know that I did use their
copy machine an awful lot. Their monthly bill went up, I guess. They paid
by the numbers of copies on their copy machine. Certainly when I was
23
there by myself I felt very little of that sort of friction. I mean, you’d expect
as a guest that, as you said earlier, where I literally evicted a senior archivist
down to another office, but I would think it was very cooperative. I mean, I
look back on those days with a lot of fondness, as far as the reception that I
got. I mean, here I was the new kid on the block, the only park service
person there, and I can just think of . . . just a lot of people on the staff were
very friendly.
WILLIAMS: Did you get much free advice?
RICHTER: Oh, I got quite a bit of free advice, as you can imagine. One thing that Dr.
Zobrist was very helpful in at least enlightening me about the complex
political situation in Independence. He had had plenty of experience with
that, particularly when he was an active member of the city’s heritage
commission. There had been many controversies politically about the
establishment and the management of the Harry S. Truman National
Historic Landmark District, and he, again, was very interested in how
things were going to progress at the Truman home. He gave me a lot of
advice about Mrs. Daniel and the most productive way of developing a
relationship with Mrs. Daniel.
WILLIAMS: Which was . . . ?
RICHTER: Well, it was to be very cooperative with Mrs. Daniel, to try as much as
possible to do things in the way that she wanted them to be done. And
certainly the way the will was written, the will basically said that Mrs.
24
Daniel was to approve of the operating plans of the home, and so we did
have to take that into consideration, in terms of how we were going to show
the home.
WILLIAMS: What was your first experience with Mrs. Daniel?
RICHTER: Well, it was probably by long distance, in that the regional director received
a letter very early on. I think he had written her a letter sort of welcoming
her or explaining who we were and everything. She wrote back to the
effect that she felt that the home was very fragile and would never
withstand the impact of being open to the public, so that she hoped we
weren’t planning to actually have the home open for the public, that she
was confident that we would take care to keep the home in good order and
good maintenance, but that she hoped it wouldn’t be open for the public.
My first meeting with her was in May of that year when she was in town
for the birthday celebration, Mr. Truman’s birthday, which she normally
attends most years, and there was a meeting of myself and Superintendent
Schoeber, Regional Director Jim Dunning, and Al Hutchings, who was
director of external affairs in the regional office. Mrs. Daniel . . . things
went rather well. She had changed her mind a bit about showing the home
because she actually gave us an idea of how the tour route should be. And
to a degree, it turned out to be the tour route, except that she had in mind a
few dead ends that weren’t going to be too productive. She thought we
should take people into the living room so they could take a peek into the
25
downstairs bedroom. Later on we decided that would have been a little
awkward.
I remember another time that I talked with her over the phone was
she had given David McCullough permission to film in the home as an
episode of Smithsonian World, which is a public broadcasting station
production, and as a preliminary to that we were proposing to bring in Steve
Harrison, who was the curator at St. Louis here at the Jefferson National
Expansion Memorial, and give the home a thorough cleaning and get it
ready for this filming. I remember she was questioning a little bit why we
were . . . Mrs. Daniel questioned why we were going to so much trouble,
that we should just hire some local cleaning service to come in and clean up
the home before the visit and so forth. But needless to say, we gave it great
attention, and she was quite pleased by the condition of the home when she
came and she was interviewed in the home by Mr. McCullough.
WILLIAMS: And this was in her first visit in May of ’83?
RICHTER: Well, not the filming. The filming was that fall. In fact, it was shortly after
the superintendent arrived, so it must have been in October or early
November.
WILLIAMS: Was she in the home in May?
RICHTER: Yes, in fact that’s where we met with her, right there in the home. The
sequence of events, she came into the home with Dr. Zobrist to go around
and to identify a few of her personal belongings. That was another unique
26
aspect of the will. Mrs. Truman’s will basically gave the home and its
contents to the government, with the exception, as she said, of her
daughter’s personal belongings or personal property. Unfortunately the
will didn’t identify what they meant by personal property. So that first
time Mrs. Daniel . . . Let’s see, it was Superintendent Schoeber and myself,
I guess we were waiting there, Dr. Zobrist came up with Mrs. Daniel, and
Mrs. Daniel basically told Mr. Schoeber and myself to wait downstairs in
the kitchen, and she went upstairs with Dr. Zobrist and basically identified
some things that she felt should go back over to her aunt next door, Mrs.
May Wallace, also identified some objects that she thought ought to go up
to the library for safekeeping and that sort of thing. Then she came back
downstairs, had a bit of conversation with Mr. Schoeber and myself, not too
much, but then the major meeting was to be the following day, and that’s
when the regional director had . . . He had come down for the birthday
event, the Truman award and that sort of thing, the ceremony. And that
day, the more formal meeting with Mrs. Daniel, we explained our concern
for security, that we would put in alarms in the home so that if people got
off the proper tour track there would be some kind of an alarm system.
Mrs. Daniel kind of laughed and thought that was really charming. As I
say, even in a few months she had come around to the idea of actually
having the home open for tours, and I’d say over the next couple of years
she slowly but surely became more and more confident in what we were
27
doing. I certainly remember the day of the dedication of the home that she
made a point in her remarks of saying what a fine job the park service had
done and that visitors would really get a good experience out of the home,
so we all felt good at that.
WILLIAMS: What was your impression of her that first day?
RICHTER: Oh, I would say she was all business. There wasn’t a lot of idle
conversation. She seemed to be very direct and to the point. Obviously she
was comfortable with Dr. Zobrist and that sort of thing.
WILLIAMS: Her husband wasn’t with her that time?
RICHTER: Not for that visit. I’m trying to remember. I don’t think he came to
Independence with her for that visit. He did come when we dedicated the
home.
WILLIAMS: So was the next time she was in town for the Smithsonian World taping, do
you recall?
RICHTER: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Were you around for the taping?
RICHTER: Oh, yes, the whole day, from sunup to sundown, or actually beyond
sundown because the taping went on into the evening a bit, which was a
long day. And I worked primarily with the crew, the film crew, making
sure that they didn’t do anything that would jeopardize the home. It was
quite an ordeal, as far as them hauling a lot of equipment in and out of the
building, and with the tight spaces in there, it was a tricky situation to get
28
that filming done.
SHAVER: Do you have any recollections of the filming in particular?
RICHTER: Well, I do remember Mrs. Daniel certainly again was very direct. She had
a certain idea of what she wanted to talk about and work that out with
David McCullough. There were a lot of takes over and over again, as with
any kind of film production. We had one small catastrophe that day. At
some points they were using clothespins to hold up cables and so forth, and
this one clothespin was too close to one of these real hot lights and had
charred the clothespin, to the point that it dropped down onto the rug and
made a small burn mark in the rug. So that was our big catastrophe for the
day. But other than that, things went pretty well.
WILLIAMS: Did you have much contact with David McCullough?
RICHTER: Not an awful lot, although they had come out earlier, even before this
October visit. They did some filming outside on the porch where they
taped him doing some introductory remarks and so forth. At that point
though, I spoke to him about the National Park Service being able to use
that film in some way in the future in any kind of an audiovisual program.
What I had thought of was some sort of a combination of the interview of
Mrs. Daniel with the old Person to Person Edward R. Murrow program that
was in the archives at the Truman Library to me would have been a rather
fascinating combination of some sort of an audiovisual program. And he
was willing to give us that permission.
29
SHAVER: Did you show him the house? Had he ever seen the house prior to your
arrival at the site?
RICHTER: I don’t think so. From my recollection, that was his first visit. And again
that was part of the reason for the advance trip that they took in, to get a
whole feel for the home and everything. The original arrangements though
were worked out with Mrs. Daniel, which in a way was a little surprising
because she was very protective about the home, not having me take hordes
and hordes of special visitors through the home and everything. And she
did give permission though for this program, and it certainly is a very
valuable part of our archival record of the condition of the home.
SHAVER: Were you the one to take him through the home the first time, or do you
recall?
RICHTER: I think Liz Safly and I together took him through, because I think he had
previously done research at the Truman Library, so he was very friendly
with Liz Safly as the manager of their research facility there at the Truman
Library. So as I recall, I think both of us took him through together.
WILLIAMS: Do you recall any of his impressions of the home? Or were they pretty
much like everybody else’s?
RICHTER: I can’t remember anything out of the ordinary that strikes out. It was, as
you say, pretty much the same idea about just the overwhelming nature of
the home, of it being so intact. I mean, you go to some of the other
presidential sites and they’re happy that they’ve got a hundred pieces of
30
furniture that belonged to the president, and here it was just a gold mine of
artifacts.
WILLIAMS: Did you have any other assistance in preparing for the filming of
Smithsonian World?
RICHTER: Well, actually, the superintendent and his wife helped out on the cleaning.
In fact, it was sort of an education for me and them from Steve Harrison in
the proper way to clean and proper way to vacuum, with little metal sieves
to guard against damaging furnishings and everything, the proper way to
dust and all that sort of thing. I think it surprised Steve the amount of work
it was going to take, and that’s why we enlisted the Reigles to help us out to
get it all done in time.
WILLIAMS: Was the house noticeably dirty?
RICHTER: I would say so. Again remember that first of all there was this time period
of several months that it was basically unoccupied—you know, just the
accumulation of dust and everything. I remember we were up cleaning the
top of the . . . no, it was some piece of furniture or something in the formal
dining room, and we actually found some coal . . . it looked like coal dust or
soot from the old days when they had a coal-fired furnace and everything,
so it was obvious they hadn’t dusted up that high for quite some time. I
think to a curator it looked very dirty. To my eyes it didn’t look that bad
off, but certainly to Steve he realized he had a lot of work ahead of him.
WILLIAMS: And this is the occasion when Mrs. Daniel set the tables?
31
RICHTER: That’s correct. We had a flower arrangement and a very formal look to the
table, and she did give us some helpful hints on the way the silverware
should be arranged and everything.
WILLIAMS: While you were still ranger in charge, what was your relationship with May
Wallace?
RICHTER: Well, I would make periodic visits. I remember my first visit: Dr. Zobrist,
as he was so willing to do, introduced me. We went down together to visit
with her for a long, long visit. She was full of memories of life there in the
old days. It was rather charming that she was questioning when we would .
. . Basically, she wanted us to restore the home to where she remembered it
more when the president was alive, or even going back wanting to know
when we would put back up a fireplace mantel that had been taken . . . or a
mirror over the fireplace mantel that she felt ought to go back up. It was
fascinating to me that she even . . . She had a lot of family history, even
that one story of the fire in the home early on where the Gates sisters left.
Or the one, I can’t remember if it was Maud or Myra, supposedly came out
with her opera cloak on or something. There’s some little family story
about that.
WILLIAMS: Is this when she told you about her husband being the handyman?
RICHTER: Well, true, and the story she repeated quite often about her husband was a
handyman and also that he had to fix the hands on the clock, on the
grandfathers clock, that there had been some children’s party or some kind
32
of party where they’d broken the hands, so he took a pie tin and made new
hands for the clock. We heard that story quite often.
WILLIAMS: So she seemed interested in what would happen to the home?
RICHTER: Oh, I think so. She was a bit melancholy about it. She was a little
apprehensive, I think, about how that would impact her privacy and
everything. I don’t think she was quite sure what would happen, as far as
how we would conduct tours. Of course, we were very concerned about
guarding her privacy and, for example, not giving guided tours way out by
the garage, or the “barn,” as she referred to it, but doing what we could to
protect her privacy.
WILLIAMS: Was she apprehensive about losing her parking spot in the barn?
RICHTER: Oh, she was asking about that, whether she’d be able to keep her parking
spot there. That is true.
WILLIAMS: And what did you decide?
RICHTER: Well, we thought, if anything, that added a bit to the ambiance of the home.
My concept from the beginning was to have the home looking as much as
possible in sort of the last days when Mrs. Truman was still healthy.
Particularly in terms of documentation, my point of view was that we
definitely knew what the home looked like then. If we were to want to take
it back to the presidential years, we’d be getting into a lot of conjecture. Or
even taking it back into the early 1950s period we’d still be guessing a lot.
And to me, one of the real stories of the home was just the fact that it
33
reflected this long, long time period of occupation by the Trumans, and
what we should be doing is interpreting the home as a reflection of that long
time period. So, to me, Mrs. Wallace’s car being in the garage to me was
appropriate to have in there.
WILLIAMS: What about your relationship with Ardis Haukenberry?
RICHTER: Probably not as frequent, and I don’t know, maybe it’s because Mrs.
Wallace was closer by or something. Again, Dr. Zobrist set up a meeting
with Mrs. Haukenberry. Of course, later on very quickly her health started
failing, too. Unlike Mrs. Wallace, the time I worked at Independence, Mrs.
Wallace was still in very good health. We just tended to run in . . . Mrs.
Wallace was so active and would walk by herself down to the beauty parlor
every week, and I just happened to see her more often.
WILLIAMS: How did Ardis get involved with the Smithsonian World?
RICHTER: Well, she was involved. I guess Liz Safly, for David McCullough, came up
with a list of people that he should interview. And as I recall, he did those
interviews also in that earlier trip. The October or November trip,
whenever, was primarily spending the day interviewing Mrs. Daniel. I
remember in the final production Ardis was saying something to the fact
that Harry and Bess were great lovers or something, or the world’s best
lovers, or some quaint expression, which I think was more in her earlier
idea of what lovers meant and everything.
WILLIAMS: Did she ever tell you stories?
34
RICHTER: Well, she told a bit about the relationship, of the story of Mr. Truman
reestablishing his friendship with Bess by taking the cake plate over across
the street and how that was all sort of a set-up deal and that began their
romance, and he would stay over there at the Noland-Haukenberry house
on these weekend visits and so forth.
WILLIAMS: Did either one of the two ladies ever tell you how much they had visited
with Mrs. Truman in the last few years?
RICHTER: Well, I think May Wallace had much more of a closer relationship. I mean,
they were very, very close. I mean, I remember my initial visit with Mrs.
Wallace when she was talking about Mrs. Truman’s death, and a tear came
to her eye and a tear came to her eye and of course, Mrs. Wallace and
Mrs. Haukenberry were sort of the last of that generation were still
around. I don’t think Mrs. Haukenberry really had that much of a
relationship with Mrs. Truman. After Mr. Truman’s death I don’t think
she really set foot in the home too often. Okay?
[End #4125; Begin #4126]
WILLIAMS: You’ve already mentioned it briefly, but what do you think was the reaction
of the residents and leaders of Independence to the National Park Service
coming in as managers of the Truman home?
RICHTER: Well, it was a real mixed bag. To begin with, something that I learned
rather quickly was that there is a basic distaste for the federal government
within Jackson County, which I think goes clear back to the War between
35
the States and all the guerrilla warfare and hard feelings towards the federal
occupation forces and so forth during that time. Also, the Truman Library’s
relationship with the town had become a bit distant. And hearing from Dr.
Zobrist I could see why, because he had become involved in a lot of this
controversy over historic preservation issues, and it was sort of a no-win
situation because there was such a fierce division in the town between those
that were strongly for historic preservation and those that were against it as
being an infringement on property rights and so forth, that it was sort of a
no-win situation for Dr. Zobrist. There was a segment of the town also that
I think had trouble understanding why the federal government was
becoming involved in the project. They could see it being something of
interest to Missourians, but they couldn’t imagine that people from all over
the country, much less the world, would want to come to Independence to
see Harry Truman’s home.
The neighbors, my feeling, most neighbors were looking forward to
the site, in terms of the National Park Service being there and reinforcing
sort of the cause of historic preservation. There was a genuine concern
about how we would manage things so as to not totally clog their streets
with traffic and people parking every which way.
Then we had down the street the First Baptist Church of
Independence, and we became the bad guys there just by default because
the minister, Reverend Hughes, was planning to build a new sanctuary and
36
was fearful that the preservationists were going to stop him from building
the sanctuary. So therefore he looked upon with suspicion the federal
government being involved in the Truman home project and being in such
close proximity to the home. He at one time, though, offered the use of his
parking lot six days a week. He wouldn’t let us use it on Sundays, but the
other days of the week he said we’d be more than welcome to use the
parking lot. Of course, other people felt that that was just him trying to . . .
as a way for us to endorse his parking lot, because he was wanting to
expand his parking lot, and jeopardize perhaps some of the other part of the
neighborhood.
There was a segment of Independence also, basically the chamber
of commerce end of things, that was looking upon the Truman home
bringing in big bucks to Independence. I think that goes along with, as I
said before, this fear that if the park service just worked with the Truman
Library and, say, establish a shuttle bus just between the library and the
home, that Independence would not benefit as much from all these visitors
coming to see the Truman home.
There was great interest in the home’s operation being done in time
for the hundredth anniversary of the president’s birth in 1984. In fact, the
director of the park service, Russ Dickenson, even made a commitment that
we would be open by May of ’84, in time for the hundredth birthday. That
was both good and bad. It was good in that we really got the attention of
37
the regional office and high priority for projects, high priority from Harpers
Ferry to get a slide show done and a brochure done. It could have been bad,
in terms of us rushing to get things done and perhaps sort of just being
satisfied to get the job done without it being done in a quality way. But as it
turned out, I don’t think that was the case. We did a good job. So there
was a lot of community pressure to get open quickly, and some people were
very discouraged when they would hear our time table. I would say, “Well,
actually we’re doing this very quickly for the way the park service does
business,” and I gave them the example of the Martin Van Buren home in
upstate New York, that after I think it was ten years of operation they had
two rooms open in the home.
There was a lot of undercurrents, different things going on. The
Jackson County Historical Society, and Sally Schwenk was their executive
director, there was sort of a rivalry there between the society and some of
these other anti-historic preservation interests in town. The city council
was split along those lines. The mayor overall was very supportive of what
we were doing. So, in some ways I think it was a miracle that I was able
when Norm Reigle showed up that I really don’t think I’d made too many
enemies during that time, that I was able to keep on an even keel with all
these conflicting interest groups, although in a way it was pretty easy,
because my marching orders were to not make any real firm commitments.
So at first, if I was pressed about making a decision, I would say, “Well, we
38
still need legislation in Congress before we really made any firm
decisions.”
The proclamation from Secretary Watt was viewed by the National
Park Service as sort of a stopgap measure, in that we wanted the guidance
of Congress through legislation, which came along later on—I think in
May, as I recall—because I think it was right around the time of the
birthday celebration, because I remember Millie Nesbitt, the city
councilwoman, coming up and saying, “Well, you got your legislation, now
let’s get on and make some plans and everything.” Well, after that then, I
was able to say, “Well, we’ve got to get our superintendent here.” Of
course, I didn’t know it was going to be Norm Reigle, but I’d say, “When
the superintendent arrives, then we’ll be in business.” Although even
before that we did have our first meeting of the general management plan
team . . . came before Norm arrived, so there was some planning being done
even before his visit.
And as I say, it was an interesting situation. Independence, the
culture there is sort of a closed culture, in that, for example, vacations to
those sort of folks, a long vacation is to go to the Lake of the Ozarks a
couple of hundred miles away for a vacation. I don’t think the townspeople
had been to enough other national park areas or seen maybe even the
negative side of being near a national park. I don’t think many people, say,
had been to West Yellowstone or to, say, the entry point to Great Smoky
39
Mountains or some of those places that had been rather tacky. And so in
some ways that helped us out, that we didn’t have a wax museum going in
right away or some more tacky get-rich-quick kind of schemes going on.
On the other hand, there was a genuine concern from some interests about,
well, why is the federal government even fooling with this? And I don’t
think they were being mean spirited or anything. I think they just really
didn’t understand the big picture of the national significance of the site.
WILLIAMS: How much effort did you make to get to know the neighbors in the
immediate vicinity of the home?
RICHTER: Well, I was fortunate there in that particular Molly and Tom Hankins, who
lived right across the street from the home on Truman Road, even set up an
evening . . . well, with Sarah Grebb, who at that time was working for the
Truman Library, set up a little evening for me to get to know the neighbors.
To be honest with you, I don’t think I really established a real strong
rapport with a lot of the neighbors, except through . . . probably more so
through these frequent town meetings on different issues of historic
preservation or the issue over the church. There were several public
meetings over a proposal to shrink the local city historic district in the
Truman home area, and I got to know many of the neighbors that way.
They had strong feelings about the fate of their neighborhood. I certainly
met Doris Hecker very early on. Doris lived in the Frank Wallace home, or
was renting it, and she had very strong feelings about the management of
40
the district, and I got to know her quite quickly. And as I say, the Hankins
were a lot of help as far as getting to know some of the other neighbors.
WILLIAMS: Did you feel it was part of your job to represent the federal government’s
preservation ethic in Independence?
RICHTER: Well, I’d say it was sort of walking on eggs in that respect. If these
meetings were coming up, these public meetings, I always was very careful
to check with either Mr. Dunning, when he was the regional director, and
then after he was transferred to the office of surface mining, I worked very
closely with the acting regional director, Randy Pope. I remember one
meeting where the regional office drafted a statement for me to issue to the
meeting, and this was over this whole issue of shrinking down the district.
We looked with disfavor on that, and I gave a presentation to the city
council at this town meeting that they had on that issue. I would sort of go
along with Dr. Zobrist’s point of view, that I felt the National Park Service
historic preservation is just part of our mandate, and I felt it was up to us
certainly to set a good example at the very least. And with the fact that the
national landmark district being there, I felt we had an added obligation to
stand up for the integrity of that landmark district. And of course that led
later on when Mr. Reigle was here, to even us listing the landmark district
as being threatened. As I said before, Dr. Zobrist had shared that view, and
he felt he’d been in the trenches for quite a while in that respect and was
looking forward to us taking our turn there as the leading advocate.
41
WILLIAMS: Well, you’ve mentioned some of the city officials. What was Millie
Nesbitt’s particular interest?
RICHTER: Well, tourism was her main interest. She was the head of the tourism
advisory board, which was sort of an adjunct body established by the city
council, which I sat in as sort of an observer, as I did . . . I sat in on
meetings of the heritage commission, whose mission was more to manage
the historic district. Millie definitely was at the forefront of coming up with
the idea of the shuttle system. She also enabled us, or certainly supported
us, eventually moving our headquarters down to the old Fire Station No. 1.
And as I say, she was interested in the tourism aspect and how that would
lead to sort of boost downtown Independence.
WILLIAMS: Well, as you know, the shuttle bus has been discontinued. Do you think
that has a significant effect on the original plan for visitors to
Independence?
RICHTER: Well, I would say in a couple of ways. First of all, as I said before, from the
very beginning we found it important. In fact, one of the real features of
this presidential site was the fact that the visitor could get a full story of
Truman, could get a sense of the personal life and the home life at the
home, they could get an impression of the presidential career up at the
library, they could get an understanding of the president’s early political
career at “The Man from Independence” slide program, and the shuttle
really enhanced that by providing a unifying element to get people from one
42
place to another. Also, Independence being such an old city as it is,
predating Kansas City by many years, as I was frequently reminded, the
streets are very crooked and narrow. They follow old trails, even one
branch of the Santa Fe Trail and so forth, and it is quite difficult, I would
think, for an outsider to really find their way around, even if they had a
good map. Of course, the shuttle also went beyond serving our needs with
the Truman story by also stopping at the two city-operated mansions. Of
course, later on the National Frontier Trails Center was established that
would have been on the shuttle route also. So I guess that’s a long-winded
answer to your question, but I do think it does handicap a bit the original
plan that we had for the visitor’s experience in Independence.
WILLIAMS: Was there ever any thought at the beginning of having a concessionaire
under the National Park Service operate the shuttle?
RICHTER: It was studied in the general management plan. There was some analysis of
that. As I said, at the very beginning when we were thinking more still of a
shuttle between the library and the home, I think I do remember Mr.
Dunning expressing the idea that it would most likely become a
concessionaire-operated thing. But then I remember him also having
misgivings about the expense and whether it would then be successful if
you were charging a fee for that. Of course, another thing about the shuttle
was that simply a lot of our visitors are elderly and it was a nice way just
for them to get around and not have to keep getting in and out of their cars.
43
To me the shuttle just represented a real unifying element to the story that
we are trying to present to visitors there.
WILLIAMS: What were some of the other city councilpersons that you dealt with?
RICHTER: Oh, to a degree I remember dealing a bit with Mike Martin, not an awful
lot. Millie Nesbitt was the prime driving force at that time. John Carnes
was more in the background. I don’t remember too many direct meetings
with John Carnes. He very much supported the interest of, or at least voted
along the lines with the First Baptist Church of Independence, and he came
up with the proposal to shrink the city’s landmark district. So as I say, I
didn’t have many direct contacts with John Carnes, but his activities on the
council certainly had an impact on what we were doing at the home.
Sometimes Mike Martin was sort of a swing vote, in terms of how the
council was acting on different issues.
As I say, I would say I spent a lot more time with the mayor’s
office. Probably, with hindsight, I should have been paying a little more
attention to individual council members. I don’t think I realized at the
beginning how independent the council really was of the mayor. Later on I
discovered this with the power of the council even to basically supervise or
ask for action by individual city staff members. It was not uncommon for
Pat O’Brien to be told what to do by one of the city—Pat O’Brien was the
historic preservation officer, and to have Millie Nesbitt or somebody go and
tell him they wanted this done over at the Bingham-Waggoner house or
44
whatever, and Pat would do it. So that was rather a different situation.
WILLIAMS: When did you meet the mayor?
RICHTER: I think we did meet with the mayor also, now that I think about it, this
lightning trip that we took over in early January. I think we did also meet
with the mayor on that trip.
WILLIAMS: This was Mayor Potts?
RICHTER: Mayor Barbara Potts. Because I do think we met the mayor, and then that’s
when I met Pat O’Brien and Bill Bullard, who was in charge of planning
and historic preservation with the city at that time.
WILLIAMS: Is it fair to say that the non-council people were more supportive in the city
government?
RICHTER: I guess I would say that was fair, although Millie Nesbitt in her own way
was very supportive. She was looking at it more in an opportunity to
enhance tourism in Independence and thereby enhance the revenue, the
business climate of the town, or whatever. I guess that would be a fair
statement. Certainly the support was really overwhelming from people like
Pat O’Brien and Bill Bullard.
WILLIAMS: What did they do, in particular?
RICHTER: Again, a lot of guidance as far . . . They played a role with even the tourism
advisory board, with Sarah Hancock who worked for Bill Bullard. She was
the head of tourism for the city. Particularly supporting, I guess they also
helped in sort of enlightening people in the town about how long a process
45
it is to do careful planning for the home, because there was this aspect of
impatience within the town about “When is the park service going to open
things up?” And certainly the planning which ultimately resulted in us
being downtown, that certainly was through the work of people like Bill
Bullard and Pat O’Brien and Sarah Hancock.
WILLIAMS: Did they have any input on the interpretive planning for the home itself?
RICHTER: I think they helped in terms of making sure that we interpreted the home
within the context of Independence and didn’t get so wrapped up in the
president himself, but put the president within the context of life in
Independence. I think they were very helpful in us sort of expanding our
horizons and appreciating the significance of the neighborhood, which
ultimately resulted even in neighborhood walking tours that we started up
later on. I think they were helpful in sort of explaining sort of the political
climate in the town, which sometimes, particularly for Norm Reigle, was
sort of walking through a mine field, you might say. Bill Bullard was really
helpful in enlightening Norm, in terms of the political realities of
Independence. I don’t think we would ever have had the shuttle and the fire
station and those sort of things without the help of city staff members,
which is not to downplay the role of the Jackson County Historical Society,
of course, with the fact that they operated the visitor center for us the first
year between city volunteers. Again a major contribution of the city was
developing a volunteer program which was a major impact upon our
46
operations at the Truman home ticket center.
SHAVER: In providing this guidance and advice, didn’t they in a sense kind of use the
park service a little bit, too, in advancing what they thought would be . . .
you know, not selfish motives but good solid planning involved with this?
RICHTER: That’s true. I mean, Bill Bullard’s major interest was planning—I mean,
that’s his job, and it was support for, as you say, careful planning and doing
it right. We would say that over and over again: “This is an opportunity to
do it right this time.” And so in that respect they certainly were allies, as far
as what we were trying to do.
WILLIAMS: How much contact did you have with the city manager?
RICHTER: Very little.
WILLIAMS: And who was the city manager at that time?
RICHTER: Oh, Keith Wilson. Keith Wilson.
WILLIAMS: That was probably three or four managers ago. [chuckling]
RICHTER: Well, that’s true because Bill Bullard served his time. What were you
about to say?
WILLIAMS: They just laid off another one a few weeks ago.
RICHTER: Okay. I understand they have a new mayor there also that’s rather
flamboyant.
WILLIAMS: Yes, he fits the description of the Independence residents that you were
giving earlier.
RICHTER: As I say, though, I had very little contact directly with Keith, and his
47
interests were in other ways, I guess. I’m sure Mr. Reigle probably told
you, once Bill Bullard became the city manager then we had a lot more
dealing directly with . . . But Bill was really the person that we dealt with,
particularly once we moved into the ticket center, and if we needed help
even with a maintenance problem, whatever. There was a long, drawn-out
process to get the curbs restored there along the front of the home and
everything, and so Bill Bullard was a real important person and contact, sort
of our liaison with the city staff, more so than you might have expected it
would be the city manager, but it really was Bill.
WILLIAMS: And Pat O’Brien was eventually removed from the city staff.
RICHTER: Well, no, removed isn’t the right word. There was no more money for him
in the city budget. It was sort of a budget cutback more so. I don’t say he
was removed or fired or anything. It would be something like a Gramm-
Rudman cutback on the federal scene.
WILLIAMS: Was that a blow to park service operations at all?
RICHTER: Well, it certainly wasn’t a positive development, because again the very
nature of his title, historic preservation officer. He was also a very fine
historian and was of use just with his knowledge of Independence and the
history of the neighborhood. It certainly wasn’t a red-letter day for us when
that happened, because he had been a good person as far as providing
insight into the community also.
WILLIAMS: How much had actually been done before Superintendent Reigle arrived on
48
the job, as far as planning?
RICHTER: Well, as I said, early on Dave Given from the regional office and I wrote up
the original statement for management, it’s called. In addition, Jim Schack
and a delegation from Harpers Ferry, Al Swift, the deputy manager of
Harpers Ferry in fact, had a lot of close attention to our project. In fact, he
pulled rank, so to speak, to come out on the planning team. And we
prepared what we called an “interim interpretive prospectus,” which was
more like an operating plan. Nowadays in the National Park Service,
interpretive prospectuses are very limited documents that talk more about
the use of media, and the statement for interpretation now is more your
operating document. But back then, basically this document was not in its
final form when Mr. Reigle came, but we had had our initial meetings and
basically had a plan in mind at that point. As I said also, we had already
had one visit by the general management plan team from Denver, and they
had met with the mayor, with Bill Bullard, with the director of the library.
They had come on what they called a “scoping mission” to get the lay of
the land, so to speak.
WILLIAMS: Was there any sense of “We should put things on hold until the
superintendent gets here for his final approval”? Or would he just move in?
RICHTER: I would say on the interpretive planning there was certainly that. I
remember several meetings with the superintendent early on where we
came to a consensus on how we wanted things like . . . An important
49
decision was whether you were going to have guided tours or else have
rangers stationed throughout the home in fixed locations, things like that.
The final approval was after Norm arrived. But thinking back, there
actually was quite a bit that was underway. We had the contract in hand
with a company to do the existing conditions drawings and plan, which was
an important document to document the state of repair or disrepair of the
home at the point that we received the property.
WILLIAMS: That was Solomon, Claybaugh and Young.
RICHTER: Right. Yes, it’s all coming back to me now.
WILLIAMS: Solomon Young, you should be able to remember that.
RICHTER: Yes.
WILLIAMS: So that was underway already?
RICHTER: That was already underway, as I recall. And as I said, some of these were
emergency repairs of the home that had been done, so it wasn’t like things
were just at a standstill until Norm arrived. There were things in motion,
certainly.
SHAVER: You were talking about the general management planning. The team had
already been assembled and was meeting in Independence?
RICHTER: They had already had one meeting in Independence.
SHAVER: Do you remember much about that, what the preliminary discussions were?
RICHTER: Well, I think one thing was that normally general management plan teams
come up with a whole variety of options, and then you come down to a final
50
wise decision. And even at the early point I think they could see certain
basic things needed to be done, such as some sort of a shuttle system. I
mean, they visited the neighborhood and right away could see the
ramification of running a popular national historic site in a neighborhood
such as the Truman neighborhood. They quickly saw the need for sort of a
joint operation, that it wouldn’t be the park service just going it alone. So
in some ways it was a rather unique general management plan process,
because some things they came to a consensus very quickly about.
I remember at one point the team captain, this was later on after
Norm had arrived, he was saying something to the fact that “If we don’t get
the general management plan pretty soon, the whole thing will already have
been implemented before we ever get the finished document completed,”
because things were going along very quickly because of Mr. Dickenson’s
commitment that the home be open by the hundredth anniversary of the
president’s birth.
WILLIAMS: Did you know Norm Reigle before he was selected as superintendent?
RICHTER: I don’t think I had ever met him. I might have, but I don’t recall. I knew of
him because of Palma Wilson-Buell working down there. I had first met
Palma here at St. Louis when she was a seasonal and had kept in touch with
her when she worked down at the Ozark, and she had told me what a great
chief ranger Norm Reigle was.
WILLIAMS: So you had a favorable impression of him when the announcement was
51
made?
RICHTER: Right, and I knew that he was particularly good about being very direct and
also getting good budgets out of—at that time it was Ozark—out of the
superintendent, so I felt that he would be good at getting the necessary
operating funds for the Truman home. I think one thing that everybody
realized very quickly was that it was going to be a labor-intensive site,
whether you had people stationed throughout the home or else had guided
tours, and the fact that you were going to need a professional curator with
all those thousands and thousands of objects, that this was not going to be
just a little mom-and-pop operation national historic site, that there was
going to be a labor-intensive situation that was going to need a sizeable
budget right away. Unlike most national parks that start out on a skeleton
staff and gradually enhance their programming and justify the need for
more positions, from the very beginning Norm realized he was going to
have to go in like gangbusters to get a reasonable operating budget right
away.
WILLIAMS: Was there a smooth transition between you and him?
RICHTER: I’d say so. I know I gave him plenty of free advice there, particularly again
with the unique climate in Independence. Things were bubbling up or
almost boiling over the controversy with the First Baptist Church and the
whole situation with either shrinking the district or keeping it at its point.
And certainly he asked for my advice. There was a bit of difficulty. It’s
52
hard after being there by myself to sort of then sit back in the background,
but you also need to just have one voice for the park service there. I
remember one meeting of the tourism board or something where we both
went, and we realized quickly that only one of us should one of us should,
that there should just be one spokesperson to avoid confusing the issues.
WILLIAMS: How similar would you say your management and preservation
philosophies are? Norm’s and yours?
RICHTER: Oh, I think pretty close.
[End #4126; Begin #4127]
WILLIAMS: What were we talking about?
RICHTER: What were we? I was about to say something good.
WILLIAMS: Norm . . . ?
SHAVER: Preservation.
RICHTER: Oh, preservation theory. I would say one point of disagreement . . .
Overall I think we were very much in sync, and I might say I was pleasantly
surprised, because Norm really didn’t have a background in managing
historic sites. His career had been in natural areas and chief ranger type
activities, but he did a fine job, with hindsight.
The one area that I would have done maybe a little different was his
decision that objects should be moved for safekeeping to some other
location. To me, even in the basement, to me there. . . I guess I draw the
analogy almost like to an archaeologist: When objects are in their original
53
location, they tell a certain story. And even though historic objects you
carefully document and photograph and everything, it’s still not the same in
terms of telling a story. And I will give the example of the attic: When the
attic is in a jumble, as the Trumans left it, that tells something about their
lifestyle. So I think I would have tried harder maybe to figure out a way to
just have had very good fire detection systems or whatever. But I wasn’t so
desirable of getting those objects moved right away. And again, Norm’s
background is more in security and everything, and so I could understand
his point of view. I just didn’t totally go along with it, but he was the
superintendent.
SHAVER: How much did Steve Harrison play a role in enhancing and developing
your preservation ethic education?
RICHTER: Yeah, I think Steve was an educator also, although I was there in the
basement the day that the decision was made about ultimately moving
things out of the home, and Steve was disappointed, at least . . . I was right
there with Steve and Norm. But your point is well taken. I do think that
Steve had a lot of education. Even that first visit, that cleaning mission
when we brought Steve over, I mean that was very enlightening for Norm,
the careful way that Steve was cleaning things, and it was an education.
Well, it was an education for me, too, but certainly for Norm, about the care
that we had to take with objects and the agents of deterioration, to keep
them under control, as Steve called them.
54
As I say, I think overall we were pretty much in sync. There were a
few points that just any two human beings are going to have some
disagreements over. I think one of the critical things that Norm went along
with was this idea of interpreting the home more or less as a representation
of the overall occupancy of the Trumans, rather than going back to some
point in time in 1945 or ’53 or something. That did come up in some of our
sessions at night or at his home discussing things in an informal way, but he
was a good listener.
WILLIAMS: And your decision early on was to interpret it the way it was when Mrs.
Truman died, or shortly before that?
RICHTER: Well, at least maybe a little bit back when she was healthy enough to give
orders to Reverend Hobby to keep the plants trimmed up and that sort of
thing. And again, as I said before, just in terms of documentation it was
much better documented at that point. For example, if you were to take it
back to 1945, you’d have to really devastate the kitchen area and the other
improvements that the Trumans made when they came back from the White
House.
WILLIAMS: So, for instance, would you be in favor as the interpretation chief of
restoring the pergola in the back yard, which is documented to have been
there in 1970 or so? Would you favor making changes that would reflect
the last years of Mr. Truman’s life?
RICHTER: Well, I don’t know. If I had a free hand there, I think I would focus more
55
on even carrying it more closer to Mrs. Truman’s last days. To me, part of
the story is the time period that Mrs. Truman spent there by herself. I
mean, that is part of the whole Truman story. We would get a remarkable
number of people that were surprised that Mrs. Truman lived there after the
president’s death. It was like they expected him to have left in the will that
she be evicted or something. But a remarkable number of people were
surprised, and to me, that in itself needed to be interpreted. That was all
part of the story. I mean, the Truman story is that long-lasting attachment
to that home. I mean, my goodness, they never left that one bedroom.
Even when they had a chance to move into the master bedroom, they stayed
in the bedroom they were comfortable in. And so I guess in answer to your
question, if I were running things, I would not restore the pergola. I would
want to keep it more towards, say, in the mid-’70s or so when Mrs. Truman
was still healthy enough to direct her way of life there.
WILLIAMS: While we’re on interpretive planning, whose idea was it to have the dark
gray visitor carpet?
RICHTER: I would stay Steve Harrison probably had . . . It was sort of a combination
of Steve and myself both going to Death Valley to Scotty’s Castle. Steve
actually worked at Scotty’s Castle, and I’d been on a tour there, and I guess
that was filed away in my mind, but they have a similar situation there.
WILLIAMS: So this wasn’t a totally original idea.
RICHTER: Well, as with most things in interpretation, there’s always someplace else. I
56
think the difference was that at Scotty’s it was a distinct carpet, where I
think the unique thing was like where we incorporated, and when we put in,
say, like, the carpeting in the foyer and the dining room, where we actually
incorporated two different colors of carpet. That certainly was more unique
than what they were doing at Scotty’s Castle. The risk that we ran there
was the fact that at Scotty’s you had much more expansive rooms, and so
we were still kind of nervous in the tight quarters of the Truman home
whether this was going to work or not, whether people really would more
or less keep on the dark gray carpet.
WILLIAMS: Is that the reason that the initial year or so of tours had two rangers?
RICHTER: Well, right. Again, remember Norm’s background in law enforcement and
security, that he was real nervous about what was going to happen in the
home. In fact, he and I had made contingency plans as to how we were
going to arrest the first person that tried to steal a fork or whatever off the
table. Norm wanted to make a big deal in the newspapers, and we were
going to work things out with the U.S. Attorney to really make an example
out of the first person. I think that was one reason why our initial staff, why
we had so many commissioned rangers on our staff, because we wanted one
on site anytime that the home was open, again with this idea of a ranger
running down the street apprehending someone with a fork or whatever.
And it sounds ludicrous now, but again think back to when we really didn’t
know what we were getting into. We had no idea about the respect that
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most people paid that home. I mean, overall the visitors pretty much were
in awe as much as we were when we first visited, and fortunately we didn’t
have this kind of Keystone Cops situation going on. And to give Norm
credit, you know, that he was thinking these things through, what a disaster
it would have been if we hadn’t thought this through and there would have
been some disastrous incidents or whatever if we didn’t have rangers there
that knew what they were doing as far as the proper way of apprehending
somebody.
WILLIAMS: Were there other similar fears about visitor use?
RICHTER: Well, we were concerned just about loving the home to death. We were
concerned about the area with the coat and the hat, people bumping their
head there by the staircase. There was a bit of concern how the porches
would hold up under all the people coming and going. I don’t know, I think
Norm rubbed off on me. I had a lot of security concerns or safety concerns.
Somehow when they put in the reproduction sidewalk they left this big gap
between the level of the sidewalk and the ground around it, and to me it
looked like a real natural hazard for visitors falling off and tripping and
everything. So, sure, there were a lot of those kind of concerns. I think we
all were a little concerned about having the table in the dining room set for
dinner and that sort of thing, and even in the kitchen we were a bit
concerned.
And believe it or not, even though it sounds almost ludicrous that
58
we’d be nervous with tours of just eight people, I mean, we for a while tried
an experiment with just nine on a tour, and the rangers unanimously felt
uneasy with just that extra body on the tour. Because there was a lot of
pressure from the regional office to increase the numbers on the tours in
order to increase the number of visitors every day, and therefore reduce the
number of letters of complaint from people that were turned away.
That brings up one thing I didn’t work up when I mentioned before.
I remember the very first visit there when Jim Dunning was there in early
January, and Mr. Dunning said that we should manage the home . . . at the
very beginning, to manage the home realizing that we were not going to be
able to serve every visitor. And to me, that’s to his credit. And that was his
marching orders, really, that we would just from the very beginning realize
that we had a preservation ethic to uphold and that we would just have to
bear the consequences of turning people away from day to day.
WILLIAMS: Was there any particular reason you think he gave you that order? From
experience in other parks, or was it just his personal view?
RICHTER: I think it was the combination just of his support for preservation or for
managing historic sites, and I guess almost just common sense after seeing
the narrow confines of the home, the desire not to totally overwhelm the
neighborhood, that he just had the wisdom, I would say, to come up with
that.
WILLIAMS: You mentioned earlier that you were hired as the chief ranger within hours
59
after the superintendent was appointed. Who came next on the permanent
staff?
RICHTER: Oh, well, you know that was a long time ago, but I think Joan Sanders came
next, the administrative officer. Her formal title was administrative
technician. One thing, if you want to get real technical, my original title
was going to be chief of interpretation and resource management. But later
on when we decided that we definitely needed a professional curator, the
regional office felt that in order to justify that, the resource management
title should be under the curator. So, as a result, my title then changed to
chief ranger.
Again, these memories, it was a long time ago, but it seemed to me
we hired our secretary Jenny Hayes next, and then Steve Harrison came
along. Steve was a reassignment person also. That seemed to get your
curiosity early on, but there were a lot of these, and part of that was just the
speed. Joan’s case was a good one, where we definitely needed
administrative support. I was a novice at administration, and certainly
Norm was also, so it just came up that she was willing to take a
reassignment from the Lincoln home, and so Norm had every confidence in
her from her background and so she was reassigned. As I say, Steve was
another case. An interesting case, though, because as this is all coming
back to me now, we first of all, though, had a curator on loan. Sue
Kopcyznski from Morristown was on loan, and through a number of
60
circumstances, we ended up offering Steve Harrison the permanent position
at the home.
WILLIAMS: And he was the curator here at Jefferson before?
RICHTER: That’s correct, and he was a GS-9 already, so it was a GS-9 to GS-9
reassignment.
WILLIAMS: So very few people got promotions.
RICHTER: That’s true. I think the promotion . . . Well, I remember Jim Dunning
saying the prestige I got as ranger in charge was my promotion rather than
any dollars and cents or anything.
WILLIAMS: When did you hire your staff in the interpretation division?
RICHTER: In the spring of ’84, in bits and pieces. I think Palma Wilson-Buell was the
first we hired, who was hired in as a . . . Now, to make you feel good, she
not only got a promotion, she therefore had to go through the competitive
hiring system. Her original title was lead park technician, and then later on
the technician series was abolished so she became lead park ranger.
WILLIAMS: And you knew her before her promotion?
RICHTER: That’s correct, and she had also worked for Norm at Ozark National Scenic
Riverways in protection. We also then hired two permanent rangers, one of
which we hired through a reassignment from Lava Beds, Cindy Ott, and
then Rick Jones, who also happened to be from Lava Beds, [chuckling] was
hired through a competitive appointment.
WILLIAMS: How was it determined, your staff needs, in your division?
61
RICHTER: Well, it started out with me working with Norm on that, a lot of it being
done after hours, as a matter of fact, in a more informal nature at several
locations. It basically was planning out what we . . . We had made our
decision early on that we wanted guided tours rather than fixed station. In
fact, I was able to demonstrate to Norm that if anything, if we went to fixed
station, we’d need more rangers there because of there being few very clear
lines of view, that you’d almost have to have a ranger in the kitchen, the
dining room, and the foyer, and then plus one controlling the crowd
somehow at the front gate. So we pretty well lined out what we thought our
needs would be, and then Norm and Joan Sanders went up to region to state
our case and everything to the regional office. And as it turned out, they
were receptive.
There had been an earlier visit by just Norm himself, and he had a
whole laundry list full of things. And it was sort of a hasty trip, and I
remember Randy Pope didn’t think he had very solid justifications at that
point. And Warren Hill, who was the associate regional director for
operations, he felt that we should pretty much manage the home as an allvolunteer
force and use volunteers to give tours of the home, contract for
curatorial services, contract for maintenance services, and pretty much just
keep a paid staff of me, the administrative officer, and the superintendent.
So, fortunately, his point of view didn’t win out in the end.
SHAVER: There were some major constraints on FTE and the budget at that time, too,
62
weren’t there?
RICHTER: There was.
SHAVER: At least you were told that.
RICHTER: Well, also that helped, the idea that we did have to open. Thank God that
Russ Dickenson had made this pledge. Mr. Dickenson visited sometime
during the summer that the first-ever meeting of the Oregon-California
Trails Association had their inaugural convention in Independence. Mr.
Dickenson was addressing that group, and it gave him the opportunity to
visit the home for the first time, and he reemphasized the fact that we were
going to open on time and it would be a quality experience. I remember
one of the newspaper reporters, Brent Schondlemeyer, asking what the fee
would be. And Russ Dickenson said that a visit to the Truman home is
priceless, and therefore there would be no fee as long as he was director.
Well, of course, later on, with later directors we got in the fee business, but
that was his point of view. And he was really taken by the home.
SHAVER: Did you take him through?
RICHTER: I took him through, and he was just . . . Went from basement to attic. In
fact, I remember in the newspaper article Brent Schondlemeyer was saying
how the director was still kind of sweating from being up in the hot attic
and everything. He was also taken by the neighborhood. He very quickly
realized the importance of the whole neighborhood as adding to the
significance of the home itself and was very much taken by that.
63
WILLIAMS: So you had very little resistance from the region or WASO of implementing
the plan that you wanted?
RICHTER: No, I’d say pretty much, if you’d call it resistance, I guess was there was
always this question from the regional office about “Well, couldn’t you
squeeze a few more on each tour?” so as to speak. Now maybe behind the
scenes Norm was fighting off other plans and everything that I wasn’t privy
to, but I really don’t think there was a lot. When Charles Odegaard became
our regional director, his management style was to question everything, to
see if there was solid logic behind decisions and so forth. And he might
have given the illusion of questioning a lot of what we were doing, but I
think with hindsight he provided a lot of key support. He certainly made
sure that the regional staff continued to keep this as a prime focus of their
attention. I do remember Mr. Odegaard questioning our system for
handicap access with the use of this innovative stair track device. Mr.
Odegaard felt there was a way to come up with ramps, and someone in the
regional office finally showed him with mathematics with the way the
slope, the acceptable slope for such ramps, that the ramp would have to go
clear out into Truman Road or somewhere. But overall, I don’t really recall
a lot of real questioning of what we were doing.
WILLIAMS: From your experience in other parks, would you say this was unusual to
receive such support?
RICHTER: Oh, definitely. I think it was the home itself. It would really just sort of
64
right away just put people in awe. And it was fortunate that we had people
like Russ Dickenson having . . . and it was almost sort of a serendipity sort
of situation. His reason for being there was to address the Oregon-
California Trails Association, and yet it gave him that opportunity to see the
home real early. A key development was when Al Swift from the Harpers
Ferry Center . . . and he was the real power behind the scenes. He was the
deputy manager, and he was taken by the home and made sure that we got
all the support that we needed from the Harpers Ferry Center. And we
certainly did in many ways: The historic furnishings people, the historic
furnishings plan was done; there were some repairs to furnishings that we
felt had been damaged, that had either been done by the guards themselves
or else damage by nurses or something after Mrs. Truman was so ill. So
yes, I think it was the two factors: one, that a lot of lead officials of the park
service were able to make visits on site; and, second of all, the fact that we
were so close to Omaha helped us out. Andy Ketterson’s commitment and
John Kawamoto’s was of immense value. And then I think just the site
itself and the fact of all its possibilities just got people enthusiastic.
WILLIAMS: How would you describe your duties as chief ranger?
RICHTER: How would I describe them?
WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm, your major duties, concerns . . .
RICHTER: I guess two-fold. One was on-site, as far as providing quality experiences
for the visitors, making sure that our system ran adequately. Mostly behind
65
the scenes, making sure we had adequate budgets for staffing to provide
these visits in a good way. And then I spent a lot of my time on external
things, duties, primarily with the ticket center, being first run by the Jackson
County Historical Society and volunteers from the city. And also the fact
that the Truman Library remained an important part of our overall plan,
because a lot of visitors would continue to visit the Truman Library first,
and so it was important that the Truman Library staff be informed of the
proper way to get tickets to the Truman home and the fact that they needed
to get down to the Truman home ticket center to get those tickets. I spent a
lot of my time working with these cooperative groups.
WILLIAMS: Speaking of one, how did the Jackson County Historical Society get to
become the operator of the visitor center?
RICHTER: Well, I think first of all with their proximity being right next door with them
operating the Marshal’s Museum, and again this urgency, this sense of
urgency that we had to get operating underway, the support that they had
already given us. I mean, they basically were the lead agency in terms of
support for historic preservation. Sally Schwenk was always at every one
of these town meetings, giving very direct and very blunt statements about
historic preservation, the need for preserving the neighborhood. A lot of
this though at that time was being negotiated by Norm. You know, I really
wasn’t in the main loop, as far as those sort of things. The thing that’s
important to realize, though, is that it was a joint operation. It wasn’t just
66
the historical society, it was also the volunteers from the city that really
were the backbone of that operation, although Tony Gentry, who was an
employee of the historical society, was just first class as far as being able to
work with the volunteers. He just had a certain way with volunteers that
was just very motivating, and he was able to get good performance out of
them.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever desire a ranger presence in the visitor center?
RICHTER: I looked on that as sort of the ideal situation. But on the other hand, I was
more concerned that we have an adequate number of rangers to be able to
operate the home itself and the tours, and so I basically, with the available
budget that we had, my point of view was we should put that down at the
home and I guess use my influence with the people running the ticket center
to do a good job. I might add, I spent a lot of time working with various
operators of the shuttle bus system. There were several different managers
of the shuttle bus system, and of course that was a major either plus or
minus for the visitor experience was the way they were treated by the
drivers on the shuttle bus, and we had mixed results on that.
WILLIAMS: Did you feel that the historical society operation of the visitor center was a
temporary expediency, or did you foresee it going on and on?
RICHTER: I saw it being a little more permanent than it ended up being, although
again I didn’t have quite the big picture that Norm had about all the
different political situations within the Jackson County Historical Society
67
which were causing turmoil. And because there was turmoil within the
society, that was causing stress on the operation in the visitor center. The
society really reflected, I think, just the nature of the town of Independence,
which . . . I never have lived in a town that loved their politics like
Independence—almost a throwback, I think, to Jacksonian democracy—
because they love their town meetings, and everybody had his say-so even
if it went till 2:00 in the morning or whatever. And the society, for a
number of reasons, and not just related to historic preservation I mean, there
were money concerns and all kinds of different factions, I guess I’d call
them, within the society that were causing problems. So, with hindsight, I
think it was a wise decision to move over to the Eastern National Park and
Monument Association.
WILLIAMS: The original park headquarters came to a catastrophic end.
RICHTER: Burned to the ground!
WILLIAMS: Were you involved in the choice of headquarters?
RICHTER: I was out of the loop on that one. I mean, that was more between . . . Joan
and Norm looked around with GSA at different sites. I remember once
early on in the process filling out a form from GSA. It was sort of a
questionnaire that would come up with this magic formula of how many
square feet you needed for office space. You had to list how many desks
you were going to have, how many bodies in this place and that sort of
thing.
68
One interesting thing, really, very early on we were offered the use
of what used to be the Secret Service house across the street, which the
Secret Service had leased, and the owners wanted to know if we wanted to
buy it. And on some very early trip, I can’t remember exactly when, it was
very early on, Andy Ketterson and I, and maybe Lee Jamieson, looked it
over, and we saw that the state of repair of the place was not adequate. It
was too small for what we saw our needs being. The basement, the
foundation was poor, literally crumbling apart—I mean, we could have
reached out and grabbed a handful of foundation—so very quickly we gave
up on that idea.
WILLIAMS: So you did do some preliminary investigation.
RICHTER: Yes, but not an awful lot.
WILLIAMS: Did the burning of the proposed headquarters put a crimp in your
interpretive program?
RICHTER: Well, it certainly didn’t help matters any, although I guess it was more in
terms of the fact that suddenly we were kind of like orphans, or looked
upon that we were not going to have a roof over our head. I know that we
spent some very restless nights thinking about what we were going to do
after that disaster happened, and so it was very fortunate that the city
offered us the space that they did.
WILLIAMS: Another community organization that has a relationship with the park
service is the Junior Service League. How did that come about?
69
RICHTER: The Junior Service League, of course, had a very close relationship with the
Truman Library. In fact, they sort of had a first right to give tours of the
Truman Library for school groups and everything. You had to almost be a
member of the Junior Service League in order to be able to volunteer to
give programs at the Truman Library. So they were very interested in
having a role to play at the Truman home. Norm set up a deal where they
were going to give special beforehand tours of the home before we opened
to the public to raise money for this Bess Wallace Truman Memorial Floral
Fund, which would then set up a fund to provide fresh flowers on the dining
room table in the home as sort of a memorial to Mrs. Truman, who had also
been a member of the Junior Service League. And, in addition to that,
Norm allowed them to have a donation box in the Truman home ticket
center to keep the fund going.
WILLIAMS: So this relationship was established after Norm became superintendent?
RICHTER: I think in more clear-cut ways. I sort of danced around that one beforehand.
There were some people within the Junior Service League that expected
that we would work out a similar relationship with them, as far as them
giving the tours of the home, but that didn’t really work out.
SHAVER: Let’s take a break.
[End #4127; Begin #4128A]
WILLIAMS: There are a couple of things I’d like to go back on, and one is Ron
Cockrell’s historic resource study and historic structures report. Was he
70
doing those while you were ranger in charge?
RICHTER: Yes, because I remember one time we had all kinds of region people down
for one week. I was doing a lot of entertaining after hours—I saw that as
one of my roles of diplomatic relations with the regional staff—because I
remember we had Lee Jamieson and Fran Krupka and another historic
restoration person, and then Ron Cockrell was on one of his research visits.
He spent a lot of time researching at the Truman Library, and particularly
their photo collection, and certainly worked closely with Liz Safly in
getting a lot of background material also. You see, his first project was
writing the “history and significance” section of the historic structures
report, and that whole bandwagon got underway with Andy Ketterson’s
support. That was going along with the same time the Solomon, Claybaugh
and Young “existing conditions” section of the historic structures report.
So as I said, Ron started out . . . He was at that time a seasonal historian in
the regional office.
WILLIAMS: During Mrs. Daniel’s visits before the home opened, she did remove things
from the home. Is that correct?
RICHTER: In a manner of speaking, yes.
WILLIAMS: What was your understanding or the park service’s understanding of the
ownership of objects?
RICHTER: Well, as I said before, I mean it really was a very hazy situation. The will
was hazy. I guess I would have interpreted the will in terms of only very
71
personal objects. If I were to go to my parents’ home today, I mean, I
might have left behind a weight lifting set or something or a stamp
collection, those sort of things that I might have just left behind because I
didn’t have room in my car to take them with me. But Mrs. Daniel’s point
of view was sort of twofold. She identified some objects that she felt
belonged to Mrs. Wallace, and actually gave Dr. Zobrist, who then gave me
a list of things that were to go to Mrs. Wallace. Then there were some
things that Mrs. Daniel just wanted for safekeeping up at the Truman
Library. She had more confidence in their security for objects up at the
library. And then there was this third category of things that actually were
to be shipped back to New York to the Daniels’ residence or to their storage
room that they had. And part of this I’m not to this day really clear on
because some of these things were taken out of the home before I ever got
there, like the Winston Churchill painting and the Grandma Moses painting.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever put up any resistance or discourage her from taking things?
RICHTER: I didn’t discourage her particularly. Certainly when I was reporting the
situation to the regional office, I’m sure they . . . or they definitely knew I
was dismayed to a degree. In particular, I can think of some objects that
were taken out of the study that I felt changed the whole atmosphere of the
study, the icon being one example. But even like there was a chair in the
study that we were ordered to take back to Mrs. Wallace’s, also a little tiny
child’s chair that Mrs. Daniel said belonged to one of her sons. With those
72
three things being missing from the study, it did to me change the condition
of the study. And then, of course, if you realize that . . . my understanding,
the Truman Library staff had, quote, “cleaned up the study a bit,” in terms
of there not being quite the helter-skelter of books that there used to be in
there. I did have a little bit of qualms of conscience, in terms of the visitor
when they saw the study, that it really wasn’t quite what it could have been.
WILLIAMS: Were you around when Mr. Truman’s armchair was removed from the
study?
RICHTER: That was before my time. That was in that hazy period around by the
funeral when Mrs. Daniel was in town.
WILLIAMS: Did anyone explain the circumstances?
RICHTER: Well, first of all, what I understood—the story from Liz Safly, so this is all
hearsay—was that Mrs. Daniel thought the chair was hideous and basically
wanted it thrown in the trash. However, before that was done, a local
furniture store, and I can’t even begin to remember the name of it, anyway
they claim they had only loaned the chair to the Trumans, and then they
claimed ownership of it, and it went back there. Well, later on, Norm
Reigle attempted to . . . We were hoping the chair was still there
somewhere in the furniture store [chuckling], and Norm did make an effort,
and with no success, of getting the chair back.
WILLIAMS: How involved were you in the plans for dedication week?
RICHTER: The overall planning was really much beyond me. In fact, we even brought
73
in a gentleman named Dave Herrera from the regional office who, in
theory, was planning the event. He turned out to be a lot less useful than
we had hoped, in terms of his planning ability. Norm sort of saved the day
for us, and Norm again, that was one of his real strong points was planning.
Joan Sanders had a lot to do with it. Norm was in charge of all the big
arrangements, things like working with Dr. Zobrist on having the Truman
Library Institute sponsor a lunch for the dignitaries and that sort of thing.
My level was more at an operational level, coming up with a plan, where to
have rangers positioned up at the ceremony, having a plan for how the other
rangers would show the home to the dignitaries immediately after the event,
and that sort of thing. So I was down more at the level of planning the
operational part of things.
WILLIAMS: What do you recall about that day?
RICHTER: Well, I think the first thing was a sense of panic because there was a
prediction of rain and everything, and we really weren’t really hoping that it
would be raining that day. We were scrambling around to get raincoats and
have them stashed at strategic locations up at the site, at the library, in case
we had to quickly hand out raincoats to all the rangers.
I think two things stood out. One thing, overall I was a little
disappointed with the turnout from the local community. We had a lot of
empty seats. I was pleased with my role. I felt, if anything, I’d overplanned
things. I had little lists to do for every individual, a timetable: “At
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one o’clock you should be here in the parking lot, at 1:05 you should move
over to this point,” and that sort of thing.
A little anecdote: I was also in charge of getting the dignitaries
ready to march out onto the podium, and was real nervous and had this list
and had to pair off everybody. Well, I managed to pair them off, but it was
in a mirror image: Everyone that should have been in line on the left-hand
side was on the right-hand side, and vice versa. It all worked out in the end.
They were all on the stage, and then in terms of how close they were to the
podium it was fine, except everybody that should have been on the left was
on the right, and vice versa. Only a few people knew about that faux pas.
And also I had forgot to tell people that when I led them onto the stage that
I would be walking off the stage and that they should stay put at their chair,
and so a couple of them started walking to follow me off the podium, but
they figured it out.
Ron Cockrell was pretty nervous. He had written the speech for the
director, Mr. Dickenson, to deliver and everything, so he was real nervous
as to how the speech would be received and whether anyone would find
any fault with the speech or with historic accuracy or whatever.
WILLIAMS: What about down at the home?
RICHTER: Well, we had everything, I think, well in hand. That part of it worked well.
We had an arrangement . . . Superintendent Schoeber was in charge of as
soon as Mrs. Daniel went out the back door that we were going to put her in
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a car and take her back to the Alameda Hotel, and meanwhile the press
were all waiting to interview her out at the front. So we put one over on the
press because we got her out of sight without any difficulty.
WILLIAMS: Was that at her request?
RICHTER: Pretty much so. Also, as she was going out the back door, at the kitchen
table she said, “May I?” and sort of rearranged the table setting a little bit.
WILLIAMS: So you were with her when she was going through the home?
RICHTER: I was not. See, I was still up at the aftermath of the public ceremony,
because immediately after the ceremony we then had the premiere showing
of our audiovisual program, which the Truman Library gave us their big
theater to show. And the idea was that we would give several showings of
that till everybody that wanted to had seen it. That was a little nervewracking,
in that the show made it to Independence in only about three or
four days before our big event, so that was a little nerve-wracking. So
basically I just was confident that we’d work through the scenario of the
rangers that were going to be at . . . Basically we had some rangers posted
at the home that were not present at the dedication ceremony, and then we
had other rangers that were up at the [library] for the ceremony.
SHAVER: You didn’t do all this with your staff? You had to import some, didn’t you?
WILLIAMS: Oh, we did. I know we borrowed the chief ranger, Larry Blake, from
George Washington Carver National Monument, and Superintendent
Gentry Davis even helped out, and I really can’t recall who else. We did
76
bring in some outsiders, though, to help out with . . . Tom Danton from the
regional office in interpretation, I know we had him posted in a parking lot
at one point in the festivities. He helped out. Obviously we had a lot of
regional office dignitaries there, particularly those that had had a role in the
restoration of the home or getting it ready in time for the dedication and
grand opening.
WILLIAMS: Were there some kind of special tours for a few days after the dedication?
RICHTER: Well, as I mentioned before, the next day there were tours for . . . I guess
you’d called them “Class B” dignitaries. The “Class A” dignitaries got a
look at the home the first day for a couple of hours afterwards. Well,
actually there were three sorts. There was the platform guests, the number
one dignitaries. They were taken down immediately and shown the home.
Mrs. Daniel—
SHAVER: There were different-color tickets involved. [chuckling]
RICHTER: There was even different-color tickets involved, depending on what rank
you were. Anyway, the one rank of dignitaries that were invited, invited
guests, their color tickets enabled them to go down and get a tour that very
day. And we shuttled them down, which was another nerve-wracking
situation because there were a lot of elderly people and the van that we
were using had a high clearance, so it was a little tough to get them in and
out of the van.
WILLIAMS: Were these genuine tours of the home?
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RICHTER: They were more walk-throughs. And then as I said, then there were these
other people that held the other color tickets, they were shown through the
next day. And then my memory holds then it was the following day was
this day for the Junior Service League, who sold tickets to raise money for
the flower fund.
WILLIAMS: And that summer there were also evening tours. Why was that?
RICHTER: Boy, you have a good memory. That’s great. It’s all coming back to me
now. We did feel that . . . again, I guess that was also part of this fundraising
activity. That’s right, and we used Junior Service League personnel.
SHAVER: To take reservations and such.
RICHTER: Right. I guess that it was also a way . . . I guess we didn’t raise, I can’t
really remember exactly the circumstances. I guess it was a concern for the
people of Independence to be able to get into the home, because we had
envisioned that during the day we would be so overwhelmed by visitors
from out of town that residents of Independence who work for a living
during the day would not have an opportunity to get a ticket during the day,
and that’s why we then came up with this idea, with the help of the Junior
Service League, to have these evening tours by reservation. And the Junior
Service League was kind enough to take the reservations through a phonein
system for two very active days of phone calls and sort of swamped their
telephone number. And it did work out well because I think we won a lot
of friends that way. I remember one night it was sort of First Baptist
78
Church of Independence night. They had all the reservations for that night.
WILLIAMS: Speaking of which, I’d like to talk more about that controversy and your
participation.
RICHTER: Oh, I had a feeling you might.
WILLIAMS: In your last interview five years ago you promised that that could take a
whole other tape. [laughter] It may not do that, but . . .
RICHTER: Although now with time things have mellowed a bit also, tempers have
cooled and that sort of thing.
WILLIAMS: Was this controversy already in progress when you arrived?
RICHTER: Oh, very definitely. The reverend had definitely had plans for a new
sanctuary. His church basically served the whole Kansas City community.
It was not just a little neighborhood church for Independence as it was in
earlier years, and with that sort of a congregation, he certainly had need of a
larger sanctuary. When I arrived, there was a lot of rumors, some of which
I think were just created for my benefit to scare me into overreacting.
There were rumors that he planned to totally demolish the old sanctuary,
which of course would have a drastic impact on not only the neighborhood
but even the view out the porch in the back. And of course, as much as
possible we were hoping that we would be able to offer visitors an
experience similar to what Mr. Truman or Mrs. Truman would have been
seeing out the back porch. But by the time I got there, they definitely had
their plans for the new sanctuary underway.
79
WILLIAMS: What was the city’s reaction?
RICHTER: You mean city government or city in general?
WILLIAMS: City government. Were you rowing upstream on the issue?
RICHTER: That’s a pretty good analogy. Again, the whole idea of property rights in
Independence is just a very basic, fundamental ethic within Independence,
as I could perceive it. And then the whole issue of the church’s rights was
pretty fundamental, as it is in this country in general, and of course it’s a
major historic preservation issue whether churches can be compelled to live
up to historic preservation codes or whatever. On the other hand, there was
also great concern within the neighborhood and other elements of the local
historic preservation movement about the ultimate result of these plans for
expansion and for putting in a parking lot in what was then a vacant area,
but also nearby residences and . . . What I gathered was the fear that this
was just the beginning, that this was just the first of many plans for
expansion. I remember somebody telling me they eventually planned to put
in a seminary and a high school, a senior citizen home, and just all kinds of
things. As a result, there was a lot of hot tempers on both sides of the
subject. The church members looked upon the neighborhood . . . In fact,
one church bulletin talked about the mean-spirited neighbors. I mean, the
tempers were that point on both sides. The church looked upon the
situation as definitely being an infringement of their rights to expand, and
as the reverend liked to say on many occasions, “A church that doesn’t
80
expand will die ultimately.” And so they saw their basic interests as a
church being at stake in their right to put up this new sanctuary.
WILLIAMS: Was your primary concern with the landmark district or the city heritage
district?
RICHTER: Well, as I said before, I guess I took more of the bigger picture. I was
interested in the whole ambiance of the area within eyesight of the Truman
home. And as you said before, it was sort of rowing uphill, realizing that
progress is going to take place, but trying to temper that as much as
possible. Obviously we were all very grateful that the church did not
demolish the old sanctuary. That was one of the hot rumors, that they were
going to demolish the old sanctuary. I guess my concern was in terms of
the precedent, that would it ever end? Would they continue to buy up . . .
There were rumors that they had purchased other property. There were a
couple of elderly ladies that owned some property on Delaware Street. The
property was rundown because these were elderly ladies who didn’t have
the financial means to keep up their property. There were rumors the
church had purchased their property and was going to destroy those two
homes to cut in a new entry point to their parking lot facilities off of
Delaware Street. Well, then you’re getting into some major concerns about
the nearby ambiance of the neighborhood. So, as I say, with time and
hindsight, I mean the drastic fears didn’t take place, but at the time it was
some tense times.
81
WILLIAMS: Did you ever meet Reverend Hughes face to face?
RICHTER: I did make a meeting with Reverend Hughes while I was still working by
myself up at the Truman Library. In fact, that’s when he made his offer to
me about the parking lot. And he did ask me if I had any opinion about
how he could cool the tempers or the hot times that were going on. As I
recall, my advice to him was to try to talk to people as individuals and try to
avoid the town meeting approach, when everybody is just up in arms and
coming at loggerheads in both directions, and to try and be as informative
as possible about what his plans were.
WILLIAMS: As it turned out, are you relatively pleased with the neighborhood as it is
now?
RICHTER: I guess I would like to have seen the general management plan
implemented with the neighborhood trust fund initiated. I felt that was a
really innovative idea that Mr. Odegaard had come up with, a compromise
between the National Park Service getting heavy-handed and buying up all
kinds of property, and yet on the same way guaranteeing . . . I mean, the
one example I gave you is a good example. It’s an older neighborhood. I
mean, the people in the neighborhood, many of them are getting on in
years, and I saw the neighborhood trust as being a good way to provide that
long-lasting support for keeping up the neighborhood. To be honest with
you, I have not been in the neighborhood since the shuttle’s demise. I don’t
know how that all worked out. I was a bit alarmed when I heard there
82
would be no shuttle, as far as how that would impact the neighborhood. As
I said before, at least the old sanctuary of the First Baptist Church remained.
Obviously, the view out the back porch is much different with the new
sanctuary, but on the other hand, we haven’t had other buildings going up
as were feared at the time.
WILLIAMS: A lot of the stories that interpreters tell, there doesn’t seem to be
documentation for.
RICHTER: Oh, really? [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: And we all assume that they were passed down from you early interpreters.
RICHTER: Kind of an oral history but not being recorded.
WILLIAMS: Yes, and if you don’t mind, I would like to just go through and maybe
document some of those stories.
RICHTER: Oh, I won’t mind. Now remember again that it’s been a few years since
I’ve been there and . . .
WILLIAMS: I guess the easiest way would be roughly to go room by room, and I know
that you gave a few tours in your time.
RICHTER: Oh, yes, there were a few budget crises, or if somebody . . . one ranger
became ill, I would be down there giving my fair share of tours.
WILLIAMS: So, say for instance, on the back porch, what would you usually tell people
about the back porch? What did you consider the important interpretive
story there?
RICHTER: Oh, okay. Well, I think again it was sort of the informal part of the
83
Trumans’ life. I mean, so much of the home, on the first floor especially,
except for the kitchen and the back porch, it was a pretty much formal
impression. And yet, from all I’ve heard, a lot of the Trumans’ lifestyle
was very informal, and so to me the porch had a lot of benefit, for a number
of reasons, particularly again as I said earlier, you could almost put chills up
peoples’ spines saying, “Imagine Mr. Truman and Mrs. Truman sitting right
here and having a cold drink on the back porch, or Mrs. Truman’s bridge
club meeting.” You could really get to more of the family atmosphere.
And particularly when we did the home, when we reversed the tour route
and the porch was the first part of the tour, I saw that as very important in
establishing sort of the privacy, informal kind of part of the Trumans’
lifestyle. Because you could also talk about the porch, the fact that they
deliberately let the plants grow up to protect their privacy. Also, I used to
talk about “Imagine that this view that you’re seeing here out this back
porch is very much like what Mr. Truman would have seen.” And also, I
know this is getting a little long-winded, but you also could talk about the
family compound from back there and talk about the significance of the two
Wallace homes. And quite often I was pretty lucky, Mrs. Wallace would be
out getting her newspaper or going off to the beauty parlor, and of course
that was a special treat for the visitors, and without interfering with her
privacy. I mean, she usually didn’t know that she was being pointed at and
people were waving at her. [chuckling]
84
WILLIAMS: Well, while we’re on the subject, I believe it was the summer of 1985 that
the tour route was reversed. Why did you make that decision?
RICHTER: Well, it came about that the superintendent did what he called an “internal
operations evaluation,” where he personally questioned each of the rangers
behind closed doors to get their candid views on things. It was the
unanimous decision that people hated being the trailer.
WILLIAMS: I think I remember that conference, now that you brought it up.
RICHTER: Talk about being nervous, I was quite nervous myself. So anyway Norm
then had a session with me, and so he brought up that there really was a
problem of morale, that people hated being the trailer, particularly the way
we scheduled things, you’d end up trailing the same ranger for the whole
day, and hear the same stories, the same jokes, over and over again for the
whole day. It meant for kind of a tedious day. So Norm felt that we had
proven now that we weren’t going to have this Keystone Cops approach,
where we’d be out chasing down theft day after day after day, and we just
had a little more confidence. And we also reversed the tour route because
we felt, in terms of the line of sight for the interpreter being by themselves,
that it was just going to work out better by going through the home that
way. That had some fringe benefits, in that in the old days it was very
difficult at the end of the tour to get people back out to the front. They
would tend to dawdle in the back yard, and it was just really difficult. By
going the other way around, they were anxious to see the home, so they just
85
walked right . . . You know, they almost trampled you down to get to the
back porch. In addition then, at the end of the tour you opened up the front
door, and if your timing was accurate, the shuttle was just coming up and
you’d say, “Well, look here, the shuttle is here. Do watch your step as you
go out the front door, it’s a bright light,” and they would hustle onto the
shuttle. We didn’t think of that ahead of time, but it did work out in terms
of making life a little easier for the interpreter, because the ultimate
challenge was always how to get a meaningful program done in fifteen to
twenty minutes.
What that did also then, of course, in terms of manpower or
womanpower, you eliminated one position on the schedule. Rick Jones
came up with the idea of compressing people’s day. If the guideline was
eight tours during the day, instead of spreading those out through the whole
day, that maybe have them go back-to-back and have half the day at the
home and the other half at the ticket center to either work on a special
project or work in the ticket center or do something special, as a way of
motivating the permanent rangers in particular.
WILLIAMS: Was that a problem originally to have the interpretive staff solely at the
home almost?
RICHTER: I think it was sort of a burnout situation, particularly for our permanent
rangers who, after all, they were being paid GS-5 rather than as seasonals
who were GS-4. So, therefore, as Norm would frequently remind me, we
86
needed to treat them a little different, to provide them with some
meaningful projects or responsibilities to not only keep up their motivation
but then in other ways just justify the way we were using them.
WILLIAMS: What were those special projects?
RICHTER: Oh, a lot of standard operating procedures needed to be done, safety
considerations, bomb threat procedures. We did have our, at least from my
knowledge, our one and only bomb threat was that first summer. We didn’t
have any big disaster. I really admired Steve Harrison’s courage to go in
with the dog that was brought in to sniff out for the bomb. I mean, after all,
he did have a wife and children, and he went in with the dog so as not to . . .
trying to protect the home, the objects, from the bomb search squad, as you
might say. As I say, there were other special projects, research projects,
ultimately research for exhibits within the ticket center. When Eastern
National Park and Monument Association came in and we had the
opportunity to completely rehab and improve the ticket center, part of that
was also doing exhibits, small panel-type exhibits within the visitor center.
And also it then gave the rangers time just to have more opportunities to do
basic research themselves and read the books, the important books on the
Trumans, read the books written by the Trumans themselves that would
give them a more family outlook on their interpretation.
WILLIAMS: Well, back to the tour, I guess.
RICHTER: Okay, yeah, we’re into the kitchen. Now please interrupt if I’m leaving out
87
one of these legends that you want to pursue or whatever. The kitchen went
right along with this informal—
WILLIAMS: Let me interrupt.
RICHTER: Go ahead, interrupt.
WILLIAMS: Often on the back porch people talk about Mr. Truman’s dislike for air
conditioning.
RICHTER: Okay. I guess I got that from Liz Safly and Pat Kerr. It was sort of funny
though, somehow I got that idea that he disliked air conditioning and he
liked the nice breezes on the back porch. But then you get to thinking for a
moment. In his later years he had an air conditioner in his downstairs
bedroom, he had an air conditioner in his study where he spent a lot of his
time, and my impression, what I understood that he did in the morning
hours . . . This was after he no longer was able to get up to the library every
day, but he would chew the fat for a while in the kitchen in the morning,
which also had an air conditioner. So, if it gets down to it, perhaps that sort
of story was overblown a bit, at least in his later years when he wasn’t in as
good a health, and maybe it was more with doctor’s orders. The story I
heard was that the doctors insisted on air conditioning in the downstairs
bedroom when he was recovering from gallbladder surgery. Apparently
that was the time when the fan went in on the back porch, also. Some
friends got him that fan on the back porch.
WILLIAMS: Well, I’ve heard the expression used that he said, “You shouldn’t monkey
88
around with the weather,” and I have yet to find a documented source.
RICHTER: [laughter] That sounds something that Rick Jones would have put out.
You got to realize one of the bad parts of this trailing business was that
if one person kind of embellished their tour, the word would get around.
I guess that was a challenge to keep from ending up with this hybrid
tour. You know, having everybody’s little story. It would be difficult to
keep that from happening when people were doing the trailing.
[End #4128A; Begin #4128B]
RICHTER: Yeah, the kitchen. Well, certainly the kitchen just about interpreted itself,
although with hindsight maybe we overdid the kitchen, I mean in terms of
people’s memory of the home. You know, they talk about the wild color
schemes and that sort of thing; of course there’s a lot more to the home than
just that. Again, just as with the back porch, I would touch on sort of the
personal touch. Sometimes I would talk about the role of this 1950s image
and the so-called improvements, the modernizations that the Trumans made
were actually rather limited. You could talk about things being behind
closed doors in the pantry. I tried as much as possible to paint a picture of
the lifestyle of the Trumans, instead of identifying every bit of furniture and
everything, which was very difficult, particularly if people were
conditioned to what I call “bad home tours” that were nothing but a
category, an itemized list of furniture and everything.
Oh, you could talk about the story of Margaret painting the kitchen
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and that sort of thing. There at least is a letter in one of the books about
Margaret writing to her dad about painting the kitchen, so . . . What in the
kitchen have you heard that is sort of legendary?
WILLIAMS: Well, most people now still talk about the colors and Mr. Truman’s favorite
sandwiches, getting toast out of the toaster with the metal tongs.
RICHTER: Mm-hmm. I was always wondering how he kept from electrocuting
himself that way.
SHAVER: The wallpaper, the selection.
WILLIAMS: The wallpaper, but that’s in the structure report. He picked that out when
he was . . .
RICHTER: I don’t know, again it could be a Liz Safly story, but my understanding is
they took the wallpaper sample book into him in the study, and he just sort
of pointed to this one sample and said, “That’s what should go up.” My
memory was that was later on in his life—I mean, maybe even by ’70 or
’71. It was real late in his life when they did that, when he picked out that
patriotic wallpaper scheme.
WILLIAMS: As far as you know, those stories are fairly accurate?
RICHTER: I think so. No, it certainly is not something that suddenly was embellished
by one of our original rangers.
WILLIAMS: Going into the butler’s pantry and the dining room, what would you
emphasize?
RICHTER: I think the main thing was I always had difficulty . . . people would tend to
90
dawdle in the kitchen and in the butler’s pantry, and it was just getting them
into the dining room. Talking a little bit about the . . . Well, there was sort
of a natural progression then if you talked about preparing meals and then
“Let’s go see where they had their formal meals.” You know, I would talk
about the fact that they would most of the time have breakfast and lunch in
the kitchen, and then talk about dinner, and tie in that to the family
traditions and the fact that family traditions were very important, and
continued even when it was just the two Trumans, having dinner in the
formal part of the house in the dining room.
WILLIAMS: So was your impression that they continued that in their retirement years?
RICHTER: That, again, I think I got a lot of my information from Liz and Pat from
their time when they were doing this inventory. I don’t know, there again
some of this is sort of legendary. But my impression was that even when it
was just the two of them that they would continue to have the evening meal
in the dining room.
WILLIAMS: What about the people sitting at the table? There seems to be some
confusion.
RICHTER: Apparently so. My memory, at least, I went with the version that Mrs.
Daniel had. But I apparently──
SHAVER: Which version? [chuckling]
RICHTER: Well, and that’s a good question, because she had different versions. I went
with the story that Mrs. Truman’s mother was at the . . . The head of the
91
table was by the kitchen so they could keep an eye on the hired help, and
then Mr. Truman was at the other end of the table, and Mrs. Truman was at
the right-hand side, and then Margaret was on down by Madge or whatever.
But as I say, I mean that apparently is a bit of a mystery now as to where
they sat. Has anyone maybe called up Mrs. Daniel again to get a
clarification of that?
WILLIAMS: She might have a whole different version.
RICHTER: Well, maybe once and for all, just tell her it’s one last chance to . . .
SHAVER: That’s no worse than the period after the S.
WILLIAMS: There are stories about the chandelier, and I believe we did work on the
chandelier before the dedication.
RICHTER: That’s right.
WILLIAMS: Were you around?
RICHTER: I’m pretty sure it was Lee Jamieson and maybe Fran Krupka. It seemed to
me though it was a regional office staff effort of reinforcing it. And then
later on, as part of the overall rehab, I think they went back and even did a
better job of it during the formal contract period. It’s a little . . . I’m sorry,
just a little hazy to me.
WILLIAMS: Did Mrs. Wallace tell you stories about the chandelier?
RICHTER: Well, that her husband helped unpack it and he put it up with a few screws.
And then we discovered later he kind of missed the joists, and it’s a miracle
that . . . Our story was that it was a gift from Margaret, or Mrs. Daniel,
92
from New York.
WILLIAMS: In her last visit she said that she helped unpack it, and one of the crystal
bauble things was missing and she had to dig around in the box and finally
found it. She said she helped hang it up.
RICHTER: I see. I don’t remember that one.
WILLIAMS: Well, that was just in her May visit.
RICHTER: I see.
WILLIAMS: And the high chair?
RICHTER: Well, you got the story that as Margaret got bigger they cut the legs
down─again, Uncle George, the handyman, approach.
WILLIAMS: Did she tell us that or did Aunt May?
RICHTER: I first heard that story from Mrs. Wallace more so than Mrs. Daniel. I don’t
remember Mrs. Daniel really sharing that.
SHAVER: You and I had talked about this several years ago, that you had seemed to
get the impression that Mrs. Wallace was trying to find a niche for her
husband in her stories, trying to almost find a place for him and give him
some sort of . . .
RICHTER: Status or whatever, sure. I think so, in a way. I once attended some sort of
program by a doctor or something who was talking about why elderly
people tend to repeat the same stories over and over again, and it is sort of a
way where they’re reinforcing either their importance or the importance of
the family members, or just making it clear what their status was, and that’s
93
very important to elderly people. And so perhaps that’s why the pie plate
story would come up every visit, and things like George Wallace being the
handyman, that in a way that Mrs. Wallace was sort of establishing his
importance within that family compound atmosphere or whatever. I mean,
you know, if you think about it, Mrs. Truman certainly overshadowed
things there being the wife of a President of the United States, and so
maybe there was something to that about why Mrs. Wallace would return to
certain favorite stories over and over again.
SHAVER: And you would hear so little about the other Wallace girls, almost nothing.
RICHTER: Right.
WILLIAMS: I guess the study is the next room.
RICHTER: And as I said before, in little ways I felt a little guilty about that, but I would
appeal to people’s imagination of Mr. Truman being there. I would try to
fill in the missing link there and talk about there being piles and piles of
books, using as my reference point that photograph that was taken while
Thomas Hart Benton was doing the preliminary sketching for his painting
called “The Old President.”
WILLIAMS: Which, by the way, the painting was on exhibit at the Truman Library the
whole past year──
RICHTER: Oh, on my last visit, yeah, I did see it up there.
WILLIAMS: It’s nice that you can mention that.
RICHTER: Right, that’s right, and make a connection that way. Well, one thing that I
94
did forget earlier on, and it goes along with both the dedication ceremonies
and just the cooperation of the Truman Library, is that they had a longlasting
exhibit on the home, using artifacts that were from the home that
were in their care, you might say, and definitely enhanced the visitors’
experiences that summer being able to see that exhibit also.
Anyway, in terms of the study, I would talk about the importance. I
had heard from a number of Independence residents that the shade was up
enough. They claim to have seen Mr. Truman through the window. As I
say, “claim.” But it was from a number of different sources, that they could
see him, and at night they could see his silhouette in that study.
WILLIAMS: And is it true that many of them thought it was a bedroom?
RICHTER: Apparently. Yes, several have said that to me, too, perhaps because it was
one of the last lights to go out in the home in the evening. There is one bit
of controversy, that some people had told me that Mrs. Truman, after the
president’s death, that she just kept it the way it was, felt very bad about
even being in that room because it was so intimately connected to Mr.
Truman. And I gathered that it had even been a refuge for Mr. Truman
back in those early years when he was living with the in-laws there, and
that that was his small little niche in the home. So, anyway, I had this one
point of view that Mrs. Truman never set foot in there after the president’s
death, and yet I know for a fact, because he told me, Senator Eagleton on
his first visit to the home, said that his last visit with Mrs. Truman was in
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that very study and that she was real concerned about George Brett,
whether he was going to hit .400. That was the year that George Brett
nearly hit .400.
WILLIAMS: That was 1980.
RICHTER: And so that seems to be contradictory, that if she felt that way, then why
would she invite in Tom Eagleton? Even though Senator Eagleton claimed
to be one of the last of the Truman protégés in politics, I can’t believe he
was considered a close family friend or anything. And I remember, I think
it was General Dawson . . . I sat next to him one year at the Truman Week
ceremonies, when I was invited to the dinner out at the Stephenson's
Restaurant, and he claimed to have visited with Mrs. Truman within the
study. So I just thought I’d further confuse the issue a bit.
WILLIAMS: That goes against the standard line that visitors really didn’t get past the
front room.
RICHTER: Well, it does that, too. It certainly does, and I mean I know that those two
individuals were very clear about the fact that they met with Mrs. Truman
in there.
WILLIAMS: Visitors often ask which chair the Trumans sat in. There are photos, but . . .
RICHTER: Well, and of course that was a tough one, and I admit I told a white lie. Of
course, though, I usually worded it in a little different way. I’d say, “The
president sat over in that location.” I did not say, “He sat in that chair.”
Now, everyone would say, “Oh yeah, there’s the chair!” I normally would
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say, “In that location the president sat.” One thing though, this thing about
the study, though, just to further cloud the issue, like these visits with Tom
Eagleton and even maybe General Dawson might have been at the point
where the nurses were really running Mrs. Truman’s life and she didn’t
have much say-so when she was wheelchair-bound. Very likely that could
have been another situation.
SHAVER: That’s not the easiest room to roll into.
RICHTER: You’re right, you’re right.
SHAVER: And I don’t think she was totally committed to the wheelchair until ’81 or
something like that.
RICHTER: Okay. So anyway I just thought I’d cloud the issue a little bit there on that.
SHAVER: Well, Rufus [Burrus] and the air conditioner, too, in the study. He talked to
you at the Truman farm home dedication once upon a time about the air
conditioner in the study. Do you recall that one?
RICHTER: Boy, I sure don’t.
SHAVER: He had claimed to help put it in and take it out.
RICHTER: Oh, I only remember that some sources had maintained that it was a
seasonal sort of thing, that the air conditioner wasn’t around year-round,
and therefore I certainly advocated that that should be one of the seasonal
changes at the home, that we remove the air conditioner in the wintertime
and then put it back in. Maintenance staff probably didn’t look too kindly
towards that kind of suggestion.
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WILLIAMS: While I think about it, did you have any stories about the Secret Service?
That seems to be still a hazy issue as to when they left.
RICHTER: You mean after Mrs. Truman’s death?
WILLIAMS: They were certainly gone by the time you arrived.
RICHTER: Right. My understanding was it was real quick after Mrs. Truman’s death,
and that was the problem then with the executor of the will, Mr. Chisholm,
having to bring in a security force.
I remember early on I, in a way, might have saved the day. The
telephone people came in and wanted to rip out of the barn─or as we called
it, the garage─wanted to rip out some of the telephone switching equipment
that had been used by the Secret Service, and I convinced them not to. And
I’m not sure if it’s still there or whether it later disappeared anyway. And
they literally just cut cables and stuff. I mean, it seemed like they made a
really hasty exit after Mrs. Truman’s death.
SHAVER: Did you talk to Bob Lockwood much and get any impressions from him,
especially when you hired him to mow the lawn?
RICHTER: He was very tight-lipped to me. It was sort of like he was observing the
code of silence of the Secret Service or whatever. I mean, he would talk a
bit about his role in cutting grass, but he didn’t have much to say about
overall operations inside or whatever. Although I do think he was the one,
or at least he told me about them eventually spending the night inside the
home, and thereby sort of beating up the sofa that’s in the living room. And
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of course we all would talk about the beat-up sofa being this homely touch
of the Trumans, and maybe Mrs. Truman would have been appalled to have
had the lumpy sofa in that condition.
WILLIAMS: Did he ever discuss the Trumans’ attitude toward the Secret Service in
general?
RICHTER: You know, not directly. As I said, he was pretty tight-lipped with me,
unless we were talking about mowing the grass.
SHAVER: What brought you to hire this former Secret Service chief──
RICHTER: Well, it’s real simple: the former experience. I mean, he had experience
going for him. [chuckling] I actually hired somebody else for the first
lawn-mowing. Several civic leaders, including the Junior Service League,
wanted to have a ceremony to honor Senator Eagleton for his role in, quote,
“saving the home,” unquote, as far as getting the park service to take it and
everything. And so before that ceremony, I arranged for just a local . . . I
almost literally looked through the yellow pages for a lawn-mowing man.
And they did an okay job, but in fact the guy, I think, didn’t want to ever do
it again, because the bid he gave me was way under the amount of time it
took to mow all that grass. So, after that I went and looked up Mr.
Lockwood, and he was agreeable to taking it on for a while, particularly
with his son working for Mr. Lockwood. And then later on we had the Dan
Cortes Lawn Mowing Service, and Antioch Lawn Mowing Service after
that, and then we went back to Dan Cortes, and we’ve had a whole series of
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lawn-mowing situations.
SHAVER: But he was faithful to it?
RICHTER: For whatever reason. I think it was mainly this aspect it was a way for his
son to earn some money and everything.
SHAVER: Oh, so it was really his son that was doing it?
RICHTER: They worked together as a team, but I think the money ended up in his
son’s pocket.
SHAVER: Okay. I never realized that.
WILLIAMS: Well, back to the home. From the dining room you go into the foyer.
RICHTER: Well, there we would certainly talk about the more formal side of the
Trumans’ life, which obviously it looked very formal. Everybody would be
stretching their necks to look up the staircase, and be very disappointed that
we weren’t going up the staircase. My point of view, I really hope someday
that there is a way to show the upstairs, because I think it would give a
more balanced view of the Trumans’ lifestyle. Because the upstairs in
many ways is a more informal part of their way of life, and I do think it
would balance it because a lot of that downstairs is a very formal look. The
parlor, very formal.
Sometimes I’d talk about the LBJ photographs. Of course,
probably as other people have said, when Mrs. Daniel visits there are
certain treatments to the home. She came in on one of her visits and said
that her dad didn’t like President Johnson that much and took away some of
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the photographs. Because there are several photographs of President
Johnson on the piano.
It was a good opportunity there to talk about again the extended
family. Parts of that parlor and the living room go back to the old days
when Madge Gates Wallace was in charge of the home. Sometimes I
would talk about Margaret being disappointed with the piano when she was
expecting the train set, that story. Perhaps that’s been a bit overblown. I
would try, though, to put some chills up people’s spine by saying, “Imagine
the president sitting there and playing the piano.” And of course they’d all
say, “Oh, the ‘Missouri Waltz’!” And then I’d say, “Well, you know, he
didn’t really care for that tune, but he was too polite not to play it if asked,”
and that sort of thing. And in the living room, you know, I would play
again on the idea of “Think of the Trumans sitting in those chairs and
receiving guests, or else Mrs. Truman going through her mail in her later
years in that one particular chair.” So what particular legend . . .
Oh, and of course the hat and the coat being the climax to the visit.
As you probably have heard from Steve Harrison, we’ve always wondered
if the hat doesn’t have any kind of sweat stains inside of it as to . . .
WILLIAMS: Well, television watching? Some people say she watched baseball,
wrestling matches, the Olympics, all sorts of different──
RICHTER: Well, and also I heard one story that she got up real early in the morning to
watch Prince Charles’s wedding─this was in her later years. My
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understanding was that she was quite a fan of TV, and then the story is Mr.
Truman would only watch the news and public affairs events. Or if there
was something where their daughter was on television, they’d be sure to
watch that.
WILLIAMS: Well, once the home opened, what were your major projects and problems
as the chief ranger the next three and a half years?
RICHTER: Well, I spent a lot of time, as all chief rangers do, with a never-ending flow
of paperwork and reports. A lot of it had to do just with . . . We had an
adequate budget in order to do business. As I said before, it was really done
on a shoestring, in terms that if one ranger was sick or on annual leave it
was pretty tight sailing down there. As I said before, I spent a lot of my
time just with coordinating visiting with these cooperating people. I spent a
lot of time downstairs, particularly that first year it was an all-volunteer
force. Genrose Welch, who was the original person in charge downstairs,
hired by the Jackson County Historical Society, had some difficulties with
her job and eventually was dismissed, which caused a great kind of turmoil.
I spent a lot of time . . . There were a lot of pros and cons about the
shuttle. I mean, there were a lot of complaints or shuttles not . . . individual
drivers. The overall management was okay, the scheme of things was okay,
but those day-to-day problems usually fell into my lap. The superintendent
expected me to resolve things that he perceived as being problems quite
quickly. There was a lot, as I said before, a lot of standard operating
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procedures as a new park, doing research for exhibits, or else directing the
work of other permanent rangers in doing research.
One project that I never saw to completion that Mr. Shaver
remembers was doing sort of a “statement of condition” of the surrounding
neighborhood homes and everything, sort of for documentary purposes. A
“statement for interpretation,” which became real in vogue there by the end
of my time at the Truman home, that every park needed a “statement for
interpretation” to document the plan of action for interpretive services. It’s
real strange. I was very busy there. It’s hard to give you an itemized list of
everything. I spent a lot of time working with the curator on different . . .
either projects or else concerns that Steve would have, working with the
two facility management specialists and their . . . getting things fixed.
There would be some wear and tear on door handles and . . .
WILLIAMS: We haven’t talked much about the facility managers. How did you get
along with the two, Skip Brooks and Mike Healy?
RICHTER: Well, they each had their talents. I mean, I think Skip certainly was the
right man for the job to get things underway, and particularly he was
magnificent in working with the large contract, the rehab of the outside of
the home. He had had an experience previously as an interpreter, so I think
he understood our point of view on things. He learned a lot in the process
here. I remember when he arrived he was ready to put, as code would have
required, neon exit signs for fire and safety in the home, and a few of those
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things. So it was sort of an educational process to compromise on those
sort of things so that we kept the integrity of the home’s experience, and yet
we weren’t neglecting the safety of the visitors and of the home itself.
Certainly I did have occasion to work with Skip and Dink Watskey’s flower
gardening arrangement and so forth. And certainly Skip, it’s to his credit,
we wouldn’t have the rose bed the way it is today [chuckling] without Skip
having been there working with Dink.
WILLIAMS: Did Dink come out of the blue as a volunteer?
RICHTER: As I recall, he came by way of Lisa Bosso’s father. There was some kind
of . . . Or wait, again memory is sort of failing me. It was either Lisa
Bosso’s father, or it could have been Warren Orville at the Truman Library.
There was some connection there that either of those two gentlemen knew
Dink and set him in the right direction to contact the park. As I recall, I
think it was a direct contact to Skip, from Dink to Skip, and then they got
Norm’s blessing for the project.
WILLIAMS: And as chief of interpretation, you had no objections?
RICHTER: I was leery [chuckling] about the overall result, because I was concerned
about the color of the roses. I would like to have seen them kept more their
. . . whatever documentation we did have from Mrs. Wallace or whoever
about the color of the roses. And if indeed in the later Truman years they
didn’t have any problem with the roses being planted helter-skelter, I would
like to have seen them planted helter-skelter. So I did have mixed feelings.
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Because, as a world-famous rose expert, Mr. Watskey took good care of
the roses, and much at a greater level of care than they would have received
by Reverend Hobby or other people tending the grounds. On the other
hand, I think it was important that there was a rose bed of some sort. If the
choice was either Dink’s rose bed or no rose bed at all, then I would vote
for Dink Watskey’s rose bed.
WILLIAMS: Did the exterior restoration pose any problems for your division?
RICHTER: Well, actually, you should come to Charleston, South Carolina, and the
National Association for Interpretation’s annual meeting. I’ll be giving a
program on how to cope with a major rehab of your primary resource. We
worked around that. Fortunately, most of their work was done on the
outside of the home, and we used it as a really good opportunity to promote
historic preservation and explain to visitors the correct way to do such a
project. We basically interpreted the project while it was in progress. We
sometimes lost access to one of the porches and so had to reroute the
visitors to get around that. But that’s where Skip was so good. I mean, he
worked real closely with me, and we just worked as a team on providing
visitor services while that project was going on.
WILLIAMS: You said that the two facility managers were different. How was Mike
Healy different?
RICHTER: Well, Mike was more of a traditional maintenance person, in that he came
up through the ranks of maintenance. In some ways he liked to chew the fat
105
a little more. I think again it was just the climate of the times: Skip had so
much of a workload that he wanted to just get the stuff done and not really
spend a lot of time deciding or chewing the fat on what should happen.
Mike Healy’s role was more of a traditional maintenance role, in that the
major rehab work had been done and it was more a sense of keeping the
home up to the condition that it was after the rehab job. Mike had to deal
more with the state of the rehab of the ticket center, the Eastern National
project, but I thoroughly enjoyed working with Mike. You know, if
anything, with Mike I had to deal . . . When I would be alerted, the
superintendent would alert me to a problem that he saw in the visitor center
or down at the home, or mostly in the visitor center, and I would work with
Mike on correcting it. I would say, if anything, I had a more day-to-day
contact with Mike than I did with Skip, Skip dealing more with contractors.
WILLIAMS: Did visitor comments and complaints come under your supervision?
RICHTER: Oh, did they ever.
WILLIAMS: What were some of those in the first year?
RICHTER: Well, particularly that first year when many days we would be out of tickets
by eleven o’clock or 11:30 in the morning. As with most national parks, we
tried to resolve complaints at the lowest level of authority so as not to
reinforce to the visitor how important . . . that their grievance was very
justified. If you bring the superintendent in at the very beginning of a
complaint, that just reinforces the idea that it’s a very important, unusual
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complaint. The complaints were primarily the fact that we were either out
of tickets or else we were inconveniencing people by too long of a wait.
People complained about inadequate signs. They didn’t understand why
they couldn’t get their tickets at the Truman Library. They would have
some complaints against staff members, particularly the shuttle bus drivers.
Occasionally a complaint about someone in the ticket center or a ranger at
the home, not very often; usually it was shuttle bus drivers.
WILLIAMS: Did these comments and complaints have any major effect on management
policies?
RICHTER: We tended to hold the line. I mean, as I say, we did experiment with even
one extra person on the tours, and decided afterwards by unanimous verdict
of the interpreters unanimous verdict of the interpreters that it wasn’t a
good idea. The, uh, shuttle bus drivers, it was just a matter of me
spending a lot of time with the various managers of the shuttle bus
system. And they basically were trained to be drivers. Their forte’ was
really not customer relations and as a result we would have hurt feelings.
WILLIAMS: Take a break.
[End #4128B; Begin #4128C]
WILLIAMS: We were talking about visitor complaints, I believe?
RICHTER: Right. There would be a few complaints about how people were treated at
the Truman Library, and again it’s always with such hearsay, it was really
tough to resolve the complaints. Whenever you deal with a volunteer staff,
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particularly one that works . . . most of our volunteers would work, at most,
one day a week, it’s a bit difficult to keep up the quality of the standards.
So some of the complaints would be directed towards them. But on the
other hand, we had some excellent volunteers─some of which I understand
are still here to this day─true-blue, quality people.
I’d say the majority of the complaints were either because the
tickets were out, there was a long wait, or this business that they would go
to the Truman Library first, because that’s where the signs from the
interstate directed them. They would spend time enjoying the Truman
Library, then realize they had to get tickets for the home, and then they
would say, “Well, we could have gotten our tickets first and been enjoying
the library second.” Then we’d say, “Well, that’s what we try to get people
to do.”
WILLIAMS: What was the rationale behind requiring people to come in and sign,
everyone had to be there?
RICHTER: Well, first of all, we did have some fear at the very beginning that there
would be ticket scalping going on, or else at least a tour broker could come
in and just say, “Okay, I want 256 tickets.” And if we didn’t have a system,
what could we do but give them to him? We did want visitors to get the
experience of the slide show. We felt very strongly at that time that the
slide show was an important event to see before the tour, and it would set
the stage for the home tour, and it would also enable the interpreter not to
108
have to start from scratch about the Truman story. But it was primarily just
sort of to make the system as fair as possible for everybody, so again you
didn’t have somebody run in and bag twenty tickets and go running out the
door and maybe distribute them down the street.
SHAVER: As you recall, originally there was always some intention to have the ticket
center downtown away from the house. Is that the way you recall it? Or
were they going to have it at the─
RICHTER: Well, actually, when we were going to have the funeral home as our site,
there was some discussion about having the tickets distributed out of the
funeral home, as I recall. That was just a momentary thought, but then very
quickly we thought of having the ticket center downtown. And then
certainly once we were all going to be down there, then certainly we were
going to have the ticket center downtown. But my memory, for a short
while we thought of having the tickets come out of the funeral home,
around the corner. It’s very hazy to me. I mean, even thinking maybe of
working out a relationship with the RLDS parking lots, and having people
park over in the RLDS parking lots.
WILLIAMS: Since you mention that, was there a little bit of controversy with the
Mormon and RLDS churches, as far as neighborhood preservation also?
RICHTER: Well, as you can see this day, as far as what’s happened in other areas of
Independence with the expansion for the temple, the RLDS temple, when I
first arrived, there were some feelers that went out to me by way of, I think,
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Bill Bullard, the RLDS wanted to know if we’d be interested in taking over
the Center Stake Building as headquarters and a museum or whatever. And
again we were a bit concerned about the future of that building, because of
course we would like it to stay as it was and not have it be changed or torn
down or whatever. The building around the corner, that for a while was
owned by Park College─I don’t know who owns it now─we were
concerned about its fate, again because it’s a major dominating feature on
the urban landscape, you might say.
SHAVER: It’s William Chrisman High School, the old one.
RICHTER: Yeah, the old William Chrisman High School. We at one time, and I don’t
know if this is going to materialize or not, when the Reorganized Church
first put up their idea of having the great temple actually being built, they
were talking about a mall going all the way down to Truman Road and
taking out the houses that would have been just one block to the west. And
I know that that made Norm and me nervous because that would be getting
very close then to the immediate area of the Truman neighborhood. And
there was some talk of relocating Lexington Avenue and relocating the
street scheme of things to accommodate the new temple, so I know that that
was a complaint Reverend Hughes had that the preservationists always
focused on the Baptist church as being anti-preservationist. And he says,
“Well, what about our friends over at the RLDS?”
And even the Latter Day Saints after I had first arrived . . . When I
110
first arrived, there was still a sanctuary standing that had been the very first
Latter Day Saints sanctuary. In fact, their president at that time had served
time at that very center. Anyway, it had fallen into disrepair and was torn
down, I think the first year I was there, in ’83. So is that what you were
referring to?
WILLIAMS: Was that as an immediate threat as the Baptist church?
RICHTER: No, long-term. I mean, we were a little more nervous in terms of the longterm
effects.
WILLIAMS: You didn’t get embroiled in public meetings and controversies?
RICHTER: Nothing like that.
WILLIAMS: You mentioned the slide program, and I’ve always wondered, since it
seems to be such a well received program, who actually wrote it.
RICHTER: Well, I’m glad you asked that question.
WILLIAMS: I always assumed that you did.
RICHTER: Well, it was a very fortunate chain of events. I had been selected for a
training course at the Mather Training Center, which is just a stone’s throw
away from the Harpers Ferry Design Center, where a lady named Shirley
Wilt worked. She was another one that just really loved Truman. She was
of that generation and was really anxious to be involved in the Truman
home project. So, in January of ’84 I knew I was going back to Harpers
Ferry, and so I worked with Shirley, and what we arranged was that I would
stay a couple of days after. The training course was a Monday-through111
Friday course. I would stay through Tuesday or Wednesday, as I recall, and
work with both Shirley on the audiovisual program and with an editor
named Jane Hanna on the brochure that we wanted to be designed. So,
coming to Harpers Ferry, I first of all took all kinds, mass quantities of
slides that I could think of, and also took along prints of photographs,
historic photographs that I thought would be appropriate, and came up with
a script. The photographs pretty much came out the way I had selected
them. Shirley sort of had the last word on that, but pretty much as I had
come up with sort of a story line, we went with that. Shirley took my script,
as far as the narration, and changed it a bit. So I mean it certainly was a
team effort. I mean, I cannot claim to be the sole person behind that show,
but it certainly was a team effort. One of those things very quickly, I mean,
as I say, literally in just a couple of days Shirley and I had the script and
pretty much the story line worked out, and also made arrangements for Tom
Gray, who is a photographer at Harpers Ferry, to come out and do some
slide work for some other slides for use in the slide program. Basically, my
kind of amateur slides at least gave her an idea of the potential and sort of
camera angles and everything, and then she gave Tom Gray some
instructions on some additional work and more professional quality.
WILLIAMS: And then she chose the music and the narrator and all of that?
RICHTER: Right. Yeah, that was all done back at Harpers Ferry.
WILLIAMS: And you say the finished product─
112
RICHTER: And please don’t ask me the name of the narrator, which everyone asks me,
and I kept . . . I called her a couple of different times, wrote down the
name, and then promptly lost it, so please don’t ask me. Hopefully,
someday we will have it enshrined somewhere where we’ll always know.
He had been used on many projects.
SHAVER: Did you have the site bulletin . . . Did you have the four-color site bulletin
on site when you opened up?
RICHTER: Well, no. You did have to ask me that, didn’t you? That was the one
disappointment, that that project did drag on quite a bit. It was almost a full
year later before we got our finished product. The production schedule at
Harpers Ferry is very tight, and we were like an add-on into that production
schedule, and we kept getting kicked backwards. And to be honest, until
the actual opening of the home, we had a lot of leverage saying, “We’ve got
to have this by the time the home opens.” Well, when we missed that
opening on the brochure, then we lost a lot of clout about “We need it just
this instant.” And there was also some problems, in that a lot of the . . . I
did write a lot of the copy, but then also did Jane Hanna, and some of it we
weren’t too pleased with and we wanted it rewritten. I rewrote most of the
captions below the little tiny photographs that are in there, because they
started out being pretty inadequate. So things went back and forth, and that
dragged things out also.
WILLIAMS: In your division originally there was a lead park technician, and we’ve
113
talked a little bit about Palma.
RICHTER: That’s correct.
WILLIAMS: But that position no longer exists.
RICHTER: Yeah, for a while it even got stronger. She took on more of a supervisory
role of front-line supervision at the home, because it was . . . at least while I
was there at the very beginning when we were still doing a lot of these
paperwork kind of exercises, operations plans. And also in a new operation
there was more time being spent with the cooperating agencies, like the
library and the volunteer force and the shuttle bus system and the Jackson
County Historical Society, and then later on I spent a lot of my time with
Eastern National Park and Monument Association, for a variety of reasons.
WILLIAMS: So was that position envisioned as a temporary position?
RICHTER: Well, see, then by then I left. It was still, I felt, needed when I left. But
then Mr. Reigle and Palma decided that it wasn’t necessary and that the
money would be better spent with more front-line people.
WILLIAMS: When you moved back to Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in 1987 .
. . Right?
RICHTER: Right.
WILLIAMS: Did you feel like you were leaving things unfinished at the Truman home?
RICHTER: No, I thought it was a good time to leave. I did feel I had pretty much
contributed what I was going to contribute there, and that they . . . I think
national parks do need a fresh perspective from time to time, and that it was
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a good time. I just thought things were pretty well in order at that time. I
thought the visitor services was pretty solid. The Eastern National
operation had gone through a lot of hard times, but I felt it had pretty well
settled down also, that we had a quality selection of sales items. We had .
. . at least the exhibits were on order. Not all the exhibits were in yet, but at
least they were in the finishing processes of being prepared, so I felt it was
an appropriate time.
WILLIAMS: Are there any gaps in the operation of the park now or since then that you
can identify, as more the distant observer?
RICHTER: I’m not sure I’m distant enough yet, you know, because there are still
several personalities . . . Hardly any now, but there still are a few that are
still involved in the project, and in most of my visits I’ve tried to be very
polite and noncommittal.
I’m not sure how the walking tour is doing. I thought that was an
important aspect in our offering to the public, not so much to give visitors
an opportunity to do something while they were waiting for their tour of the
home, but just to make a point about what we see as important of the whole
national landmark district.
And I guess, as I say earlier, I think the one thing that I regret is the
fact that, at least up till now, that we have not been able to implement a key
part of the general management plan, being the neighborhood trust and
ensuring sort of the longevity of the neighborhood.
115
WILLIAMS: Do you think there’s a need for any additional staff in the park?
RICHTER: Well, I guess it all depends on how you’re going to handle the Haukenberry
house and the Wallace homes, and again, I’m not really up-to-date on what
the plans are or how that’s really going to work its way out. Even though
we do have a couple of exhibits at the Truman home ticket center, I see the
need to use one of those homes sort of as a museum. If you think about all
the artifacts that are now down in storage, in curatorial storage, I could see
a never-ending series of special exhibits on life at the home, particularly
until someday in the future when we have the upstairs. And as I said
before, I see that as the other thing, that someday I really think that that’s a
relevant part of a visitor’s experience. Even though the logistics would be
very difficult, it would just really, to me, enhance the overall story of the
Trumans.
WILLIAMS: As a historian, did you ever argue for a historian staff position?
RICHTER: Oh, not myself. Again remember, I was there at the ground floor when I
was more concerned about just getting enough interpreters to do the job
right. Ron Cockrell had done a really fine job, I felt, in the work that he had
done, and so I felt more in terms of having summer historians there, giving
them specific projects. I think the oral history project needs to really be on
the front burner, with a lot of the eyewitnesses departing the scene, that that
needs to be an important focus of park management over there.
And certainly I was glad to see the “historic grounds study and
116
plan” see the light of day. That was a long process, and of course that’s the
most challenging part of interpreting a historic site, that you can’t freeze the
grounds in one certain time period. You can’t stop trees from growing into
bigger trees and that sort of thing.
WILLIAMS: Mike, do you have any other questions?
SHAVER: A capsule summary of some of the folks at the Truman Library that you
dealt with.
RICHTER: A summary?
SHAVER: Well, your impressions of them and how they kind of played a role in the
development of the site, or at least your─
RICHTER: Well, certainly as I said, Dr. Zobrist was a key player, and particularly
when I was there as ranger in charge, you know, a lot of good, solid advice
on sort of the lay of the land, you might say, and the different players in the
community. Liz Safly was just a delight, and of course, with her role with
the inventory and having been in the home, and her longevity as far as
being an Independence resident, she provided a lot of insight. Pat Kerr in
the first few months had a lot of advice also.
SHAVER: What kind of advice?
RICHTER: Well, just more in terms of . . . maybe not so much advice. I take that back,
more . . .
SHAVER: Observations?
RICHTER: Observations maybe. Also her point of view about sort of the history of the
117
home, because again she was the other key person that had been in there
doing the inventory. So her opinions of . . . or not so much opinions, but
her memories of how Mrs. Truman was being cared for and that sort of
thing, or just the way life was at the home in the later years.
The support staff, I couldn’t say enough, you know. The
secretaries, which I consider much more . . . They do much more than a
secretary. They’re more like office managers. Mary Jo Colley, and at that
time Diane Farris worked there. She was tremendous to work with. Vicky
Alexander, who is Dr. Zobrist’s administrative assistant, was totally
supportive when I was there, in terms of support, office support, that sort of
thing.
SHAVER: Mary Jo had worked for Mr. Truman. Did she ever share any of her
reminiscences?
RICHTER: She felt honor-bound not to disclose such things, but she was a secretary to
Mrs. Truman for some years. But she doesn’t want to reveal anything.
SHAVER: So you never got any impressions or insights from her?
RICHTER: Nothing, no. Also, Pauline Testerman, of course, was of great help, the
photo archivist, and certainly a great help to Ron Cockrell. There was a
remarkable collection of photos of the early days, at least mostly of the
exterior of the home.
WILLIAMS: From the attic of the Truman home that the library removed for
safekeeping. [chuckling]
118
RICHTER: That’s right.
SHAVER: Any of the archivists that you remember more than any that played
important roles in things?
RICHTER: Well, John Curry for one, mainly because he had a delegated authority also.
He was sort of a public programming person for Dr. Zobrist. So things like
planning the opening of the home, the dedication ceremony, I worked with
John. There were several times where Dr. Zobrist hosted us to have
planning meetings at the library, or even Norm had a zone meeting of the
superintendents at the library, so John Curry was real helpful in that regard.
Warren Orville, another Independence resident, he provided some
insight into the way the nature of Independence, what makes residents of
Independence tick, you might say. He tried hard to get me to join the Lions
Club, but unfortunately at that time it was a closed society to men only, so I
chose not to join his organization. [tape turned off]
WILLIAMS: You were talking about Warren Orville.
RICHTER: Right.
WILLIAMS: Any others?
RICHTER: Well, the others, I guess, was more in terms of moral support, or else
establishing that climate of just receiving me right away as a colleague, you
know, instead of as an outsider. People like Harry Clark and J.R. [Fuchs]
just went out of their way to be friendly. And Phil Lagerquist, of course, a
great memory. I mean, he goes back to when the documents came out from
119
Washington to Kansas City. And Mary Jo primarily worked for Phil, so
when Mary Jo would do favors for me, of course it was taking away from
her time for Phil, so he was very understanding about that. And Dennis
[Bilger]. I don’t want to forget Dennis, was very friendly and supportive.
And I know I’m forgetting some of them. Again, it’s─
WILLIAMS: There’s Neil Johnson.
RICHTER: Neil was sort of an interesting fellow because he did have a background in
western history, and of course that’s my background, so we sort of had a
kindred interest there in that regard.
WILLIAMS: He has a keen interest in the farm home.
RICHTER: Oh, I see, okay.
WILLIAMS: Would you say that your original impressions of the Trumans and
Independence were from the staff at the library?
RICHTER: Oh, just before I answer that question, I don’t want to forget Irwin, also one
of the other archivists, was also quite, quite friendly and interested in what
we were doing down there. Okay, could you repeat your question?
WILLIAMS: Would you say that your original impressions of Independence and the
Trumans were from the Truman Library staff?
RICHTER: I’d say more or less. I think so. Plus what Andy Ketterson . . . his
impressions over time.
WILLIAMS: And would it have been much more difficult for you to jump right in
without the─
120
RICHTER: I’d say almost impossible.
WILLIAMS: ─people there that actually knew the Trumans?
RICHTER: That would have been just almost impossible, and particularly with the
complexities of Independence and its politics and its different interest
groups, it would have been a pretty tough situation. Although not to slight
the role that Bill Bullard and Pat O’Brien and Sally Schwenk played, and
even Millie Nesbitt. I mean, there was support. I don’t want to say it was
just the Truman Library. I mean, there certainly was some good support
and advice. Basically, I measured and weighed this different advice and
then tried to be as noncommittal as possible until Norm Reigle showed up.
WILLIAMS: I’d like to thank you for your continuing interest in the Truman home.
RICHORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
WITH
THOMAS P. RICHTER
AUGUST 27, 1990
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
INTERVIEWED BY JIM WILLIAMS
ORAL HISTORY #1990-4
This transcript corresponds to audiotapes DAV-AR #4124-4128C
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.
Thomas P. Richter and Jim Williams reviewed the draft of this transcript. Their
corrections were incorporated into this final transcript by Perky Beisel in summer 2000.
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
Thomas P. Richter served as the ranger in charge when the Truman home was transferred to
the National Park Service and was the site’s first chief ranger. He remained at the site until
October 1987, when he moved to an appointment in St. Louis. As chief ranger, Richter was
instrumental in developing the interpretive and administrative processes which continue to
be utilized by the rangers today. Richter provides an in-depth understanding of the problems
and their solutions encountered by the rangers in opening the Truman home to visitors. He
also gives detailed description of park, regional office, library, and Independence city
employees involved in the process.
Persons mentioned: Norman J. Reigle, Bess W. Truman, Jerry Schoeber, Jim L. Dunning, F.
A. “Andy” Ketterson, Jr., Ken Shaeffer, James Watt, Tom Eagleton, John Danforth,
Margaret Truman Daniel, Benedict K. Zobrist, Pat Kerr Dorsey, Elizabeth Safly, Donald H.
Chisholm, Warren Orville, John Kawamoto, Abraham Lincoln, Lee Jamison, Dave Given,
Jim Schack, Jill York O’Bright, Ron Cockrell, Steve Harrison, Ken Smith, Pat O’Brien,
Sarah Hancock, David McCullough, May Wallace, Maud L. Gates Wells, Myra Gates
Wallace, Ardis Haukenberry, John Hughes, Russell Dickinson, Sally Schwenk, Millie
Nesbitt, Molly Hankins, Tom Hankins, Sarah Grebb, Doris Hecker, Randy Pope, Mike
Martin, John Carnes, Barbara Potts, Bill Bullard, Keith Wilson, Al Swift, Palma E. Wilson,
Edward Hobby, Joan Sanders, Jennifer A. Hayes, Sue Kopcyznski, Cindy Ott, Rick Jones,
Brent Schondlemeyer, Charles Odegaard, Tony Gentry, Fran Krupka, Dave Herrera,
Winston Churchill, Grandma Moses, Larry Blake, Gentry Davis, Tom Danton, George
Porterfield Wallace, George Brett, General Dawson, Rufus Burrus, Robert E. Lockwood,
Dan Cortes, Lyndon B. Johnson, Madge Gates Wallace, Prince Charles, Genrose Welch,
Skip Brooks, Mike Healy, Denfred “Dink” Watskey, Shirley Wilt, Jane Hanna, Tom Gray,
Mary Jo Colley, Diane Farris, Vicky Alexander, Pauline Testerman, John Curry, Dennis
Bilger, Warren Hill, Harry Clark, John R. Fuchs, Phillip D. Lagerquist, and Neil Johnson.
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH
THOMAS P. RICHTER
HSTR INTERVIEW #1990-4
JIM WILLIAMS: This interview is with Thomas P. Richter. It’s being conducted in
the conference room of the Old Courthouse, part of Jefferson
National Expansion Memorial National Historic Site in St. Louis,
Missouri, on August 27, 1990. The interviewer is Jim Williams, a
park ranger at Harry S Truman National Historic Site, and also
present is Michael Shaver, museum aide at Harry S Truman
National Historic Site.
First of all, Tom, I’d like for you to go over your experience
with the National Park Service before coming to Harry S Truman.
THOMAS RICHTER: Oh, from the very beginning? [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: From the very beginning.
RICHTER: Well, I started with the park service as a seasonal at Homestead National
Monument way back in 1973, and spent six delightful summers at
Homestead. I became a permanent park ranger “intake trainee,” as they call
it, in November of 1977 here at the Gateway Arch, Jefferson National
Expansion Memorial. And after two years as a trainee, normally we would
then move on to a new park assignment. However, a job came open as
supervisor of the Old Courthouse, so I stayed on as supervisor of the Old
Courthouse from March of 1980 until January of 1983, at which time I
moved on to the Truman home as ranger in charge, as they called it, and
2
served in that capacity until around the 1st of October of 1983, when the
superintendent, Norm Reigle, arrived, and at that point I became the chief
ranger.
WILLIAMS: When did you leave the Truman home?
RICHTER: Well, I left on a temporary assignment in October of 1987, for a threemonth
detail assignment. They were shorthanded. They had lost their chief
of . . . or their chief of interpretation. Their director of visitor services and
their park historian had left, they were very shorthanded, so I was on loan
with them for three months, and that was extended another month, and then
I got the permanent position over here as director of visitor services. So,
essentially I was no longer at the Truman home as of October of ’87.
WILLIAMS: And you are still the director of visitor services here?
RICHTER: To this day. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: How were you first made aware that the Truman home might be transferred
to the National Park Service?
RICHTER: Well, the first I heard was more in the media when I was over here in St.
Louis. I kept hearing some news reports about the situation at the Truman
home after Mrs. Truman’s death. And late in December, the superintendent
here let me know that I was being considered for the ranger in charge job,
and wasn’t officially appointed until very early in the New Year. I had just
come back from my Christmas vacation, and I can’t remember the exact
date, but it was in about mid-January of 1983 that I went over to the
3
Truman home for the first time.
WILLIAMS: What was your reaction to the possibility of the Truman home being
accepted into the park system?
RICHTER: Well, it was just overwhelming, the potential for the site, with the fact of so
much of the furnishings being intact, that you immediately could
understand how it could give a really quality experience about the
personality of a President of the United States, to give visitors a personal
glimpse into the life of one particular president. And as a historian also, I
saw a great value just in the fact that the home itself was sort of a time
capsule of 1950s culture, which in years to come is therein enough to, I
think, merit it being included in the national system of the National Park
Service.
WILLIAMS: So did you actively campaign or promote yourself for this position at the
Truman home?
RICHTER: Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. I would be candid that the superintendent, Jerry
Schoeber here at Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, was suggesting
me for that role to the regional director, who at that time was Jim Dunning
in Omaha at the Midwest Regional Office.
WILLIAMS: Did you know Dunning before?
RICHTER: Only had met him a couple of times in different times that he’d come down
here to St. Louis to superintendents’ conferences and that sort of thing.
WILLIAMS: So you didn’t get the job by applying or responding to a vacancy
4
announcement?
RICHTER: Well, no, it was called a “directed reassignment,” because it was a GS-9
that I was here to a GS-9 over there. As they explained to me, they needed
somebody over there in a hurry, that up till January . . . Mrs. Truman had
passed away in October and there had been that period where there was sort
of a . . . the question of ownership of the property was a little bit hazy,
whether to the National Archives or the National Park Service. So, for that
period from late October until January, Andy Ketterson, who is the chief of
cultural resources in the regional office in Omaha, was looking after things
sort of by long distance, or sort of by shuttle management. He would come
down periodically. Once, in December, after December 8th when the
Secretary of Interior did issue a proclamation proclaiming the site as a
national historic site, Andy came down and did such things as putting the
utilities in the name of the National Park Service and that sort of thing, and
he kept in touch with the regional director. But as I say, they were anxious
to get somebody in there on site very quickly. As I recall, it was about
eleven days from when I was officially offered the position until I was there
on site.
WILLIAMS: Did you understand this to be a temporary or a permanent position?
RICHTER: It was proposed to me as a permanent position. It wasn’t a loan type of
situation. I remember a conference call with me and Superintendent
Schoeber with Ken Shaeffer, who at that time was the assistant chief of
5
personnel in the regional office, and I remember that came up, whether it
was going to be a temporary or a permanent reassignment, and it was
decided it would be a permanent situation.
WILLIAMS: So once the park superintendent came into the park, you didn’t have to
apply for the chief ranger job in a competitive—
RICHTER: Again, because of it being a nine to a nine situation, Mr. Reigle called up .
. . As soon as he had been offered the position, then he called me an hour
or two later and did ask if I’d be interested in staying on as the chief ranger.
WILLIAMS: So you knew you would be there in some capacity for a while?
RICHTER: Right. It was a little hazy. I knew that it was going to be a permanent
reassignment in that I wouldn’t be going back to St. Louis. It was a little
hazy what would happen once the superintendent arrived and everything.
WILLIAMS: What is your understanding of the designation of the site by Secretary Watt
in December of ’82? Do you have any knowledge of how that came to be?
RICHTER: Oh, mostly by hearsay, I guess. I certainly wasn’t involved in any of that at
that time. I did understand there was a problem in the way the will had
been written. The will had granted the home to the Chief Archivist of the
United States, and the National Archives was hesitant to take on the project,
I think recognizing they have rather limited expertise in managing such
historic sites, outside of maybe the Eisenhower home in Abilene, and I
think, what I understood—it was more by hearsay—just the enormous cost
of renovation and rehabilitation and then operating the site, that they
6
quickly thought of the National Park Service as a likely recipient of the
property. Again, what I understood, then there was negotiations between
the executor of the will and the National Archives, which at that time was
part of General Services Administration, and the Department of Interior
representing the National Park Service. And out of that resulted the
December 8, 1982, proclamation that Secretary Watt proclaimed.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever hear of any reluctance on his part to accept the Truman home?
RICHTER: Well, I do recall one story, again it’s sort of by hearsay. I remember
Superintendent Reigle telling me that he had heard that there was a bit of
reluctance, and it was basically poor staff work, that when they gave
Secretary Watt a presentation on the situation, the staff people showed him
a map of the entire national landmark district, which included several
square blocks of private homes and so forth, and the secretary was not
willing to take on boundaries of that magnitude, and that that was part of
the reluctance, at least the stories that came out that we were reluctant to,
and a good example of how your staff can sometimes get you into
predicaments.
WILLIAMS: Before your selection and then movement to Independence, you’ve already
mentioned some things, but what other things had the National Park Service
done in the roughly month or so, in December and early January?
RICHTER: Well, they put on a new lock system. They also purchased a set of plastic
runners, to walk through the home, and with the theory that that would then
7
protect the flooring and everything. That was rather ironic because later on
the upstairs where the floors were not covered with carpeting, it turned out
these plastic runners, they had a little gripper, almost like little teeth
underneath, and they actually damaged the finish on the wood floors on the
second story. As I recall, Andy . . . basically it was through some lumber
company or something that he ordered these runners. It was rather curious
that he also paid for installation. Because I remember later on giving a
guided tour of the Truman home and somebody said, “Oh, I’d been in real
early on because I was in charge of putting down the runners.”
One of the controversies was the question of security of the home
during this time period where there was a debate as to where the home was
going to go, whether to the park service or the presidential library system.
And at that time, what I understood, the executor of the will had just . . .
was using the services of a rental security company, where they were not
even inside the home. The rental security man would sit in a car in the
driveway next to the garage, and that was the extent of the security of the
home. So that was one thing. Once things were settled with the
proclamation in December, Andy established an agreement with the Federal
Protective Service to station guards twenty-four hours a day in the home,
with the understanding that the National Park Service would reimburse the
Federal Protective Service for that. Most of it was overtime work that the
Federal Protective Officers were doing.
8
One ironic thing, later on the executor of the will submitted a bill
for this rental security man, and as I recall, someone in the Missouri
delegation, I can’t remember if it was Senator Eagleton or Danforth, put
through a rider to the appropriation bill for the park service to reimburse
this security agent, or reimburse the executor of the will.
WILLIAMS: So that was done by reimbursement?
RICHTER: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Before the December proclamation, are you aware of any activity in the
home by family members or Truman Library people?
RICHTER: My understanding is that the Truman Library, particularly their curator, had
been in the home. They had been on a long-term project of inventorying all
the objects in the home, and also, by the request of Mrs. Margaret Truman
Daniel, had taken some valuable objects out of the home for, quote,
“safekeeping.” There had been charges that the nurses taking care of Mrs.
Truman in the last days had been suspected of stealing things, and so Mrs.
Daniel worked out an arrangement with the director of the library, Dr.
Zobrist. The idea of the inventory, they’d then be able to more carefully
document if anything were to turn up missing. And my understanding was
that that went on even after Mrs. Truman’s death in October.
Now, they very carefully orchestrated things when Mrs. Truman
was alive so she didn’t know what was going on. They would work out
with the nurses where Mrs. Truman would be that day, so they would work
9
in a different . . . Say, if they were going to be working documenting what
was in the study, then they would have Mrs. Truman out on the back porch
or out in the living room, or somewhere where she wouldn’t realize what
was going on. The two staff members that were involved in this were Pat
Kerr and Elizabeth Safly.
WILLIAMS: Was there any other activity that you were aware of in that two and a half
months?
RICHTER: I do remember one thing that happened that did pose a bit of a dilemma for
us later on in terms of interpretation. In Mrs. Truman’s illness, they had her
in the downstairs bedroom, which had basically been set up like a hospital
room. They had a hospital bed and other such furniture for her to be
attended at home. After her death and, as I understand it, before the funeral,
the Library staff first of all arranged to have the medical facilities and
everything taken out, and then they moved down a bed or furniture from the
upstairs, and the question was in terms of documenting what furniture was
there before the illness. It seems like they brought the wrong bed or a
different bed down from the attic than had been up there to begin with, so
that was another bit of activity that happened. Also, my understanding was
that at the funeral Mrs. Daniel did stay at the home. I remember one
conversation with Dr. Zobrist where she took one last look around and
departed after the funeral.
WILLIAMS: Who was so-called in charge of the home before the park service assumed
10
control?
RICHTER: It’s sort of a hazy situation. I can’t recall the name of the gentleman who
was with a bank in Kansas who was the executor of the will.
MICHAEL SHAVER: Donald Chisholm?
RICHTER: Donald Chisholm rings a bell, yes. [chuckling] Yes, Don Chisholm.
Because I remember the first trip I made over there with Superintendent
Schoeber and Mr. Dunning and Andy Ketterson. We did have a meeting
with Don Chisholm downtown in Kansas City.
WILLIAMS: When was that?
RICHTER: That was very early in January. Basically, the scenario, I came back from
my Christmas vacation, and shortly, just a few days into January, they made
me an offer of this position. And just a couple of days later then,
Superintendent Schoeber and I flew over for the day to Kansas City, then
out to Independence, and we met with Dr. Zobrist. There was a news
conference arranged at the Truman Library where Mr. Dunning announced
what was going to happen, as far as I was going to be there and that they
would be advertising for a superintendent and that sort of thing. And after
that news conference . . . Oh, and of course that was my first vision of the
home then, too. We got to see the home, and then we did go downtown to
talk with Mr. Chisholm.
SHAVER: Do you remember the topics of the meeting or the subject of the meeting?
RICHTER: Well, I do remember actually even that early on Mr. Chisholm brought up
11
that idea about being reimbursed for the guard service. And at that time the
will had not gone through probate or anything, although Mr. Chisholm
stressed that in the law of Missouri that the will takes effect immediately
with the death of the person, and so that was another reason for the urgency
of figuring out what was going to happen between the Truman Library or
the National Archives and the National Park Service because of that quirk
in the law of Missouri.
WILLIAMS: What was your first impression of Benedict Zobrist?
RICHTER: Well, he was very enthusiastic. I remember our first meeting with him up
in his office. I remember he was really tickled. I came in my uniform that
day, and he reacted as if the cavalry had arrived or whatever. He seemed
very genuinely interested in giving us all the cooperation that we needed.
He had already offered, and Mr. Ketterson accepted, a space for an office
for me there right at the library, and secretarial help, free use of the copy
machine, which as a good bureaucrat I made a lot of use of. He was
enthusiastic early even in that first meeting about developing a joint
operation where the whole Truman story could be told between a visit to
the library and museum, a visit to the home, and a visit to the county
courthouse in Independence’s town square where they have “The Man from
Independence” audiovisual program. I remember even at that meeting he
brought up he was involved even at that time in the restoration of the
Truman farm home, which he also thought had a lot of merit as part of the
12
whole story, and he was enthusiastic about the fact that, as he told us, he felt
it was the most unique opportunity he knew of for a visitor to get a
complete experience of a president’s life and career and everything within a
small area of just a few miles. And as I say, he was very gracious about
welcoming me to the library from the very beginning.
WILLIAMS: It was his idea then for the park service to use a little bit of the Truman
Library for office space?
RICHTER: I would imagine it was sort of a . . . My understanding was that he offered
it to Mr. Ketterson.
WILLIAMS: Ketterson didn’t ask for it?
RICHTER: I don’t know. I don’t know really the fine points of that. I do know that by
the time of that first arrival I made in January the office was already cleared
out, an archivist by the name of Warren Orville was moved down the hall to
share an office with another archivist, and that things were ready to go.
WILLIAMS: So you actually displaced a member of the Truman Library staff.
RICHTER: I wouldn’t say displaced. He had to share an office with somebody else as
a result of that.
WILLIAMS: Well, you said you also went to the home that day for the first time.
RICHTER: Right.
WILLIAMS: What was your impression of the home?
RICHTER: I think the initial impression was the . . . Well, actually, to be honest, the
first impression was that it wasn’t as large on the inside as it seemed from
13
the outside, even at that point. I immediately began thinking of ways to
show the home, in terms of a tour and everything, but I guess I was almost
stunned by the complete nature of the furnishings. It truly did seem as if the
Trumans were still there and perhaps were out on a walk or so forth. And I
think the quality of this time capsule of the 1950s, I think even at that point,
sort of grabbed my attention also, and the fact that, as many people have
said, it reminds them of their grandparents’ house or whatever.
WILLIAMS: Well, if this job wasn’t really a promotion as far as the grade scale goes,
why did you accept the job?
RICHTER: Well, I have as a career goal to become a manager in the National Park
Service, and as ranger in charge, I could see it as giving me a lot of valuable
experience. Particularly being there by myself, it was going to require a lot
of decision making. Also, the opportunity to be in at the ground floor of
establishing a visitor services program for a national park site is almost a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Also, as I said, I just have an interest in sort
of the overall picture of park service operations, and as a historian I
particularly relish the opportunity to set a really excellent historic site off in
the right direction.
WILLIAMS: You’ve mentioned Andy Ketterson several times so far. Was he the main
contact with the Midwest Regional Office?
RICHTER: Well, once I was established there . . . Up until I arrived, he pretty much, as
I said, had been authorized by the regional director to manage the site.
14
When I arrived, I did most of my business either through Mr. Schoeber or
with regional office staff, not necessarily just Mr. Ketterson but sometimes
just with the regional director, or John Kawamoto took a particular interest
in the site also.
WILLIAMS: What was his position?
RICHTER: He was an associate regional director for cultural resources, historic
preservation, and maintenance. And planning. He had planning under his
area also.
SHAVER: Do you have any idea what may have been the source of his interest? I’ve
heard it referred to several times by other staff members, but what’s your
interpretation of what made John pay some interest in the site?
RICHTER: Well, I don’t know. I wouldn’t really want to speculate on that. I mean, he
certainly has a deep interest in cultural resources. He and Mr. Ketterson
many times said that this was a golden opportunity to demonstrate the
proper sequence of events in establishing and rehabilitating a historic site.
And many times, as I say, it’s a chance to do it right the first time. Mr.
Kawamoto seemed to have a particular interest in the whole Truman story
and so forth. I know at one time he made some comment to the effect that
he particularly admired Truman because he came back to his neighborhood
and his old home, unlike others like Abraham Lincoln. [chuckling] Well,
unfortunately Mr. Lincoln didn’t have much choice in the matter.
WILLIAMS: He went back to his hometown.
15
RICHTER: That’s right.
WILLIAMS: Were there any other regional office people actively involved in the first
phase?
RICHTER: Well, there were quite a few. From the very beginning, one thing very
quickly, you asked about initial impressions. Well, quickly I had an
impression of the state of disrepair of the home, particularly the roof. There
were some severe leaks in the roof, not so much the main roof but some of
the side roofs, the flat roofs over some of the porches. So I quickly got to
know a gentleman by the name of Lee Jamieson, who is a restoration
specialist who worked under Andy Ketterson. He had to make several trips
to the home. In fact, as I recall now, he also came down on that same visit
where Mr. Schoeber and I came over and Jim Dunning and Andy Ketterson
and Lee Jamieson all came down from region for the day. Anyway, as I
was saying, Lee Jamieson had to spend several trips coming down to make
some emergency repairs on the roof. Also, Dave Given, who was in the
planning division under Mr. Kawamoto, made many visits. Together we
prepared the first statement for management for the site. Jim Schack in
interpretation showed a special interest in the site. I think we had the
advantage that we were only a three-hour drive or a quick plane ride down
from Omaha, that it was an extra advantage to be that close to the regional
office. Jill York, who’s now Jill York O’Bright, also paid an interest in the
home. She arranged for Ron Cockrell, who started out, he was a seasonal
16
historian and worked his way into a permanent position in the regional
office. He did a lot of work on the history of the Trumans in Independence
and the history of the home. Andy Ketterson was interested very quickly in
getting the ball rolling on the funding and so forth for a historic structures
report on the home, particularly an existing conditions study of how the
home was.
WILLIAMS: How much were the regional office people actually in Independence?
RICHTER: The technical people, the people like Lee Jamieson and some of his cohorts,
Fran Krupka, who was a historic architect, was down there several times.
They spent weeks at a time down, or they would be down for a week and go
back for the weekend, as I said, doing either emergency work or starting to
do preliminary drawings for such things as putting in a new wiring system,
which was a prime concern. The antiquated electrical wiring system was an
old knob-and-tube-style electrical system with many splices. Ironically, in
Independence, the city code, knob and tube is okay as long as it’s not
spliced. Well, there were many splices in the electrical system.
WILLIAMS: You said Lee Jamieson actually fixed the roof himself?
RICHTER: He made some repairs. If the truth be known, there was one occasion
where he even talked me through. I was up on the roof one time with a
bucket of tar trying to patch things up until he could get down the next day.
And we did continue . . . Even after I arrived, we continued with this
arrangement of twenty-four-hour guarding of the home with the Federal
17
Protective Service. Eventually, by March or so, we had then negotiated a
contract for a contracted guard service in which the Federal Protective
Service would make periodic inspections of each shift of this guard service.
WILLIAMS: And these were temporary repairs, I assume?
RICHTER: At the very beginning, yes. Simply trying to stop particularly the leaks in
the roof.
WILLIAMS: Was there any damage to the interior of the home?
RICHTER: The most severe case was in the downstairs bathroom where a lot of the
wallpapering had flaked off. Also, a lot of the bathroom tile had come off
in that room. That really was the real troublesome area.
[End #4124; Begin #4125]
RICHTER: Oh, you were asking about early activity in the home even before I arrived
or after Mrs. Truman’s death. I did remember also that they had somebody
from the fire department in to inspect the home. As I say, they were the
ones that pointed out the inadequate electrical system, particularly when
they saw up in the little sleeping room of the president that they had simply
poked a hole through the wall of one of the other bedrooms and put through
an extension cord and that was the source of power in there. There is a
story that the fire department videotaped the home, which would have been
of great value to the curators to this day. Unfortunately, that videotape has
never seen the light of day. I know that Steve Harrison pursued that angle
but never came up with any verdict of where that videotape ever ended up.
18
WILLIAMS: I hadn’t heard that one before.
SHAVER: Was any particular concern of the wiring due to the result of the unhappy
experience at the Roosevelt home?
RICHTER: Well . . .
SHAVER: The fact that National Park Service people were now in charge?
RICHTER: We were a little concerned in terms that Mrs. Daniel did have a friendship
with some of the Roosevelt children. She was very unfamiliar with the
National Park Service. She was used to dealing with Dr. Zobrist and his
predecessor at the Truman Library. And what we understood, her only
knowledge of the park service was how things had been managed at the
Franklin Roosevelt home, and also the fact that she had a summer home on
Fire Island, and I’m sure she’d had some relationship then with the National
Park Service with the nearby Fire Island National Seashore. So I would say
there was a bit of concern that we certainly wanted to take care of that
wiring. Because I can’t remember the date, but it didn’t seem to have been
too far back before that when they had the fire at the Roosevelt home.
WILLIAMS: I believe you’ve already mentioned some of them, but could you list your
primary concerns in those first few months as the ranger in charge?
RICHTER: Well, I think, besides what I already mentioned, I did have a concern about
the quality of security with this contracted system coming in. I was assured
by the Federal Protective Service that this contractor would be good.
WILLIAMS: Was it?
19
RICHTER: I would say it was marginal. There was one excellent guard during the day
named Ken Smith who took a real interest in the home. In fact, he went so
far as to even water the grass. We had probably the best-kept lawn in
Independence that summer. In fact, Ken went on to even get a job with the
Federal Protective Service. Some of the other guards were not so diligent.
One was discovered one night watching the Truman television set in the
living room. I guess the bottom line is we didn’t have any incidents, as far
as things disappearing or whatever.
Another concern I had from the very beginning was in the form of
public relations in Independence. Independence was not familiar with the
National Park Service. The townspeople probably had an unrealistic
expectation of how quickly we could open the home. There were certain
political interests that felt that the home should be opened real quickly. I
was in an interesting situation, in terms of keeping on an even keel with a
lot of different interest groups in Independence. My marching orders while
I was there by myself were basically not to make any real firm
commitments in terms of policy or what direction we were going to take
with the home, but at the same time to keep friendships or develop
friendships and working relationships with these different interests. These
included such organizations as: the Jackson County Historical Society,
which managed the 1859 Jail and Marshal’s Home Museum in the
downtown area; developing a rapport with the Jackson County people who
20
manage the courthouse audiovisual program, “The Man from
Independence”; also developing a relationship with the city’s historic
preservation officer, Pat O’Brien; of course, working with the mayor and
the city council. Independence, their form of government, the city council
is very independent of the mayor. It’s sort of a weak mayor’s form of
government, so that could become tricky. Sarah Hancock worked for the
city as their tourism director. One city councilwoman in particular, Millie
Nesbitt, was very interested in seeing the home get open as quickly as
possible. A lot of these interest groups were concerned that we work
closely with the city so that in terms of the average visit of somebody to
Independence would not be simply a visit to the Truman Library, a quick
dash to the home, and then they’d be on their way. These different interest
groups were very vocal, and the idea that we come up with a system that
would encourage people to visit the other historic sites of Independence—
stay a little longer, you might say.
And, of course, my relationship with the library, I felt, was very
important. They had been very good, in terms of their hospitality. They
also had their point of view of how things should be run. They envisioned a
very close relationship between us and the library, and again their concept
of visits to the home was probably more in line with almost a joint visit.
The director was always interested in us working out some kind of
arrangement with the farm home, or at least being able to encourage people
21
to go down and visit the farm home.
WILLIAMS: Was there ever any thought at the Truman Library of making our
headquarters or ticket center within the library?
RICHTER: Well, actually, early on I remember one time that the regional director was
down for a visit, Jim Dunning, and he did approach Dr. Zobrist about
having office space—as you say, a headquarters area—within the Truman
Library and even using that as a staging area for a shuttle that would take
visitors then down to the home. One of the initial impressions that every
national park official saw about the home, one of the unique qualities, was
the fact that indeed the old neighborhood was still intact, and a living
neighborhood, and we wanted to come up with a plan that would give
visitors an opportunity to see the home but also not negatively impact the
lives of all our neighbors around there. So from the very beginning we
thought of some sort of a shuttle system to avoid the impact of all the traffic
and parking that would take place down there. And so, as I say, there was
an offer very early on. Dr. Zobrist even showed us to the east wing of the
Truman Library where there was another audiovisual room. It was
designed as a multipurpose room, primarily for use with a school program
operation that most of the time was not being used, and he saw that, and
that was also an alternate entrance to the library museum, and so he at that
time was proposing that we operate out of that end of the building.
WILLIAMS: Why was that option not taken?
22
RICHTER: I think later on perhaps Dr. Zobrist didn’t realize the magnitude of the staff
that would eventually come to the Truman home. And also at that time, by
then Superintendent Norm Reigle had arrived, and in our relationship with
the city we also saw the need to develop some sort of a system that we
would provide visitors the opportunity to see the slide program down at the
courthouse and work with our friends in Independence. Also, there was a
simple probably dollars-and-cents situation. If we were to develop a shuttle
ourselves from the library to the home, we in some way would have to fund
that, either through charging a fee or through large appropriations of money
every year. Well, at one point in conversations with the city officials, they
proposed to establish their own shuttle system for visitors to Independence,
and so we saw that as an opportunity to also save the taxpayers some
money. I would say that basically when we really got down at the library to
looking over office space, they really didn’t have enough office space really
to meet our needs, and so, at the same time, we decided to go more in a
little different direction where we’d be a little closer to the other city
facilities.
WILLIAMS: Was there ever any friction in the early days between the park service and
the library staff?
RICHTER: Well, I would say maybe something minor, like I know that I did use their
copy machine an awful lot. Their monthly bill went up, I guess. They paid
by the numbers of copies on their copy machine. Certainly when I was
23
there by myself I felt very little of that sort of friction. I mean, you’d expect
as a guest that, as you said earlier, where I literally evicted a senior archivist
down to another office, but I would think it was very cooperative. I mean, I
look back on those days with a lot of fondness, as far as the reception that I
got. I mean, here I was the new kid on the block, the only park service
person there, and I can just think of . . . just a lot of people on the staff were
very friendly.
WILLIAMS: Did you get much free advice?
RICHTER: Oh, I got quite a bit of free advice, as you can imagine. One thing that Dr.
Zobrist was very helpful in at least enlightening me about the complex
political situation in Independence. He had had plenty of experience with
that, particularly when he was an active member of the city’s heritage
commission. There had been many controversies politically about the
establishment and the management of the Harry S. Truman National
Historic Landmark District, and he, again, was very interested in how
things were going to progress at the Truman home. He gave me a lot of
advice about Mrs. Daniel and the most productive way of developing a
relationship with Mrs. Daniel.
WILLIAMS: Which was . . . ?
RICHTER: Well, it was to be very cooperative with Mrs. Daniel, to try as much as
possible to do things in the way that she wanted them to be done. And
certainly the way the will was written, the will basically said that Mrs.
24
Daniel was to approve of the operating plans of the home, and so we did
have to take that into consideration, in terms of how we were going to show
the home.
WILLIAMS: What was your first experience with Mrs. Daniel?
RICHTER: Well, it was probably by long distance, in that the regional director received
a letter very early on. I think he had written her a letter sort of welcoming
her or explaining who we were and everything. She wrote back to the
effect that she felt that the home was very fragile and would never
withstand the impact of being open to the public, so that she hoped we
weren’t planning to actually have the home open for the public, that she
was confident that we would take care to keep the home in good order and
good maintenance, but that she hoped it wouldn’t be open for the public.
My first meeting with her was in May of that year when she was in town
for the birthday celebration, Mr. Truman’s birthday, which she normally
attends most years, and there was a meeting of myself and Superintendent
Schoeber, Regional Director Jim Dunning, and Al Hutchings, who was
director of external affairs in the regional office. Mrs. Daniel . . . things
went rather well. She had changed her mind a bit about showing the home
because she actually gave us an idea of how the tour route should be. And
to a degree, it turned out to be the tour route, except that she had in mind a
few dead ends that weren’t going to be too productive. She thought we
should take people into the living room so they could take a peek into the
25
downstairs bedroom. Later on we decided that would have been a little
awkward.
I remember another time that I talked with her over the phone was
she had given David McCullough permission to film in the home as an
episode of Smithsonian World, which is a public broadcasting station
production, and as a preliminary to that we were proposing to bring in Steve
Harrison, who was the curator at St. Louis here at the Jefferson National
Expansion Memorial, and give the home a thorough cleaning and get it
ready for this filming. I remember she was questioning a little bit why we
were . . . Mrs. Daniel questioned why we were going to so much trouble,
that we should just hire some local cleaning service to come in and clean up
the home before the visit and so forth. But needless to say, we gave it great
attention, and she was quite pleased by the condition of the home when she
came and she was interviewed in the home by Mr. McCullough.
WILLIAMS: And this was in her first visit in May of ’83?
RICHTER: Well, not the filming. The filming was that fall. In fact, it was shortly after
the superintendent arrived, so it must have been in October or early
November.
WILLIAMS: Was she in the home in May?
RICHTER: Yes, in fact that’s where we met with her, right there in the home. The
sequence of events, she came into the home with Dr. Zobrist to go around
and to identify a few of her personal belongings. That was another unique
26
aspect of the will. Mrs. Truman’s will basically gave the home and its
contents to the government, with the exception, as she said, of her
daughter’s personal belongings or personal property. Unfortunately the
will didn’t identify what they meant by personal property. So that first
time Mrs. Daniel . . . Let’s see, it was Superintendent Schoeber and myself,
I guess we were waiting there, Dr. Zobrist came up with Mrs. Daniel, and
Mrs. Daniel basically told Mr. Schoeber and myself to wait downstairs in
the kitchen, and she went upstairs with Dr. Zobrist and basically identified
some things that she felt should go back over to her aunt next door, Mrs.
May Wallace, also identified some objects that she thought ought to go up
to the library for safekeeping and that sort of thing. Then she came back
downstairs, had a bit of conversation with Mr. Schoeber and myself, not too
much, but then the major meeting was to be the following day, and that’s
when the regional director had . . . He had come down for the birthday
event, the Truman award and that sort of thing, the ceremony. And that
day, the more formal meeting with Mrs. Daniel, we explained our concern
for security, that we would put in alarms in the home so that if people got
off the proper tour track there would be some kind of an alarm system.
Mrs. Daniel kind of laughed and thought that was really charming. As I
say, even in a few months she had come around to the idea of actually
having the home open for tours, and I’d say over the next couple of years
she slowly but surely became more and more confident in what we were
27
doing. I certainly remember the day of the dedication of the home that she
made a point in her remarks of saying what a fine job the park service had
done and that visitors would really get a good experience out of the home,
so we all felt good at that.
WILLIAMS: What was your impression of her that first day?
RICHTER: Oh, I would say she was all business. There wasn’t a lot of idle
conversation. She seemed to be very direct and to the point. Obviously she
was comfortable with Dr. Zobrist and that sort of thing.
WILLIAMS: Her husband wasn’t with her that time?
RICHTER: Not for that visit. I’m trying to remember. I don’t think he came to
Independence with her for that visit. He did come when we dedicated the
home.
WILLIAMS: So was the next time she was in town for the Smithsonian World taping, do
you recall?
RICHTER: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Were you around for the taping?
RICHTER: Oh, yes, the whole day, from sunup to sundown, or actually beyond
sundown because the taping went on into the evening a bit, which was a
long day. And I worked primarily with the crew, the film crew, making
sure that they didn’t do anything that would jeopardize the home. It was
quite an ordeal, as far as them hauling a lot of equipment in and out of the
building, and with the tight spaces in there, it was a tricky situation to get
28
that filming done.
SHAVER: Do you have any recollections of the filming in particular?
RICHTER: Well, I do remember Mrs. Daniel certainly again was very direct. She had
a certain idea of what she wanted to talk about and work that out with
David McCullough. There were a lot of takes over and over again, as with
any kind of film production. We had one small catastrophe that day. At
some points they were using clothespins to hold up cables and so forth, and
this one clothespin was too close to one of these real hot lights and had
charred the clothespin, to the point that it dropped down onto the rug and
made a small burn mark in the rug. So that was our big catastrophe for the
day. But other than that, things went pretty well.
WILLIAMS: Did you have much contact with David McCullough?
RICHTER: Not an awful lot, although they had come out earlier, even before this
October visit. They did some filming outside on the porch where they
taped him doing some introductory remarks and so forth. At that point
though, I spoke to him about the National Park Service being able to use
that film in some way in the future in any kind of an audiovisual program.
What I had thought of was some sort of a combination of the interview of
Mrs. Daniel with the old Person to Person Edward R. Murrow program that
was in the archives at the Truman Library to me would have been a rather
fascinating combination of some sort of an audiovisual program. And he
was willing to give us that permission.
29
SHAVER: Did you show him the house? Had he ever seen the house prior to your
arrival at the site?
RICHTER: I don’t think so. From my recollection, that was his first visit. And again
that was part of the reason for the advance trip that they took in, to get a
whole feel for the home and everything. The original arrangements though
were worked out with Mrs. Daniel, which in a way was a little surprising
because she was very protective about the home, not having me take hordes
and hordes of special visitors through the home and everything. And she
did give permission though for this program, and it certainly is a very
valuable part of our archival record of the condition of the home.
SHAVER: Were you the one to take him through the home the first time, or do you
recall?
RICHTER: I think Liz Safly and I together took him through, because I think he had
previously done research at the Truman Library, so he was very friendly
with Liz Safly as the manager of their research facility there at the Truman
Library. So as I recall, I think both of us took him through together.
WILLIAMS: Do you recall any of his impressions of the home? Or were they pretty
much like everybody else’s?
RICHTER: I can’t remember anything out of the ordinary that strikes out. It was, as
you say, pretty much the same idea about just the overwhelming nature of
the home, of it being so intact. I mean, you go to some of the other
presidential sites and they’re happy that they’ve got a hundred pieces of
30
furniture that belonged to the president, and here it was just a gold mine of
artifacts.
WILLIAMS: Did you have any other assistance in preparing for the filming of
Smithsonian World?
RICHTER: Well, actually, the superintendent and his wife helped out on the cleaning.
In fact, it was sort of an education for me and them from Steve Harrison in
the proper way to clean and proper way to vacuum, with little metal sieves
to guard against damaging furnishings and everything, the proper way to
dust and all that sort of thing. I think it surprised Steve the amount of work
it was going to take, and that’s why we enlisted the Reigles to help us out to
get it all done in time.
WILLIAMS: Was the house noticeably dirty?
RICHTER: I would say so. Again remember that first of all there was this time period
of several months that it was basically unoccupied—you know, just the
accumulation of dust and everything. I remember we were up cleaning the
top of the . . . no, it was some piece of furniture or something in the formal
dining room, and we actually found some coal . . . it looked like coal dust or
soot from the old days when they had a coal-fired furnace and everything,
so it was obvious they hadn’t dusted up that high for quite some time. I
think to a curator it looked very dirty. To my eyes it didn’t look that bad
off, but certainly to Steve he realized he had a lot of work ahead of him.
WILLIAMS: And this is the occasion when Mrs. Daniel set the tables?
31
RICHTER: That’s correct. We had a flower arrangement and a very formal look to the
table, and she did give us some helpful hints on the way the silverware
should be arranged and everything.
WILLIAMS: While you were still ranger in charge, what was your relationship with May
Wallace?
RICHTER: Well, I would make periodic visits. I remember my first visit: Dr. Zobrist,
as he was so willing to do, introduced me. We went down together to visit
with her for a long, long visit. She was full of memories of life there in the
old days. It was rather charming that she was questioning when we would .
. . Basically, she wanted us to restore the home to where she remembered it
more when the president was alive, or even going back wanting to know
when we would put back up a fireplace mantel that had been taken . . . or a
mirror over the fireplace mantel that she felt ought to go back up. It was
fascinating to me that she even . . . She had a lot of family history, even
that one story of the fire in the home early on where the Gates sisters left.
Or the one, I can’t remember if it was Maud or Myra, supposedly came out
with her opera cloak on or something. There’s some little family story
about that.
WILLIAMS: Is this when she told you about her husband being the handyman?
RICHTER: Well, true, and the story she repeated quite often about her husband was a
handyman and also that he had to fix the hands on the clock, on the
grandfathers clock, that there had been some children’s party or some kind
32
of party where they’d broken the hands, so he took a pie tin and made new
hands for the clock. We heard that story quite often.
WILLIAMS: So she seemed interested in what would happen to the home?
RICHTER: Oh, I think so. She was a bit melancholy about it. She was a little
apprehensive, I think, about how that would impact her privacy and
everything. I don’t think she was quite sure what would happen, as far as
how we would conduct tours. Of course, we were very concerned about
guarding her privacy and, for example, not giving guided tours way out by
the garage, or the “barn,” as she referred to it, but doing what we could to
protect her privacy.
WILLIAMS: Was she apprehensive about losing her parking spot in the barn?
RICHTER: Oh, she was asking about that, whether she’d be able to keep her parking
spot there. That is true.
WILLIAMS: And what did you decide?
RICHTER: Well, we thought, if anything, that added a bit to the ambiance of the home.
My concept from the beginning was to have the home looking as much as
possible in sort of the last days when Mrs. Truman was still healthy.
Particularly in terms of documentation, my point of view was that we
definitely knew what the home looked like then. If we were to want to take
it back to the presidential years, we’d be getting into a lot of conjecture. Or
even taking it back into the early 1950s period we’d still be guessing a lot.
And to me, one of the real stories of the home was just the fact that it
33
reflected this long, long time period of occupation by the Trumans, and
what we should be doing is interpreting the home as a reflection of that long
time period. So, to me, Mrs. Wallace’s car being in the garage to me was
appropriate to have in there.
WILLIAMS: What about your relationship with Ardis Haukenberry?
RICHTER: Probably not as frequent, and I don’t know, maybe it’s because Mrs.
Wallace was closer by or something. Again, Dr. Zobrist set up a meeting
with Mrs. Haukenberry. Of course, later on very quickly her health started
failing, too. Unlike Mrs. Wallace, the time I worked at Independence, Mrs.
Wallace was still in very good health. We just tended to run in . . . Mrs.
Wallace was so active and would walk by herself down to the beauty parlor
every week, and I just happened to see her more often.
WILLIAMS: How did Ardis get involved with the Smithsonian World?
RICHTER: Well, she was involved. I guess Liz Safly, for David McCullough, came up
with a list of people that he should interview. And as I recall, he did those
interviews also in that earlier trip. The October or November trip,
whenever, was primarily spending the day interviewing Mrs. Daniel. I
remember in the final production Ardis was saying something to the fact
that Harry and Bess were great lovers or something, or the world’s best
lovers, or some quaint expression, which I think was more in her earlier
idea of what lovers meant and everything.
WILLIAMS: Did she ever tell you stories?
34
RICHTER: Well, she told a bit about the relationship, of the story of Mr. Truman
reestablishing his friendship with Bess by taking the cake plate over across
the street and how that was all sort of a set-up deal and that began their
romance, and he would stay over there at the Noland-Haukenberry house
on these weekend visits and so forth.
WILLIAMS: Did either one of the two ladies ever tell you how much they had visited
with Mrs. Truman in the last few years?
RICHTER: Well, I think May Wallace had much more of a closer relationship. I mean,
they were very, very close. I mean, I remember my initial visit with Mrs.
Wallace when she was talking about Mrs. Truman’s death, and a tear came
to her eye and a tear came to her eye and of course, Mrs. Wallace and
Mrs. Haukenberry were sort of the last of that generation were still
around. I don’t think Mrs. Haukenberry really had that much of a
relationship with Mrs. Truman. After Mr. Truman’s death I don’t think
she really set foot in the home too often. Okay?
[End #4125; Begin #4126]
WILLIAMS: You’ve already mentioned it briefly, but what do you think was the reaction
of the residents and leaders of Independence to the National Park Service
coming in as managers of the Truman home?
RICHTER: Well, it was a real mixed bag. To begin with, something that I learned
rather quickly was that there is a basic distaste for the federal government
within Jackson County, which I think goes clear back to the War between
35
the States and all the guerrilla warfare and hard feelings towards the federal
occupation forces and so forth during that time. Also, the Truman Library’s
relationship with the town had become a bit distant. And hearing from Dr.
Zobrist I could see why, because he had become involved in a lot of this
controversy over historic preservation issues, and it was sort of a no-win
situation because there was such a fierce division in the town between those
that were strongly for historic preservation and those that were against it as
being an infringement on property rights and so forth, that it was sort of a
no-win situation for Dr. Zobrist. There was a segment of the town also that
I think had trouble understanding why the federal government was
becoming involved in the project. They could see it being something of
interest to Missourians, but they couldn’t imagine that people from all over
the country, much less the world, would want to come to Independence to
see Harry Truman’s home.
The neighbors, my feeling, most neighbors were looking forward to
the site, in terms of the National Park Service being there and reinforcing
sort of the cause of historic preservation. There was a genuine concern
about how we would manage things so as to not totally clog their streets
with traffic and people parking every which way.
Then we had down the street the First Baptist Church of
Independence, and we became the bad guys there just by default because
the minister, Reverend Hughes, was planning to build a new sanctuary and
36
was fearful that the preservationists were going to stop him from building
the sanctuary. So therefore he looked upon with suspicion the federal
government being involved in the Truman home project and being in such
close proximity to the home. He at one time, though, offered the use of his
parking lot six days a week. He wouldn’t let us use it on Sundays, but the
other days of the week he said we’d be more than welcome to use the
parking lot. Of course, other people felt that that was just him trying to . . .
as a way for us to endorse his parking lot, because he was wanting to
expand his parking lot, and jeopardize perhaps some of the other part of the
neighborhood.
There was a segment of Independence also, basically the chamber
of commerce end of things, that was looking upon the Truman home
bringing in big bucks to Independence. I think that goes along with, as I
said before, this fear that if the park service just worked with the Truman
Library and, say, establish a shuttle bus just between the library and the
home, that Independence would not benefit as much from all these visitors
coming to see the Truman home.
There was great interest in the home’s operation being done in time
for the hundredth anniversary of the president’s birth in 1984. In fact, the
director of the park service, Russ Dickenson, even made a commitment that
we would be open by May of ’84, in time for the hundredth birthday. That
was both good and bad. It was good in that we really got the attention of
37
the regional office and high priority for projects, high priority from Harpers
Ferry to get a slide show done and a brochure done. It could have been bad,
in terms of us rushing to get things done and perhaps sort of just being
satisfied to get the job done without it being done in a quality way. But as it
turned out, I don’t think that was the case. We did a good job. So there
was a lot of community pressure to get open quickly, and some people were
very discouraged when they would hear our time table. I would say, “Well,
actually we’re doing this very quickly for the way the park service does
business,” and I gave them the example of the Martin Van Buren home in
upstate New York, that after I think it was ten years of operation they had
two rooms open in the home.
There was a lot of undercurrents, different things going on. The
Jackson County Historical Society, and Sally Schwenk was their executive
director, there was sort of a rivalry there between the society and some of
these other anti-historic preservation interests in town. The city council
was split along those lines. The mayor overall was very supportive of what
we were doing. So, in some ways I think it was a miracle that I was able
when Norm Reigle showed up that I really don’t think I’d made too many
enemies during that time, that I was able to keep on an even keel with all
these conflicting interest groups, although in a way it was pretty easy,
because my marching orders were to not make any real firm commitments.
So at first, if I was pressed about making a decision, I would say, “Well, we
38
still need legislation in Congress before we really made any firm
decisions.”
The proclamation from Secretary Watt was viewed by the National
Park Service as sort of a stopgap measure, in that we wanted the guidance
of Congress through legislation, which came along later on—I think in
May, as I recall—because I think it was right around the time of the
birthday celebration, because I remember Millie Nesbitt, the city
councilwoman, coming up and saying, “Well, you got your legislation, now
let’s get on and make some plans and everything.” Well, after that then, I
was able to say, “Well, we’ve got to get our superintendent here.” Of
course, I didn’t know it was going to be Norm Reigle, but I’d say, “When
the superintendent arrives, then we’ll be in business.” Although even
before that we did have our first meeting of the general management plan
team . . . came before Norm arrived, so there was some planning being done
even before his visit.
And as I say, it was an interesting situation. Independence, the
culture there is sort of a closed culture, in that, for example, vacations to
those sort of folks, a long vacation is to go to the Lake of the Ozarks a
couple of hundred miles away for a vacation. I don’t think the townspeople
had been to enough other national park areas or seen maybe even the
negative side of being near a national park. I don’t think many people, say,
had been to West Yellowstone or to, say, the entry point to Great Smoky
39
Mountains or some of those places that had been rather tacky. And so in
some ways that helped us out, that we didn’t have a wax museum going in
right away or some more tacky get-rich-quick kind of schemes going on.
On the other hand, there was a genuine concern from some interests about,
well, why is the federal government even fooling with this? And I don’t
think they were being mean spirited or anything. I think they just really
didn’t understand the big picture of the national significance of the site.
WILLIAMS: How much effort did you make to get to know the neighbors in the
immediate vicinity of the home?
RICHTER: Well, I was fortunate there in that particular Molly and Tom Hankins, who
lived right across the street from the home on Truman Road, even set up an
evening . . . well, with Sarah Grebb, who at that time was working for the
Truman Library, set up a little evening for me to get to know the neighbors.
To be honest with you, I don’t think I really established a real strong
rapport with a lot of the neighbors, except through . . . probably more so
through these frequent town meetings on different issues of historic
preservation or the issue over the church. There were several public
meetings over a proposal to shrink the local city historic district in the
Truman home area, and I got to know many of the neighbors that way.
They had strong feelings about the fate of their neighborhood. I certainly
met Doris Hecker very early on. Doris lived in the Frank Wallace home, or
was renting it, and she had very strong feelings about the management of
40
the district, and I got to know her quite quickly. And as I say, the Hankins
were a lot of help as far as getting to know some of the other neighbors.
WILLIAMS: Did you feel it was part of your job to represent the federal government’s
preservation ethic in Independence?
RICHTER: Well, I’d say it was sort of walking on eggs in that respect. If these
meetings were coming up, these public meetings, I always was very careful
to check with either Mr. Dunning, when he was the regional director, and
then after he was transferred to the office of surface mining, I worked very
closely with the acting regional director, Randy Pope. I remember one
meeting where the regional office drafted a statement for me to issue to the
meeting, and this was over this whole issue of shrinking down the district.
We looked with disfavor on that, and I gave a presentation to the city
council at this town meeting that they had on that issue. I would sort of go
along with Dr. Zobrist’s point of view, that I felt the National Park Service
historic preservation is just part of our mandate, and I felt it was up to us
certainly to set a good example at the very least. And with the fact that the
national landmark district being there, I felt we had an added obligation to
stand up for the integrity of that landmark district. And of course that led
later on when Mr. Reigle was here, to even us listing the landmark district
as being threatened. As I said before, Dr. Zobrist had shared that view, and
he felt he’d been in the trenches for quite a while in that respect and was
looking forward to us taking our turn there as the leading advocate.
41
WILLIAMS: Well, you’ve mentioned some of the city officials. What was Millie
Nesbitt’s particular interest?
RICHTER: Well, tourism was her main interest. She was the head of the tourism
advisory board, which was sort of an adjunct body established by the city
council, which I sat in as sort of an observer, as I did . . . I sat in on
meetings of the heritage commission, whose mission was more to manage
the historic district. Millie definitely was at the forefront of coming up with
the idea of the shuttle system. She also enabled us, or certainly supported
us, eventually moving our headquarters down to the old Fire Station No. 1.
And as I say, she was interested in the tourism aspect and how that would
lead to sort of boost downtown Independence.
WILLIAMS: Well, as you know, the shuttle bus has been discontinued. Do you think
that has a significant effect on the original plan for visitors to
Independence?
RICHTER: Well, I would say in a couple of ways. First of all, as I said before, from the
very beginning we found it important. In fact, one of the real features of
this presidential site was the fact that the visitor could get a full story of
Truman, could get a sense of the personal life and the home life at the
home, they could get an impression of the presidential career up at the
library, they could get an understanding of the president’s early political
career at “The Man from Independence” slide program, and the shuttle
really enhanced that by providing a unifying element to get people from one
42
place to another. Also, Independence being such an old city as it is,
predating Kansas City by many years, as I was frequently reminded, the
streets are very crooked and narrow. They follow old trails, even one
branch of the Santa Fe Trail and so forth, and it is quite difficult, I would
think, for an outsider to really find their way around, even if they had a
good map. Of course, the shuttle also went beyond serving our needs with
the Truman story by also stopping at the two city-operated mansions. Of
course, later on the National Frontier Trails Center was established that
would have been on the shuttle route also. So I guess that’s a long-winded
answer to your question, but I do think it does handicap a bit the original
plan that we had for the visitor’s experience in Independence.
WILLIAMS: Was there ever any thought at the beginning of having a concessionaire
under the National Park Service operate the shuttle?
RICHTER: It was studied in the general management plan. There was some analysis of
that. As I said, at the very beginning when we were thinking more still of a
shuttle between the library and the home, I think I do remember Mr.
Dunning expressing the idea that it would most likely become a
concessionaire-operated thing. But then I remember him also having
misgivings about the expense and whether it would then be successful if
you were charging a fee for that. Of course, another thing about the shuttle
was that simply a lot of our visitors are elderly and it was a nice way just
for them to get around and not have to keep getting in and out of their cars.
43
To me the shuttle just represented a real unifying element to the story that
we are trying to present to visitors there.
WILLIAMS: What were some of the other city councilpersons that you dealt with?
RICHTER: Oh, to a degree I remember dealing a bit with Mike Martin, not an awful
lot. Millie Nesbitt was the prime driving force at that time. John Carnes
was more in the background. I don’t remember too many direct meetings
with John Carnes. He very much supported the interest of, or at least voted
along the lines with the First Baptist Church of Independence, and he came
up with the proposal to shrink the city’s landmark district. So as I say, I
didn’t have many direct contacts with John Carnes, but his activities on the
council certainly had an impact on what we were doing at the home.
Sometimes Mike Martin was sort of a swing vote, in terms of how the
council was acting on different issues.
As I say, I would say I spent a lot more time with the mayor’s
office. Probably, with hindsight, I should have been paying a little more
attention to individual council members. I don’t think I realized at the
beginning how independent the council really was of the mayor. Later on I
discovered this with the power of the council even to basically supervise or
ask for action by individual city staff members. It was not uncommon for
Pat O’Brien to be told what to do by one of the city—Pat O’Brien was the
historic preservation officer, and to have Millie Nesbitt or somebody go and
tell him they wanted this done over at the Bingham-Waggoner house or
44
whatever, and Pat would do it. So that was rather a different situation.
WILLIAMS: When did you meet the mayor?
RICHTER: I think we did meet with the mayor also, now that I think about it, this
lightning trip that we took over in early January. I think we did also meet
with the mayor on that trip.
WILLIAMS: This was Mayor Potts?
RICHTER: Mayor Barbara Potts. Because I do think we met the mayor, and then that’s
when I met Pat O’Brien and Bill Bullard, who was in charge of planning
and historic preservation with the city at that time.
WILLIAMS: Is it fair to say that the non-council people were more supportive in the city
government?
RICHTER: I guess I would say that was fair, although Millie Nesbitt in her own way
was very supportive. She was looking at it more in an opportunity to
enhance tourism in Independence and thereby enhance the revenue, the
business climate of the town, or whatever. I guess that would be a fair
statement. Certainly the support was really overwhelming from people like
Pat O’Brien and Bill Bullard.
WILLIAMS: What did they do, in particular?
RICHTER: Again, a lot of guidance as far . . . They played a role with even the tourism
advisory board, with Sarah Hancock who worked for Bill Bullard. She was
the head of tourism for the city. Particularly supporting, I guess they also
helped in sort of enlightening people in the town about how long a process
45
it is to do careful planning for the home, because there was this aspect of
impatience within the town about “When is the park service going to open
things up?” And certainly the planning which ultimately resulted in us
being downtown, that certainly was through the work of people like Bill
Bullard and Pat O’Brien and Sarah Hancock.
WILLIAMS: Did they have any input on the interpretive planning for the home itself?
RICHTER: I think they helped in terms of making sure that we interpreted the home
within the context of Independence and didn’t get so wrapped up in the
president himself, but put the president within the context of life in
Independence. I think they were very helpful in us sort of expanding our
horizons and appreciating the significance of the neighborhood, which
ultimately resulted even in neighborhood walking tours that we started up
later on. I think they were helpful in sort of explaining sort of the political
climate in the town, which sometimes, particularly for Norm Reigle, was
sort of walking through a mine field, you might say. Bill Bullard was really
helpful in enlightening Norm, in terms of the political realities of
Independence. I don’t think we would ever have had the shuttle and the fire
station and those sort of things without the help of city staff members,
which is not to downplay the role of the Jackson County Historical Society,
of course, with the fact that they operated the visitor center for us the first
year between city volunteers. Again a major contribution of the city was
developing a volunteer program which was a major impact upon our
46
operations at the Truman home ticket center.
SHAVER: In providing this guidance and advice, didn’t they in a sense kind of use the
park service a little bit, too, in advancing what they thought would be . . .
you know, not selfish motives but good solid planning involved with this?
RICHTER: That’s true. I mean, Bill Bullard’s major interest was planning—I mean,
that’s his job, and it was support for, as you say, careful planning and doing
it right. We would say that over and over again: “This is an opportunity to
do it right this time.” And so in that respect they certainly were allies, as far
as what we were trying to do.
WILLIAMS: How much contact did you have with the city manager?
RICHTER: Very little.
WILLIAMS: And who was the city manager at that time?
RICHTER: Oh, Keith Wilson. Keith Wilson.
WILLIAMS: That was probably three or four managers ago. [chuckling]
RICHTER: Well, that’s true because Bill Bullard served his time. What were you
about to say?
WILLIAMS: They just laid off another one a few weeks ago.
RICHTER: Okay. I understand they have a new mayor there also that’s rather
flamboyant.
WILLIAMS: Yes, he fits the description of the Independence residents that you were
giving earlier.
RICHTER: As I say, though, I had very little contact directly with Keith, and his
47
interests were in other ways, I guess. I’m sure Mr. Reigle probably told
you, once Bill Bullard became the city manager then we had a lot more
dealing directly with . . . But Bill was really the person that we dealt with,
particularly once we moved into the ticket center, and if we needed help
even with a maintenance problem, whatever. There was a long, drawn-out
process to get the curbs restored there along the front of the home and
everything, and so Bill Bullard was a real important person and contact, sort
of our liaison with the city staff, more so than you might have expected it
would be the city manager, but it really was Bill.
WILLIAMS: And Pat O’Brien was eventually removed from the city staff.
RICHTER: Well, no, removed isn’t the right word. There was no more money for him
in the city budget. It was sort of a budget cutback more so. I don’t say he
was removed or fired or anything. It would be something like a Gramm-
Rudman cutback on the federal scene.
WILLIAMS: Was that a blow to park service operations at all?
RICHTER: Well, it certainly wasn’t a positive development, because again the very
nature of his title, historic preservation officer. He was also a very fine
historian and was of use just with his knowledge of Independence and the
history of the neighborhood. It certainly wasn’t a red-letter day for us when
that happened, because he had been a good person as far as providing
insight into the community also.
WILLIAMS: How much had actually been done before Superintendent Reigle arrived on
48
the job, as far as planning?
RICHTER: Well, as I said, early on Dave Given from the regional office and I wrote up
the original statement for management, it’s called. In addition, Jim Schack
and a delegation from Harpers Ferry, Al Swift, the deputy manager of
Harpers Ferry in fact, had a lot of close attention to our project. In fact, he
pulled rank, so to speak, to come out on the planning team. And we
prepared what we called an “interim interpretive prospectus,” which was
more like an operating plan. Nowadays in the National Park Service,
interpretive prospectuses are very limited documents that talk more about
the use of media, and the statement for interpretation now is more your
operating document. But back then, basically this document was not in its
final form when Mr. Reigle came, but we had had our initial meetings and
basically had a plan in mind at that point. As I said also, we had already
had one visit by the general management plan team from Denver, and they
had met with the mayor, with Bill Bullard, with the director of the library.
They had come on what they called a “scoping mission” to get the lay of
the land, so to speak.
WILLIAMS: Was there any sense of “We should put things on hold until the
superintendent gets here for his final approval”? Or would he just move in?
RICHTER: I would say on the interpretive planning there was certainly that. I
remember several meetings with the superintendent early on where we
came to a consensus on how we wanted things like . . . An important
49
decision was whether you were going to have guided tours or else have
rangers stationed throughout the home in fixed locations, things like that.
The final approval was after Norm arrived. But thinking back, there
actually was quite a bit that was underway. We had the contract in hand
with a company to do the existing conditions drawings and plan, which was
an important document to document the state of repair or disrepair of the
home at the point that we received the property.
WILLIAMS: That was Solomon, Claybaugh and Young.
RICHTER: Right. Yes, it’s all coming back to me now.
WILLIAMS: Solomon Young, you should be able to remember that.
RICHTER: Yes.
WILLIAMS: So that was underway already?
RICHTER: That was already underway, as I recall. And as I said, some of these were
emergency repairs of the home that had been done, so it wasn’t like things
were just at a standstill until Norm arrived. There were things in motion,
certainly.
SHAVER: You were talking about the general management planning. The team had
already been assembled and was meeting in Independence?
RICHTER: They had already had one meeting in Independence.
SHAVER: Do you remember much about that, what the preliminary discussions were?
RICHTER: Well, I think one thing was that normally general management plan teams
come up with a whole variety of options, and then you come down to a final
50
wise decision. And even at the early point I think they could see certain
basic things needed to be done, such as some sort of a shuttle system. I
mean, they visited the neighborhood and right away could see the
ramification of running a popular national historic site in a neighborhood
such as the Truman neighborhood. They quickly saw the need for sort of a
joint operation, that it wouldn’t be the park service just going it alone. So
in some ways it was a rather unique general management plan process,
because some things they came to a consensus very quickly about.
I remember at one point the team captain, this was later on after
Norm had arrived, he was saying something to the fact that “If we don’t get
the general management plan pretty soon, the whole thing will already have
been implemented before we ever get the finished document completed,”
because things were going along very quickly because of Mr. Dickenson’s
commitment that the home be open by the hundredth anniversary of the
president’s birth.
WILLIAMS: Did you know Norm Reigle before he was selected as superintendent?
RICHTER: I don’t think I had ever met him. I might have, but I don’t recall. I knew of
him because of Palma Wilson-Buell working down there. I had first met
Palma here at St. Louis when she was a seasonal and had kept in touch with
her when she worked down at the Ozark, and she had told me what a great
chief ranger Norm Reigle was.
WILLIAMS: So you had a favorable impression of him when the announcement was
51
made?
RICHTER: Right, and I knew that he was particularly good about being very direct and
also getting good budgets out of—at that time it was Ozark—out of the
superintendent, so I felt that he would be good at getting the necessary
operating funds for the Truman home. I think one thing that everybody
realized very quickly was that it was going to be a labor-intensive site,
whether you had people stationed throughout the home or else had guided
tours, and the fact that you were going to need a professional curator with
all those thousands and thousands of objects, that this was not going to be
just a little mom-and-pop operation national historic site, that there was
going to be a labor-intensive situation that was going to need a sizeable
budget right away. Unlike most national parks that start out on a skeleton
staff and gradually enhance their programming and justify the need for
more positions, from the very beginning Norm realized he was going to
have to go in like gangbusters to get a reasonable operating budget right
away.
WILLIAMS: Was there a smooth transition between you and him?
RICHTER: I’d say so. I know I gave him plenty of free advice there, particularly again
with the unique climate in Independence. Things were bubbling up or
almost boiling over the controversy with the First Baptist Church and the
whole situation with either shrinking the district or keeping it at its point.
And certainly he asked for my advice. There was a bit of difficulty. It’s
52
hard after being there by myself to sort of then sit back in the background,
but you also need to just have one voice for the park service there. I
remember one meeting of the tourism board or something where we both
went, and we realized quickly that only one of us should one of us should,
that there should just be one spokesperson to avoid confusing the issues.
WILLIAMS: How similar would you say your management and preservation
philosophies are? Norm’s and yours?
RICHTER: Oh, I think pretty close.
[End #4126; Begin #4127]
WILLIAMS: What were we talking about?
RICHTER: What were we? I was about to say something good.
WILLIAMS: Norm . . . ?
SHAVER: Preservation.
RICHTER: Oh, preservation theory. I would say one point of disagreement . . .
Overall I think we were very much in sync, and I might say I was pleasantly
surprised, because Norm really didn’t have a background in managing
historic sites. His career had been in natural areas and chief ranger type
activities, but he did a fine job, with hindsight.
The one area that I would have done maybe a little different was his
decision that objects should be moved for safekeeping to some other
location. To me, even in the basement, to me there. . . I guess I draw the
analogy almost like to an archaeologist: When objects are in their original
53
location, they tell a certain story. And even though historic objects you
carefully document and photograph and everything, it’s still not the same in
terms of telling a story. And I will give the example of the attic: When the
attic is in a jumble, as the Trumans left it, that tells something about their
lifestyle. So I think I would have tried harder maybe to figure out a way to
just have had very good fire detection systems or whatever. But I wasn’t so
desirable of getting those objects moved right away. And again, Norm’s
background is more in security and everything, and so I could understand
his point of view. I just didn’t totally go along with it, but he was the
superintendent.
SHAVER: How much did Steve Harrison play a role in enhancing and developing
your preservation ethic education?
RICHTER: Yeah, I think Steve was an educator also, although I was there in the
basement the day that the decision was made about ultimately moving
things out of the home, and Steve was disappointed, at least . . . I was right
there with Steve and Norm. But your point is well taken. I do think that
Steve had a lot of education. Even that first visit, that cleaning mission
when we brought Steve over, I mean that was very enlightening for Norm,
the careful way that Steve was cleaning things, and it was an education.
Well, it was an education for me, too, but certainly for Norm, about the care
that we had to take with objects and the agents of deterioration, to keep
them under control, as Steve called them.
54
As I say, I think overall we were pretty much in sync. There were a
few points that just any two human beings are going to have some
disagreements over. I think one of the critical things that Norm went along
with was this idea of interpreting the home more or less as a representation
of the overall occupancy of the Trumans, rather than going back to some
point in time in 1945 or ’53 or something. That did come up in some of our
sessions at night or at his home discussing things in an informal way, but he
was a good listener.
WILLIAMS: And your decision early on was to interpret it the way it was when Mrs.
Truman died, or shortly before that?
RICHTER: Well, at least maybe a little bit back when she was healthy enough to give
orders to Reverend Hobby to keep the plants trimmed up and that sort of
thing. And again, as I said before, just in terms of documentation it was
much better documented at that point. For example, if you were to take it
back to 1945, you’d have to really devastate the kitchen area and the other
improvements that the Trumans made when they came back from the White
House.
WILLIAMS: So, for instance, would you be in favor as the interpretation chief of
restoring the pergola in the back yard, which is documented to have been
there in 1970 or so? Would you favor making changes that would reflect
the last years of Mr. Truman’s life?
RICHTER: Well, I don’t know. If I had a free hand there, I think I would focus more
55
on even carrying it more closer to Mrs. Truman’s last days. To me, part of
the story is the time period that Mrs. Truman spent there by herself. I
mean, that is part of the whole Truman story. We would get a remarkable
number of people that were surprised that Mrs. Truman lived there after the
president’s death. It was like they expected him to have left in the will that
she be evicted or something. But a remarkable number of people were
surprised, and to me, that in itself needed to be interpreted. That was all
part of the story. I mean, the Truman story is that long-lasting attachment
to that home. I mean, my goodness, they never left that one bedroom.
Even when they had a chance to move into the master bedroom, they stayed
in the bedroom they were comfortable in. And so I guess in answer to your
question, if I were running things, I would not restore the pergola. I would
want to keep it more towards, say, in the mid-’70s or so when Mrs. Truman
was still healthy enough to direct her way of life there.
WILLIAMS: While we’re on interpretive planning, whose idea was it to have the dark
gray visitor carpet?
RICHTER: I would stay Steve Harrison probably had . . . It was sort of a combination
of Steve and myself both going to Death Valley to Scotty’s Castle. Steve
actually worked at Scotty’s Castle, and I’d been on a tour there, and I guess
that was filed away in my mind, but they have a similar situation there.
WILLIAMS: So this wasn’t a totally original idea.
RICHTER: Well, as with most things in interpretation, there’s always someplace else. I
56
think the difference was that at Scotty’s it was a distinct carpet, where I
think the unique thing was like where we incorporated, and when we put in,
say, like, the carpeting in the foyer and the dining room, where we actually
incorporated two different colors of carpet. That certainly was more unique
than what they were doing at Scotty’s Castle. The risk that we ran there
was the fact that at Scotty’s you had much more expansive rooms, and so
we were still kind of nervous in the tight quarters of the Truman home
whether this was going to work or not, whether people really would more
or less keep on the dark gray carpet.
WILLIAMS: Is that the reason that the initial year or so of tours had two rangers?
RICHTER: Well, right. Again, remember Norm’s background in law enforcement and
security, that he was real nervous about what was going to happen in the
home. In fact, he and I had made contingency plans as to how we were
going to arrest the first person that tried to steal a fork or whatever off the
table. Norm wanted to make a big deal in the newspapers, and we were
going to work things out with the U.S. Attorney to really make an example
out of the first person. I think that was one reason why our initial staff, why
we had so many commissioned rangers on our staff, because we wanted one
on site anytime that the home was open, again with this idea of a ranger
running down the street apprehending someone with a fork or whatever.
And it sounds ludicrous now, but again think back to when we really didn’t
know what we were getting into. We had no idea about the respect that
57
most people paid that home. I mean, overall the visitors pretty much were
in awe as much as we were when we first visited, and fortunately we didn’t
have this kind of Keystone Cops situation going on. And to give Norm
credit, you know, that he was thinking these things through, what a disaster
it would have been if we hadn’t thought this through and there would have
been some disastrous incidents or whatever if we didn’t have rangers there
that knew what they were doing as far as the proper way of apprehending
somebody.
WILLIAMS: Were there other similar fears about visitor use?
RICHTER: Well, we were concerned just about loving the home to death. We were
concerned about the area with the coat and the hat, people bumping their
head there by the staircase. There was a bit of concern how the porches
would hold up under all the people coming and going. I don’t know, I think
Norm rubbed off on me. I had a lot of security concerns or safety concerns.
Somehow when they put in the reproduction sidewalk they left this big gap
between the level of the sidewalk and the ground around it, and to me it
looked like a real natural hazard for visitors falling off and tripping and
everything. So, sure, there were a lot of those kind of concerns. I think we
all were a little concerned about having the table in the dining room set for
dinner and that sort of thing, and even in the kitchen we were a bit
concerned.
And believe it or not, even though it sounds almost ludicrous that
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we’d be nervous with tours of just eight people, I mean, we for a while tried
an experiment with just nine on a tour, and the rangers unanimously felt
uneasy with just that extra body on the tour. Because there was a lot of
pressure from the regional office to increase the numbers on the tours in
order to increase the number of visitors every day, and therefore reduce the
number of letters of complaint from people that were turned away.
That brings up one thing I didn’t work up when I mentioned before.
I remember the very first visit there when Jim Dunning was there in early
January, and Mr. Dunning said that we should manage the home . . . at the
very beginning, to manage the home realizing that we were not going to be
able to serve every visitor. And to me, that’s to his credit. And that was his
marching orders, really, that we would just from the very beginning realize
that we had a preservation ethic to uphold and that we would just have to
bear the consequences of turning people away from day to day.
WILLIAMS: Was there any particular reason you think he gave you that order? From
experience in other parks, or was it just his personal view?
RICHTER: I think it was the combination just of his support for preservation or for
managing historic sites, and I guess almost just common sense after seeing
the narrow confines of the home, the desire not to totally overwhelm the
neighborhood, that he just had the wisdom, I would say, to come up with
that.
WILLIAMS: You mentioned earlier that you were hired as the chief ranger within hours
59
after the superintendent was appointed. Who came next on the permanent
staff?
RICHTER: Oh, well, you know that was a long time ago, but I think Joan Sanders came
next, the administrative officer. Her formal title was administrative
technician. One thing, if you want to get real technical, my original title
was going to be chief of interpretation and resource management. But later
on when we decided that we definitely needed a professional curator, the
regional office felt that in order to justify that, the resource management
title should be under the curator. So, as a result, my title then changed to
chief ranger.
Again, these memories, it was a long time ago, but it seemed to me
we hired our secretary Jenny Hayes next, and then Steve Harrison came
along. Steve was a reassignment person also. That seemed to get your
curiosity early on, but there were a lot of these, and part of that was just the
speed. Joan’s case was a good one, where we definitely needed
administrative support. I was a novice at administration, and certainly
Norm was also, so it just came up that she was willing to take a
reassignment from the Lincoln home, and so Norm had every confidence in
her from her background and so she was reassigned. As I say, Steve was
another case. An interesting case, though, because as this is all coming
back to me now, we first of all, though, had a curator on loan. Sue
Kopcyznski from Morristown was on loan, and through a number of
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circumstances, we ended up offering Steve Harrison the permanent position
at the home.
WILLIAMS: And he was the curator here at Jefferson before?
RICHTER: That’s correct, and he was a GS-9 already, so it was a GS-9 to GS-9
reassignment.
WILLIAMS: So very few people got promotions.
RICHTER: That’s true. I think the promotion . . . Well, I remember Jim Dunning
saying the prestige I got as ranger in charge was my promotion rather than
any dollars and cents or anything.
WILLIAMS: When did you hire your staff in the interpretation division?
RICHTER: In the spring of ’84, in bits and pieces. I think Palma Wilson-Buell was the
first we hired, who was hired in as a . . . Now, to make you feel good, she
not only got a promotion, she therefore had to go through the competitive
hiring system. Her original title was lead park technician, and then later on
the technician series was abolished so she became lead park ranger.
WILLIAMS: And you knew her before her promotion?
RICHTER: That’s correct, and she had also worked for Norm at Ozark National Scenic
Riverways in protection. We also then hired two permanent rangers, one of
which we hired through a reassignment from Lava Beds, Cindy Ott, and
then Rick Jones, who also happened to be from Lava Beds, [chuckling] was
hired through a competitive appointment.
WILLIAMS: How was it determined, your staff needs, in your division?
61
RICHTER: Well, it started out with me working with Norm on that, a lot of it being
done after hours, as a matter of fact, in a more informal nature at several
locations. It basically was planning out what we . . . We had made our
decision early on that we wanted guided tours rather than fixed station. In
fact, I was able to demonstrate to Norm that if anything, if we went to fixed
station, we’d need more rangers there because of there being few very clear
lines of view, that you’d almost have to have a ranger in the kitchen, the
dining room, and the foyer, and then plus one controlling the crowd
somehow at the front gate. So we pretty well lined out what we thought our
needs would be, and then Norm and Joan Sanders went up to region to state
our case and everything to the regional office. And as it turned out, they
were receptive.
There had been an earlier visit by just Norm himself, and he had a
whole laundry list full of things. And it was sort of a hasty trip, and I
remember Randy Pope didn’t think he had very solid justifications at that
point. And Warren Hill, who was the associate regional director for
operations, he felt that we should pretty much manage the home as an allvolunteer
force and use volunteers to give tours of the home, contract for
curatorial services, contract for maintenance services, and pretty much just
keep a paid staff of me, the administrative officer, and the superintendent.
So, fortunately, his point of view didn’t win out in the end.
SHAVER: There were some major constraints on FTE and the budget at that time, too,
62
weren’t there?
RICHTER: There was.
SHAVER: At least you were told that.
RICHTER: Well, also that helped, the idea that we did have to open. Thank God that
Russ Dickenson had made this pledge. Mr. Dickenson visited sometime
during the summer that the first-ever meeting of the Oregon-California
Trails Association had their inaugural convention in Independence. Mr.
Dickenson was addressing that group, and it gave him the opportunity to
visit the home for the first time, and he reemphasized the fact that we were
going to open on time and it would be a quality experience. I remember
one of the newspaper reporters, Brent Schondlemeyer, asking what the fee
would be. And Russ Dickenson said that a visit to the Truman home is
priceless, and therefore there would be no fee as long as he was director.
Well, of course, later on, with later directors we got in the fee business, but
that was his point of view. And he was really taken by the home.
SHAVER: Did you take him through?
RICHTER: I took him through, and he was just . . . Went from basement to attic. In
fact, I remember in the newspaper article Brent Schondlemeyer was saying
how the director was still kind of sweating from being up in the hot attic
and everything. He was also taken by the neighborhood. He very quickly
realized the importance of the whole neighborhood as adding to the
significance of the home itself and was very much taken by that.
63
WILLIAMS: So you had very little resistance from the region or WASO of implementing
the plan that you wanted?
RICHTER: No, I’d say pretty much, if you’d call it resistance, I guess was there was
always this question from the regional office about “Well, couldn’t you
squeeze a few more on each tour?” so as to speak. Now maybe behind the
scenes Norm was fighting off other plans and everything that I wasn’t privy
to, but I really don’t think there was a lot. When Charles Odegaard became
our regional director, his management style was to question everything, to
see if there was solid logic behind decisions and so forth. And he might
have given the illusion of questioning a lot of what we were doing, but I
think with hindsight he provided a lot of key support. He certainly made
sure that the regional staff continued to keep this as a prime focus of their
attention. I do remember Mr. Odegaard questioning our system for
handicap access with the use of this innovative stair track device. Mr.
Odegaard felt there was a way to come up with ramps, and someone in the
regional office finally showed him with mathematics with the way the
slope, the acceptable slope for such ramps, that the ramp would have to go
clear out into Truman Road or somewhere. But overall, I don’t really recall
a lot of real questioning of what we were doing.
WILLIAMS: From your experience in other parks, would you say this was unusual to
receive such support?
RICHTER: Oh, definitely. I think it was the home itself. It would really just sort of
64
right away just put people in awe. And it was fortunate that we had people
like Russ Dickenson having . . . and it was almost sort of a serendipity sort
of situation. His reason for being there was to address the Oregon-
California Trails Association, and yet it gave him that opportunity to see the
home real early. A key development was when Al Swift from the Harpers
Ferry Center . . . and he was the real power behind the scenes. He was the
deputy manager, and he was taken by the home and made sure that we got
all the support that we needed from the Harpers Ferry Center. And we
certainly did in many ways: The historic furnishings people, the historic
furnishings plan was done; there were some repairs to furnishings that we
felt had been damaged, that had either been done by the guards themselves
or else damage by nurses or something after Mrs. Truman was so ill. So
yes, I think it was the two factors: one, that a lot of lead officials of the park
service were able to make visits on site; and, second of all, the fact that we
were so close to Omaha helped us out. Andy Ketterson’s commitment and
John Kawamoto’s was of immense value. And then I think just the site
itself and the fact of all its possibilities just got people enthusiastic.
WILLIAMS: How would you describe your duties as chief ranger?
RICHTER: How would I describe them?
WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm, your major duties, concerns . . .
RICHTER: I guess two-fold. One was on-site, as far as providing quality experiences
for the visitors, making sure that our system ran adequately. Mostly behind
65
the scenes, making sure we had adequate budgets for staffing to provide
these visits in a good way. And then I spent a lot of my time on external
things, duties, primarily with the ticket center, being first run by the Jackson
County Historical Society and volunteers from the city. And also the fact
that the Truman Library remained an important part of our overall plan,
because a lot of visitors would continue to visit the Truman Library first,
and so it was important that the Truman Library staff be informed of the
proper way to get tickets to the Truman home and the fact that they needed
to get down to the Truman home ticket center to get those tickets. I spent a
lot of my time working with these cooperative groups.
WILLIAMS: Speaking of one, how did the Jackson County Historical Society get to
become the operator of the visitor center?
RICHTER: Well, I think first of all with their proximity being right next door with them
operating the Marshal’s Museum, and again this urgency, this sense of
urgency that we had to get operating underway, the support that they had
already given us. I mean, they basically were the lead agency in terms of
support for historic preservation. Sally Schwenk was always at every one
of these town meetings, giving very direct and very blunt statements about
historic preservation, the need for preserving the neighborhood. A lot of
this though at that time was being negotiated by Norm. You know, I really
wasn’t in the main loop, as far as those sort of things. The thing that’s
important to realize, though, is that it was a joint operation. It wasn’t just
66
the historical society, it was also the volunteers from the city that really
were the backbone of that operation, although Tony Gentry, who was an
employee of the historical society, was just first class as far as being able to
work with the volunteers. He just had a certain way with volunteers that
was just very motivating, and he was able to get good performance out of
them.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever desire a ranger presence in the visitor center?
RICHTER: I looked on that as sort of the ideal situation. But on the other hand, I was
more concerned that we have an adequate number of rangers to be able to
operate the home itself and the tours, and so I basically, with the available
budget that we had, my point of view was we should put that down at the
home and I guess use my influence with the people running the ticket center
to do a good job. I might add, I spent a lot of time working with various
operators of the shuttle bus system. There were several different managers
of the shuttle bus system, and of course that was a major either plus or
minus for the visitor experience was the way they were treated by the
drivers on the shuttle bus, and we had mixed results on that.
WILLIAMS: Did you feel that the historical society operation of the visitor center was a
temporary expediency, or did you foresee it going on and on?
RICHTER: I saw it being a little more permanent than it ended up being, although
again I didn’t have quite the big picture that Norm had about all the
different political situations within the Jackson County Historical Society
67
which were causing turmoil. And because there was turmoil within the
society, that was causing stress on the operation in the visitor center. The
society really reflected, I think, just the nature of the town of Independence,
which . . . I never have lived in a town that loved their politics like
Independence—almost a throwback, I think, to Jacksonian democracy—
because they love their town meetings, and everybody had his say-so even
if it went till 2:00 in the morning or whatever. And the society, for a
number of reasons, and not just related to historic preservation I mean, there
were money concerns and all kinds of different factions, I guess I’d call
them, within the society that were causing problems. So, with hindsight, I
think it was a wise decision to move over to the Eastern National Park and
Monument Association.
WILLIAMS: The original park headquarters came to a catastrophic end.
RICHTER: Burned to the ground!
WILLIAMS: Were you involved in the choice of headquarters?
RICHTER: I was out of the loop on that one. I mean, that was more between . . . Joan
and Norm looked around with GSA at different sites. I remember once
early on in the process filling out a form from GSA. It was sort of a
questionnaire that would come up with this magic formula of how many
square feet you needed for office space. You had to list how many desks
you were going to have, how many bodies in this place and that sort of
thing.
68
One interesting thing, really, very early on we were offered the use
of what used to be the Secret Service house across the street, which the
Secret Service had leased, and the owners wanted to know if we wanted to
buy it. And on some very early trip, I can’t remember exactly when, it was
very early on, Andy Ketterson and I, and maybe Lee Jamieson, looked it
over, and we saw that the state of repair of the place was not adequate. It
was too small for what we saw our needs being. The basement, the
foundation was poor, literally crumbling apart—I mean, we could have
reached out and grabbed a handful of foundation—so very quickly we gave
up on that idea.
WILLIAMS: So you did do some preliminary investigation.
RICHTER: Yes, but not an awful lot.
WILLIAMS: Did the burning of the proposed headquarters put a crimp in your
interpretive program?
RICHTER: Well, it certainly didn’t help matters any, although I guess it was more in
terms of the fact that suddenly we were kind of like orphans, or looked
upon that we were not going to have a roof over our head. I know that we
spent some very restless nights thinking about what we were going to do
after that disaster happened, and so it was very fortunate that the city
offered us the space that they did.
WILLIAMS: Another community organization that has a relationship with the park
service is the Junior Service League. How did that come about?
69
RICHTER: The Junior Service League, of course, had a very close relationship with the
Truman Library. In fact, they sort of had a first right to give tours of the
Truman Library for school groups and everything. You had to almost be a
member of the Junior Service League in order to be able to volunteer to
give programs at the Truman Library. So they were very interested in
having a role to play at the Truman home. Norm set up a deal where they
were going to give special beforehand tours of the home before we opened
to the public to raise money for this Bess Wallace Truman Memorial Floral
Fund, which would then set up a fund to provide fresh flowers on the dining
room table in the home as sort of a memorial to Mrs. Truman, who had also
been a member of the Junior Service League. And, in addition to that,
Norm allowed them to have a donation box in the Truman home ticket
center to keep the fund going.
WILLIAMS: So this relationship was established after Norm became superintendent?
RICHTER: I think in more clear-cut ways. I sort of danced around that one beforehand.
There were some people within the Junior Service League that expected
that we would work out a similar relationship with them, as far as them
giving the tours of the home, but that didn’t really work out.
SHAVER: Let’s take a break.
[End #4127; Begin #4128A]
WILLIAMS: There are a couple of things I’d like to go back on, and one is Ron
Cockrell’s historic resource study and historic structures report. Was he
70
doing those while you were ranger in charge?
RICHTER: Yes, because I remember one time we had all kinds of region people down
for one week. I was doing a lot of entertaining after hours—I saw that as
one of my roles of diplomatic relations with the regional staff—because I
remember we had Lee Jamieson and Fran Krupka and another historic
restoration person, and then Ron Cockrell was on one of his research visits.
He spent a lot of time researching at the Truman Library, and particularly
their photo collection, and certainly worked closely with Liz Safly in
getting a lot of background material also. You see, his first project was
writing the “history and significance” section of the historic structures
report, and that whole bandwagon got underway with Andy Ketterson’s
support. That was going along with the same time the Solomon, Claybaugh
and Young “existing conditions” section of the historic structures report.
So as I said, Ron started out . . . He was at that time a seasonal historian in
the regional office.
WILLIAMS: During Mrs. Daniel’s visits before the home opened, she did remove things
from the home. Is that correct?
RICHTER: In a manner of speaking, yes.
WILLIAMS: What was your understanding or the park service’s understanding of the
ownership of objects?
RICHTER: Well, as I said before, I mean it really was a very hazy situation. The will
was hazy. I guess I would have interpreted the will in terms of only very
71
personal objects. If I were to go to my parents’ home today, I mean, I
might have left behind a weight lifting set or something or a stamp
collection, those sort of things that I might have just left behind because I
didn’t have room in my car to take them with me. But Mrs. Daniel’s point
of view was sort of twofold. She identified some objects that she felt
belonged to Mrs. Wallace, and actually gave Dr. Zobrist, who then gave me
a list of things that were to go to Mrs. Wallace. Then there were some
things that Mrs. Daniel just wanted for safekeeping up at the Truman
Library. She had more confidence in their security for objects up at the
library. And then there was this third category of things that actually were
to be shipped back to New York to the Daniels’ residence or to their storage
room that they had. And part of this I’m not to this day really clear on
because some of these things were taken out of the home before I ever got
there, like the Winston Churchill painting and the Grandma Moses painting.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever put up any resistance or discourage her from taking things?
RICHTER: I didn’t discourage her particularly. Certainly when I was reporting the
situation to the regional office, I’m sure they . . . or they definitely knew I
was dismayed to a degree. In particular, I can think of some objects that
were taken out of the study that I felt changed the whole atmosphere of the
study, the icon being one example. But even like there was a chair in the
study that we were ordered to take back to Mrs. Wallace’s, also a little tiny
child’s chair that Mrs. Daniel said belonged to one of her sons. With those
72
three things being missing from the study, it did to me change the condition
of the study. And then, of course, if you realize that . . . my understanding,
the Truman Library staff had, quote, “cleaned up the study a bit,” in terms
of there not being quite the helter-skelter of books that there used to be in
there. I did have a little bit of qualms of conscience, in terms of the visitor
when they saw the study, that it really wasn’t quite what it could have been.
WILLIAMS: Were you around when Mr. Truman’s armchair was removed from the
study?
RICHTER: That was before my time. That was in that hazy period around by the
funeral when Mrs. Daniel was in town.
WILLIAMS: Did anyone explain the circumstances?
RICHTER: Well, first of all, what I understood—the story from Liz Safly, so this is all
hearsay—was that Mrs. Daniel thought the chair was hideous and basically
wanted it thrown in the trash. However, before that was done, a local
furniture store, and I can’t even begin to remember the name of it, anyway
they claim they had only loaned the chair to the Trumans, and then they
claimed ownership of it, and it went back there. Well, later on, Norm
Reigle attempted to . . . We were hoping the chair was still there
somewhere in the furniture store [chuckling], and Norm did make an effort,
and with no success, of getting the chair back.
WILLIAMS: How involved were you in the plans for dedication week?
RICHTER: The overall planning was really much beyond me. In fact, we even brought
73
in a gentleman named Dave Herrera from the regional office who, in
theory, was planning the event. He turned out to be a lot less useful than
we had hoped, in terms of his planning ability. Norm sort of saved the day
for us, and Norm again, that was one of his real strong points was planning.
Joan Sanders had a lot to do with it. Norm was in charge of all the big
arrangements, things like working with Dr. Zobrist on having the Truman
Library Institute sponsor a lunch for the dignitaries and that sort of thing.
My level was more at an operational level, coming up with a plan, where to
have rangers positioned up at the ceremony, having a plan for how the other
rangers would show the home to the dignitaries immediately after the event,
and that sort of thing. So I was down more at the level of planning the
operational part of things.
WILLIAMS: What do you recall about that day?
RICHTER: Well, I think the first thing was a sense of panic because there was a
prediction of rain and everything, and we really weren’t really hoping that it
would be raining that day. We were scrambling around to get raincoats and
have them stashed at strategic locations up at the site, at the library, in case
we had to quickly hand out raincoats to all the rangers.
I think two things stood out. One thing, overall I was a little
disappointed with the turnout from the local community. We had a lot of
empty seats. I was pleased with my role. I felt, if anything, I’d overplanned
things. I had little lists to do for every individual, a timetable: “At
74
one o’clock you should be here in the parking lot, at 1:05 you should move
over to this point,” and that sort of thing.
A little anecdote: I was also in charge of getting the dignitaries
ready to march out onto the podium, and was real nervous and had this list
and had to pair off everybody. Well, I managed to pair them off, but it was
in a mirror image: Everyone that should have been in line on the left-hand
side was on the right-hand side, and vice versa. It all worked out in the end.
They were all on the stage, and then in terms of how close they were to the
podium it was fine, except everybody that should have been on the left was
on the right, and vice versa. Only a few people knew about that faux pas.
And also I had forgot to tell people that when I led them onto the stage that
I would be walking off the stage and that they should stay put at their chair,
and so a couple of them started walking to follow me off the podium, but
they figured it out.
Ron Cockrell was pretty nervous. He had written the speech for the
director, Mr. Dickenson, to deliver and everything, so he was real nervous
as to how the speech would be received and whether anyone would find
any fault with the speech or with historic accuracy or whatever.
WILLIAMS: What about down at the home?
RICHTER: Well, we had everything, I think, well in hand. That part of it worked well.
We had an arrangement . . . Superintendent Schoeber was in charge of as
soon as Mrs. Daniel went out the back door that we were going to put her in
75
a car and take her back to the Alameda Hotel, and meanwhile the press
were all waiting to interview her out at the front. So we put one over on the
press because we got her out of sight without any difficulty.
WILLIAMS: Was that at her request?
RICHTER: Pretty much so. Also, as she was going out the back door, at the kitchen
table she said, “May I?” and sort of rearranged the table setting a little bit.
WILLIAMS: So you were with her when she was going through the home?
RICHTER: I was not. See, I was still up at the aftermath of the public ceremony,
because immediately after the ceremony we then had the premiere showing
of our audiovisual program, which the Truman Library gave us their big
theater to show. And the idea was that we would give several showings of
that till everybody that wanted to had seen it. That was a little nervewracking,
in that the show made it to Independence in only about three or
four days before our big event, so that was a little nerve-wracking. So
basically I just was confident that we’d work through the scenario of the
rangers that were going to be at . . . Basically we had some rangers posted
at the home that were not present at the dedication ceremony, and then we
had other rangers that were up at the [library] for the ceremony.
SHAVER: You didn’t do all this with your staff? You had to import some, didn’t you?
WILLIAMS: Oh, we did. I know we borrowed the chief ranger, Larry Blake, from
George Washington Carver National Monument, and Superintendent
Gentry Davis even helped out, and I really can’t recall who else. We did
76
bring in some outsiders, though, to help out with . . . Tom Danton from the
regional office in interpretation, I know we had him posted in a parking lot
at one point in the festivities. He helped out. Obviously we had a lot of
regional office dignitaries there, particularly those that had had a role in the
restoration of the home or getting it ready in time for the dedication and
grand opening.
WILLIAMS: Were there some kind of special tours for a few days after the dedication?
RICHTER: Well, as I mentioned before, the next day there were tours for . . . I guess
you’d called them “Class B” dignitaries. The “Class A” dignitaries got a
look at the home the first day for a couple of hours afterwards. Well,
actually there were three sorts. There was the platform guests, the number
one dignitaries. They were taken down immediately and shown the home.
Mrs. Daniel—
SHAVER: There were different-color tickets involved. [chuckling]
RICHTER: There was even different-color tickets involved, depending on what rank
you were. Anyway, the one rank of dignitaries that were invited, invited
guests, their color tickets enabled them to go down and get a tour that very
day. And we shuttled them down, which was another nerve-wracking
situation because there were a lot of elderly people and the van that we
were using had a high clearance, so it was a little tough to get them in and
out of the van.
WILLIAMS: Were these genuine tours of the home?
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RICHTER: They were more walk-throughs. And then as I said, then there were these
other people that held the other color tickets, they were shown through the
next day. And then my memory holds then it was the following day was
this day for the Junior Service League, who sold tickets to raise money for
the flower fund.
WILLIAMS: And that summer there were also evening tours. Why was that?
RICHTER: Boy, you have a good memory. That’s great. It’s all coming back to me
now. We did feel that . . . again, I guess that was also part of this fundraising
activity. That’s right, and we used Junior Service League personnel.
SHAVER: To take reservations and such.
RICHTER: Right. I guess that it was also a way . . . I guess we didn’t raise, I can’t
really remember exactly the circumstances. I guess it was a concern for the
people of Independence to be able to get into the home, because we had
envisioned that during the day we would be so overwhelmed by visitors
from out of town that residents of Independence who work for a living
during the day would not have an opportunity to get a ticket during the day,
and that’s why we then came up with this idea, with the help of the Junior
Service League, to have these evening tours by reservation. And the Junior
Service League was kind enough to take the reservations through a phonein
system for two very active days of phone calls and sort of swamped their
telephone number. And it did work out well because I think we won a lot
of friends that way. I remember one night it was sort of First Baptist
78
Church of Independence night. They had all the reservations for that night.
WILLIAMS: Speaking of which, I’d like to talk more about that controversy and your
participation.
RICHTER: Oh, I had a feeling you might.
WILLIAMS: In your last interview five years ago you promised that that could take a
whole other tape. [laughter] It may not do that, but . . .
RICHTER: Although now with time things have mellowed a bit also, tempers have
cooled and that sort of thing.
WILLIAMS: Was this controversy already in progress when you arrived?
RICHTER: Oh, very definitely. The reverend had definitely had plans for a new
sanctuary. His church basically served the whole Kansas City community.
It was not just a little neighborhood church for Independence as it was in
earlier years, and with that sort of a congregation, he certainly had need of a
larger sanctuary. When I arrived, there was a lot of rumors, some of which
I think were just created for my benefit to scare me into overreacting.
There were rumors that he planned to totally demolish the old sanctuary,
which of course would have a drastic impact on not only the neighborhood
but even the view out the porch in the back. And of course, as much as
possible we were hoping that we would be able to offer visitors an
experience similar to what Mr. Truman or Mrs. Truman would have been
seeing out the back porch. But by the time I got there, they definitely had
their plans for the new sanctuary underway.
79
WILLIAMS: What was the city’s reaction?
RICHTER: You mean city government or city in general?
WILLIAMS: City government. Were you rowing upstream on the issue?
RICHTER: That’s a pretty good analogy. Again, the whole idea of property rights in
Independence is just a very basic, fundamental ethic within Independence,
as I could perceive it. And then the whole issue of the church’s rights was
pretty fundamental, as it is in this country in general, and of course it’s a
major historic preservation issue whether churches can be compelled to live
up to historic preservation codes or whatever. On the other hand, there was
also great concern within the neighborhood and other elements of the local
historic preservation movement about the ultimate result of these plans for
expansion and for putting in a parking lot in what was then a vacant area,
but also nearby residences and . . . What I gathered was the fear that this
was just the beginning, that this was just the first of many plans for
expansion. I remember somebody telling me they eventually planned to put
in a seminary and a high school, a senior citizen home, and just all kinds of
things. As a result, there was a lot of hot tempers on both sides of the
subject. The church members looked upon the neighborhood . . . In fact,
one church bulletin talked about the mean-spirited neighbors. I mean, the
tempers were that point on both sides. The church looked upon the
situation as definitely being an infringement of their rights to expand, and
as the reverend liked to say on many occasions, “A church that doesn’t
80
expand will die ultimately.” And so they saw their basic interests as a
church being at stake in their right to put up this new sanctuary.
WILLIAMS: Was your primary concern with the landmark district or the city heritage
district?
RICHTER: Well, as I said before, I guess I took more of the bigger picture. I was
interested in the whole ambiance of the area within eyesight of the Truman
home. And as you said before, it was sort of rowing uphill, realizing that
progress is going to take place, but trying to temper that as much as
possible. Obviously we were all very grateful that the church did not
demolish the old sanctuary. That was one of the hot rumors, that they were
going to demolish the old sanctuary. I guess my concern was in terms of
the precedent, that would it ever end? Would they continue to buy up . . .
There were rumors that they had purchased other property. There were a
couple of elderly ladies that owned some property on Delaware Street. The
property was rundown because these were elderly ladies who didn’t have
the financial means to keep up their property. There were rumors the
church had purchased their property and was going to destroy those two
homes to cut in a new entry point to their parking lot facilities off of
Delaware Street. Well, then you’re getting into some major concerns about
the nearby ambiance of the neighborhood. So, as I say, with time and
hindsight, I mean the drastic fears didn’t take place, but at the time it was
some tense times.
81
WILLIAMS: Did you ever meet Reverend Hughes face to face?
RICHTER: I did make a meeting with Reverend Hughes while I was still working by
myself up at the Truman Library. In fact, that’s when he made his offer to
me about the parking lot. And he did ask me if I had any opinion about
how he could cool the tempers or the hot times that were going on. As I
recall, my advice to him was to try to talk to people as individuals and try to
avoid the town meeting approach, when everybody is just up in arms and
coming at loggerheads in both directions, and to try and be as informative
as possible about what his plans were.
WILLIAMS: As it turned out, are you relatively pleased with the neighborhood as it is
now?
RICHTER: I guess I would like to have seen the general management plan
implemented with the neighborhood trust fund initiated. I felt that was a
really innovative idea that Mr. Odegaard had come up with, a compromise
between the National Park Service getting heavy-handed and buying up all
kinds of property, and yet on the same way guaranteeing . . . I mean, the
one example I gave you is a good example. It’s an older neighborhood. I
mean, the people in the neighborhood, many of them are getting on in
years, and I saw the neighborhood trust as being a good way to provide that
long-lasting support for keeping up the neighborhood. To be honest with
you, I have not been in the neighborhood since the shuttle’s demise. I don’t
know how that all worked out. I was a bit alarmed when I heard there
82
would be no shuttle, as far as how that would impact the neighborhood. As
I said before, at least the old sanctuary of the First Baptist Church remained.
Obviously, the view out the back porch is much different with the new
sanctuary, but on the other hand, we haven’t had other buildings going up
as were feared at the time.
WILLIAMS: A lot of the stories that interpreters tell, there doesn’t seem to be
documentation for.
RICHTER: Oh, really? [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: And we all assume that they were passed down from you early interpreters.
RICHTER: Kind of an oral history but not being recorded.
WILLIAMS: Yes, and if you don’t mind, I would like to just go through and maybe
document some of those stories.
RICHTER: Oh, I won’t mind. Now remember again that it’s been a few years since
I’ve been there and . . .
WILLIAMS: I guess the easiest way would be roughly to go room by room, and I know
that you gave a few tours in your time.
RICHTER: Oh, yes, there were a few budget crises, or if somebody . . . one ranger
became ill, I would be down there giving my fair share of tours.
WILLIAMS: So, say for instance, on the back porch, what would you usually tell people
about the back porch? What did you consider the important interpretive
story there?
RICHTER: Oh, okay. Well, I think again it was sort of the informal part of the
83
Trumans’ life. I mean, so much of the home, on the first floor especially,
except for the kitchen and the back porch, it was a pretty much formal
impression. And yet, from all I’ve heard, a lot of the Trumans’ lifestyle
was very informal, and so to me the porch had a lot of benefit, for a number
of reasons, particularly again as I said earlier, you could almost put chills up
peoples’ spines saying, “Imagine Mr. Truman and Mrs. Truman sitting right
here and having a cold drink on the back porch, or Mrs. Truman’s bridge
club meeting.” You could really get to more of the family atmosphere.
And particularly when we did the home, when we reversed the tour route
and the porch was the first part of the tour, I saw that as very important in
establishing sort of the privacy, informal kind of part of the Trumans’
lifestyle. Because you could also talk about the porch, the fact that they
deliberately let the plants grow up to protect their privacy. Also, I used to
talk about “Imagine that this view that you’re seeing here out this back
porch is very much like what Mr. Truman would have seen.” And also, I
know this is getting a little long-winded, but you also could talk about the
family compound from back there and talk about the significance of the two
Wallace homes. And quite often I was pretty lucky, Mrs. Wallace would be
out getting her newspaper or going off to the beauty parlor, and of course
that was a special treat for the visitors, and without interfering with her
privacy. I mean, she usually didn’t know that she was being pointed at and
people were waving at her. [chuckling]
84
WILLIAMS: Well, while we’re on the subject, I believe it was the summer of 1985 that
the tour route was reversed. Why did you make that decision?
RICHTER: Well, it came about that the superintendent did what he called an “internal
operations evaluation,” where he personally questioned each of the rangers
behind closed doors to get their candid views on things. It was the
unanimous decision that people hated being the trailer.
WILLIAMS: I think I remember that conference, now that you brought it up.
RICHTER: Talk about being nervous, I was quite nervous myself. So anyway Norm
then had a session with me, and so he brought up that there really was a
problem of morale, that people hated being the trailer, particularly the way
we scheduled things, you’d end up trailing the same ranger for the whole
day, and hear the same stories, the same jokes, over and over again for the
whole day. It meant for kind of a tedious day. So Norm felt that we had
proven now that we weren’t going to have this Keystone Cops approach,
where we’d be out chasing down theft day after day after day, and we just
had a little more confidence. And we also reversed the tour route because
we felt, in terms of the line of sight for the interpreter being by themselves,
that it was just going to work out better by going through the home that
way. That had some fringe benefits, in that in the old days it was very
difficult at the end of the tour to get people back out to the front. They
would tend to dawdle in the back yard, and it was just really difficult. By
going the other way around, they were anxious to see the home, so they just
85
walked right . . . You know, they almost trampled you down to get to the
back porch. In addition then, at the end of the tour you opened up the front
door, and if your timing was accurate, the shuttle was just coming up and
you’d say, “Well, look here, the shuttle is here. Do watch your step as you
go out the front door, it’s a bright light,” and they would hustle onto the
shuttle. We didn’t think of that ahead of time, but it did work out in terms
of making life a little easier for the interpreter, because the ultimate
challenge was always how to get a meaningful program done in fifteen to
twenty minutes.
What that did also then, of course, in terms of manpower or
womanpower, you eliminated one position on the schedule. Rick Jones
came up with the idea of compressing people’s day. If the guideline was
eight tours during the day, instead of spreading those out through the whole
day, that maybe have them go back-to-back and have half the day at the
home and the other half at the ticket center to either work on a special
project or work in the ticket center or do something special, as a way of
motivating the permanent rangers in particular.
WILLIAMS: Was that a problem originally to have the interpretive staff solely at the
home almost?
RICHTER: I think it was sort of a burnout situation, particularly for our permanent
rangers who, after all, they were being paid GS-5 rather than as seasonals
who were GS-4. So, therefore, as Norm would frequently remind me, we
86
needed to treat them a little different, to provide them with some
meaningful projects or responsibilities to not only keep up their motivation
but then in other ways just justify the way we were using them.
WILLIAMS: What were those special projects?
RICHTER: Oh, a lot of standard operating procedures needed to be done, safety
considerations, bomb threat procedures. We did have our, at least from my
knowledge, our one and only bomb threat was that first summer. We didn’t
have any big disaster. I really admired Steve Harrison’s courage to go in
with the dog that was brought in to sniff out for the bomb. I mean, after all,
he did have a wife and children, and he went in with the dog so as not to . . .
trying to protect the home, the objects, from the bomb search squad, as you
might say. As I say, there were other special projects, research projects,
ultimately research for exhibits within the ticket center. When Eastern
National Park and Monument Association came in and we had the
opportunity to completely rehab and improve the ticket center, part of that
was also doing exhibits, small panel-type exhibits within the visitor center.
And also it then gave the rangers time just to have more opportunities to do
basic research themselves and read the books, the important books on the
Trumans, read the books written by the Trumans themselves that would
give them a more family outlook on their interpretation.
WILLIAMS: Well, back to the tour, I guess.
RICHTER: Okay, yeah, we’re into the kitchen. Now please interrupt if I’m leaving out
87
one of these legends that you want to pursue or whatever. The kitchen went
right along with this informal—
WILLIAMS: Let me interrupt.
RICHTER: Go ahead, interrupt.
WILLIAMS: Often on the back porch people talk about Mr. Truman’s dislike for air
conditioning.
RICHTER: Okay. I guess I got that from Liz Safly and Pat Kerr. It was sort of funny
though, somehow I got that idea that he disliked air conditioning and he
liked the nice breezes on the back porch. But then you get to thinking for a
moment. In his later years he had an air conditioner in his downstairs
bedroom, he had an air conditioner in his study where he spent a lot of his
time, and my impression, what I understood that he did in the morning
hours . . . This was after he no longer was able to get up to the library every
day, but he would chew the fat for a while in the kitchen in the morning,
which also had an air conditioner. So, if it gets down to it, perhaps that sort
of story was overblown a bit, at least in his later years when he wasn’t in as
good a health, and maybe it was more with doctor’s orders. The story I
heard was that the doctors insisted on air conditioning in the downstairs
bedroom when he was recovering from gallbladder surgery. Apparently
that was the time when the fan went in on the back porch, also. Some
friends got him that fan on the back porch.
WILLIAMS: Well, I’ve heard the expression used that he said, “You shouldn’t monkey
88
around with the weather,” and I have yet to find a documented source.
RICHTER: [laughter] That sounds something that Rick Jones would have put out.
You got to realize one of the bad parts of this trailing business was that
if one person kind of embellished their tour, the word would get around.
I guess that was a challenge to keep from ending up with this hybrid
tour. You know, having everybody’s little story. It would be difficult to
keep that from happening when people were doing the trailing.
[End #4128A; Begin #4128B]
RICHTER: Yeah, the kitchen. Well, certainly the kitchen just about interpreted itself,
although with hindsight maybe we overdid the kitchen, I mean in terms of
people’s memory of the home. You know, they talk about the wild color
schemes and that sort of thing; of course there’s a lot more to the home than
just that. Again, just as with the back porch, I would touch on sort of the
personal touch. Sometimes I would talk about the role of this 1950s image
and the so-called improvements, the modernizations that the Trumans made
were actually rather limited. You could talk about things being behind
closed doors in the pantry. I tried as much as possible to paint a picture of
the lifestyle of the Trumans, instead of identifying every bit of furniture and
everything, which was very difficult, particularly if people were
conditioned to what I call “bad home tours” that were nothing but a
category, an itemized list of furniture and everything.
Oh, you could talk about the story of Margaret painting the kitchen
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and that sort of thing. There at least is a letter in one of the books about
Margaret writing to her dad about painting the kitchen, so . . . What in the
kitchen have you heard that is sort of legendary?
WILLIAMS: Well, most people now still talk about the colors and Mr. Truman’s favorite
sandwiches, getting toast out of the toaster with the metal tongs.
RICHTER: Mm-hmm. I was always wondering how he kept from electrocuting
himself that way.
SHAVER: The wallpaper, the selection.
WILLIAMS: The wallpaper, but that’s in the structure report. He picked that out when
he was . . .
RICHTER: I don’t know, again it could be a Liz Safly story, but my understanding is
they took the wallpaper sample book into him in the study, and he just sort
of pointed to this one sample and said, “That’s what should go up.” My
memory was that was later on in his life—I mean, maybe even by ’70 or
’71. It was real late in his life when they did that, when he picked out that
patriotic wallpaper scheme.
WILLIAMS: As far as you know, those stories are fairly accurate?
RICHTER: I think so. No, it certainly is not something that suddenly was embellished
by one of our original rangers.
WILLIAMS: Going into the butler’s pantry and the dining room, what would you
emphasize?
RICHTER: I think the main thing was I always had difficulty . . . people would tend to
90
dawdle in the kitchen and in the butler’s pantry, and it was just getting them
into the dining room. Talking a little bit about the . . . Well, there was sort
of a natural progression then if you talked about preparing meals and then
“Let’s go see where they had their formal meals.” You know, I would talk
about the fact that they would most of the time have breakfast and lunch in
the kitchen, and then talk about dinner, and tie in that to the family
traditions and the fact that family traditions were very important, and
continued even when it was just the two Trumans, having dinner in the
formal part of the house in the dining room.
WILLIAMS: So was your impression that they continued that in their retirement years?
RICHTER: That, again, I think I got a lot of my information from Liz and Pat from
their time when they were doing this inventory. I don’t know, there again
some of this is sort of legendary. But my impression was that even when it
was just the two of them that they would continue to have the evening meal
in the dining room.
WILLIAMS: What about the people sitting at the table? There seems to be some
confusion.
RICHTER: Apparently so. My memory, at least, I went with the version that Mrs.
Daniel had. But I apparently──
SHAVER: Which version? [chuckling]
RICHTER: Well, and that’s a good question, because she had different versions. I went
with the story that Mrs. Truman’s mother was at the . . . The head of the
91
table was by the kitchen so they could keep an eye on the hired help, and
then Mr. Truman was at the other end of the table, and Mrs. Truman was at
the right-hand side, and then Margaret was on down by Madge or whatever.
But as I say, I mean that apparently is a bit of a mystery now as to where
they sat. Has anyone maybe called up Mrs. Daniel again to get a
clarification of that?
WILLIAMS: She might have a whole different version.
RICHTER: Well, maybe once and for all, just tell her it’s one last chance to . . .
SHAVER: That’s no worse than the period after the S.
WILLIAMS: There are stories about the chandelier, and I believe we did work on the
chandelier before the dedication.
RICHTER: That’s right.
WILLIAMS: Were you around?
RICHTER: I’m pretty sure it was Lee Jamieson and maybe Fran Krupka. It seemed to
me though it was a regional office staff effort of reinforcing it. And then
later on, as part of the overall rehab, I think they went back and even did a
better job of it during the formal contract period. It’s a little . . . I’m sorry,
just a little hazy to me.
WILLIAMS: Did Mrs. Wallace tell you stories about the chandelier?
RICHTER: Well, that her husband helped unpack it and he put it up with a few screws.
And then we discovered later he kind of missed the joists, and it’s a miracle
that . . . Our story was that it was a gift from Margaret, or Mrs. Daniel,
92
from New York.
WILLIAMS: In her last visit she said that she helped unpack it, and one of the crystal
bauble things was missing and she had to dig around in the box and finally
found it. She said she helped hang it up.
RICHTER: I see. I don’t remember that one.
WILLIAMS: Well, that was just in her May visit.
RICHTER: I see.
WILLIAMS: And the high chair?
RICHTER: Well, you got the story that as Margaret got bigger they cut the legs
down─again, Uncle George, the handyman, approach.
WILLIAMS: Did she tell us that or did Aunt May?
RICHTER: I first heard that story from Mrs. Wallace more so than Mrs. Daniel. I don’t
remember Mrs. Daniel really sharing that.
SHAVER: You and I had talked about this several years ago, that you had seemed to
get the impression that Mrs. Wallace was trying to find a niche for her
husband in her stories, trying to almost find a place for him and give him
some sort of . . .
RICHTER: Status or whatever, sure. I think so, in a way. I once attended some sort of
program by a doctor or something who was talking about why elderly
people tend to repeat the same stories over and over again, and it is sort of a
way where they’re reinforcing either their importance or the importance of
the family members, or just making it clear what their status was, and that’s
93
very important to elderly people. And so perhaps that’s why the pie plate
story would come up every visit, and things like George Wallace being the
handyman, that in a way that Mrs. Wallace was sort of establishing his
importance within that family compound atmosphere or whatever. I mean,
you know, if you think about it, Mrs. Truman certainly overshadowed
things there being the wife of a President of the United States, and so
maybe there was something to that about why Mrs. Wallace would return to
certain favorite stories over and over again.
SHAVER: And you would hear so little about the other Wallace girls, almost nothing.
RICHTER: Right.
WILLIAMS: I guess the study is the next room.
RICHTER: And as I said before, in little ways I felt a little guilty about that, but I would
appeal to people’s imagination of Mr. Truman being there. I would try to
fill in the missing link there and talk about there being piles and piles of
books, using as my reference point that photograph that was taken while
Thomas Hart Benton was doing the preliminary sketching for his painting
called “The Old President.”
WILLIAMS: Which, by the way, the painting was on exhibit at the Truman Library the
whole past year──
RICHTER: Oh, on my last visit, yeah, I did see it up there.
WILLIAMS: It’s nice that you can mention that.
RICHTER: Right, that’s right, and make a connection that way. Well, one thing that I
94
did forget earlier on, and it goes along with both the dedication ceremonies
and just the cooperation of the Truman Library, is that they had a longlasting
exhibit on the home, using artifacts that were from the home that
were in their care, you might say, and definitely enhanced the visitors’
experiences that summer being able to see that exhibit also.
Anyway, in terms of the study, I would talk about the importance. I
had heard from a number of Independence residents that the shade was up
enough. They claim to have seen Mr. Truman through the window. As I
say, “claim.” But it was from a number of different sources, that they could
see him, and at night they could see his silhouette in that study.
WILLIAMS: And is it true that many of them thought it was a bedroom?
RICHTER: Apparently. Yes, several have said that to me, too, perhaps because it was
one of the last lights to go out in the home in the evening. There is one bit
of controversy, that some people had told me that Mrs. Truman, after the
president’s death, that she just kept it the way it was, felt very bad about
even being in that room because it was so intimately connected to Mr.
Truman. And I gathered that it had even been a refuge for Mr. Truman
back in those early years when he was living with the in-laws there, and
that that was his small little niche in the home. So, anyway, I had this one
point of view that Mrs. Truman never set foot in there after the president’s
death, and yet I know for a fact, because he told me, Senator Eagleton on
his first visit to the home, said that his last visit with Mrs. Truman was in
95
that very study and that she was real concerned about George Brett,
whether he was going to hit .400. That was the year that George Brett
nearly hit .400.
WILLIAMS: That was 1980.
RICHTER: And so that seems to be contradictory, that if she felt that way, then why
would she invite in Tom Eagleton? Even though Senator Eagleton claimed
to be one of the last of the Truman protégés in politics, I can’t believe he
was considered a close family friend or anything. And I remember, I think
it was General Dawson . . . I sat next to him one year at the Truman Week
ceremonies, when I was invited to the dinner out at the Stephenson's
Restaurant, and he claimed to have visited with Mrs. Truman within the
study. So I just thought I’d further confuse the issue a bit.
WILLIAMS: That goes against the standard line that visitors really didn’t get past the
front room.
RICHTER: Well, it does that, too. It certainly does, and I mean I know that those two
individuals were very clear about the fact that they met with Mrs. Truman
in there.
WILLIAMS: Visitors often ask which chair the Trumans sat in. There are photos, but . . .
RICHTER: Well, and of course that was a tough one, and I admit I told a white lie. Of
course, though, I usually worded it in a little different way. I’d say, “The
president sat over in that location.” I did not say, “He sat in that chair.”
Now, everyone would say, “Oh yeah, there’s the chair!” I normally would
96
say, “In that location the president sat.” One thing though, this thing about
the study, though, just to further cloud the issue, like these visits with Tom
Eagleton and even maybe General Dawson might have been at the point
where the nurses were really running Mrs. Truman’s life and she didn’t
have much say-so when she was wheelchair-bound. Very likely that could
have been another situation.
SHAVER: That’s not the easiest room to roll into.
RICHTER: You’re right, you’re right.
SHAVER: And I don’t think she was totally committed to the wheelchair until ’81 or
something like that.
RICHTER: Okay. So anyway I just thought I’d cloud the issue a little bit there on that.
SHAVER: Well, Rufus [Burrus] and the air conditioner, too, in the study. He talked to
you at the Truman farm home dedication once upon a time about the air
conditioner in the study. Do you recall that one?
RICHTER: Boy, I sure don’t.
SHAVER: He had claimed to help put it in and take it out.
RICHTER: Oh, I only remember that some sources had maintained that it was a
seasonal sort of thing, that the air conditioner wasn’t around year-round,
and therefore I certainly advocated that that should be one of the seasonal
changes at the home, that we remove the air conditioner in the wintertime
and then put it back in. Maintenance staff probably didn’t look too kindly
towards that kind of suggestion.
97
WILLIAMS: While I think about it, did you have any stories about the Secret Service?
That seems to be still a hazy issue as to when they left.
RICHTER: You mean after Mrs. Truman’s death?
WILLIAMS: They were certainly gone by the time you arrived.
RICHTER: Right. My understanding was it was real quick after Mrs. Truman’s death,
and that was the problem then with the executor of the will, Mr. Chisholm,
having to bring in a security force.
I remember early on I, in a way, might have saved the day. The
telephone people came in and wanted to rip out of the barn─or as we called
it, the garage─wanted to rip out some of the telephone switching equipment
that had been used by the Secret Service, and I convinced them not to. And
I’m not sure if it’s still there or whether it later disappeared anyway. And
they literally just cut cables and stuff. I mean, it seemed like they made a
really hasty exit after Mrs. Truman’s death.
SHAVER: Did you talk to Bob Lockwood much and get any impressions from him,
especially when you hired him to mow the lawn?
RICHTER: He was very tight-lipped to me. It was sort of like he was observing the
code of silence of the Secret Service or whatever. I mean, he would talk a
bit about his role in cutting grass, but he didn’t have much to say about
overall operations inside or whatever. Although I do think he was the one,
or at least he told me about them eventually spending the night inside the
home, and thereby sort of beating up the sofa that’s in the living room. And
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of course we all would talk about the beat-up sofa being this homely touch
of the Trumans, and maybe Mrs. Truman would have been appalled to have
had the lumpy sofa in that condition.
WILLIAMS: Did he ever discuss the Trumans’ attitude toward the Secret Service in
general?
RICHTER: You know, not directly. As I said, he was pretty tight-lipped with me,
unless we were talking about mowing the grass.
SHAVER: What brought you to hire this former Secret Service chief──
RICHTER: Well, it’s real simple: the former experience. I mean, he had experience
going for him. [chuckling] I actually hired somebody else for the first
lawn-mowing. Several civic leaders, including the Junior Service League,
wanted to have a ceremony to honor Senator Eagleton for his role in, quote,
“saving the home,” unquote, as far as getting the park service to take it and
everything. And so before that ceremony, I arranged for just a local . . . I
almost literally looked through the yellow pages for a lawn-mowing man.
And they did an okay job, but in fact the guy, I think, didn’t want to ever do
it again, because the bid he gave me was way under the amount of time it
took to mow all that grass. So, after that I went and looked up Mr.
Lockwood, and he was agreeable to taking it on for a while, particularly
with his son working for Mr. Lockwood. And then later on we had the Dan
Cortes Lawn Mowing Service, and Antioch Lawn Mowing Service after
that, and then we went back to Dan Cortes, and we’ve had a whole series of
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lawn-mowing situations.
SHAVER: But he was faithful to it?
RICHTER: For whatever reason. I think it was mainly this aspect it was a way for his
son to earn some money and everything.
SHAVER: Oh, so it was really his son that was doing it?
RICHTER: They worked together as a team, but I think the money ended up in his
son’s pocket.
SHAVER: Okay. I never realized that.
WILLIAMS: Well, back to the home. From the dining room you go into the foyer.
RICHTER: Well, there we would certainly talk about the more formal side of the
Trumans’ life, which obviously it looked very formal. Everybody would be
stretching their necks to look up the staircase, and be very disappointed that
we weren’t going up the staircase. My point of view, I really hope someday
that there is a way to show the upstairs, because I think it would give a
more balanced view of the Trumans’ lifestyle. Because the upstairs in
many ways is a more informal part of their way of life, and I do think it
would balance it because a lot of that downstairs is a very formal look. The
parlor, very formal.
Sometimes I’d talk about the LBJ photographs. Of course,
probably as other people have said, when Mrs. Daniel visits there are
certain treatments to the home. She came in on one of her visits and said
that her dad didn’t like President Johnson that much and took away some of
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the photographs. Because there are several photographs of President
Johnson on the piano.
It was a good opportunity there to talk about again the extended
family. Parts of that parlor and the living room go back to the old days
when Madge Gates Wallace was in charge of the home. Sometimes I
would talk about Margaret being disappointed with the piano when she was
expecting the train set, that story. Perhaps that’s been a bit overblown. I
would try, though, to put some chills up people’s spine by saying, “Imagine
the president sitting there and playing the piano.” And of course they’d all
say, “Oh, the ‘Missouri Waltz’!” And then I’d say, “Well, you know, he
didn’t really care for that tune, but he was too polite not to play it if asked,”
and that sort of thing. And in the living room, you know, I would play
again on the idea of “Think of the Trumans sitting in those chairs and
receiving guests, or else Mrs. Truman going through her mail in her later
years in that one particular chair.” So what particular legend . . .
Oh, and of course the hat and the coat being the climax to the visit.
As you probably have heard from Steve Harrison, we’ve always wondered
if the hat doesn’t have any kind of sweat stains inside of it as to . . .
WILLIAMS: Well, television watching? Some people say she watched baseball,
wrestling matches, the Olympics, all sorts of different──
RICHTER: Well, and also I heard one story that she got up real early in the morning to
watch Prince Charles’s wedding─this was in her later years. My
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understanding was that she was quite a fan of TV, and then the story is Mr.
Truman would only watch the news and public affairs events. Or if there
was something where their daughter was on television, they’d be sure to
watch that.
WILLIAMS: Well, once the home opened, what were your major projects and problems
as the chief ranger the next three and a half years?
RICHTER: Well, I spent a lot of time, as all chief rangers do, with a never-ending flow
of paperwork and reports. A lot of it had to do just with . . . We had an
adequate budget in order to do business. As I said before, it was really done
on a shoestring, in terms that if one ranger was sick or on annual leave it
was pretty tight sailing down there. As I said before, I spent a lot of my
time just with coordinating visiting with these cooperating people. I spent a
lot of time downstairs, particularly that first year it was an all-volunteer
force. Genrose Welch, who was the original person in charge downstairs,
hired by the Jackson County Historical Society, had some difficulties with
her job and eventually was dismissed, which caused a great kind of turmoil.
I spent a lot of time . . . There were a lot of pros and cons about the
shuttle. I mean, there were a lot of complaints or shuttles not . . . individual
drivers. The overall management was okay, the scheme of things was okay,
but those day-to-day problems usually fell into my lap. The superintendent
expected me to resolve things that he perceived as being problems quite
quickly. There was a lot, as I said before, a lot of standard operating
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procedures as a new park, doing research for exhibits, or else directing the
work of other permanent rangers in doing research.
One project that I never saw to completion that Mr. Shaver
remembers was doing sort of a “statement of condition” of the surrounding
neighborhood homes and everything, sort of for documentary purposes. A
“statement for interpretation,” which became real in vogue there by the end
of my time at the Truman home, that every park needed a “statement for
interpretation” to document the plan of action for interpretive services. It’s
real strange. I was very busy there. It’s hard to give you an itemized list of
everything. I spent a lot of time working with the curator on different . . .
either projects or else concerns that Steve would have, working with the
two facility management specialists and their . . . getting things fixed.
There would be some wear and tear on door handles and . . .
WILLIAMS: We haven’t talked much about the facility managers. How did you get
along with the two, Skip Brooks and Mike Healy?
RICHTER: Well, they each had their talents. I mean, I think Skip certainly was the
right man for the job to get things underway, and particularly he was
magnificent in working with the large contract, the rehab of the outside of
the home. He had had an experience previously as an interpreter, so I think
he understood our point of view on things. He learned a lot in the process
here. I remember when he arrived he was ready to put, as code would have
required, neon exit signs for fire and safety in the home, and a few of those
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things. So it was sort of an educational process to compromise on those
sort of things so that we kept the integrity of the home’s experience, and yet
we weren’t neglecting the safety of the visitors and of the home itself.
Certainly I did have occasion to work with Skip and Dink Watskey’s flower
gardening arrangement and so forth. And certainly Skip, it’s to his credit,
we wouldn’t have the rose bed the way it is today [chuckling] without Skip
having been there working with Dink.
WILLIAMS: Did Dink come out of the blue as a volunteer?
RICHTER: As I recall, he came by way of Lisa Bosso’s father. There was some kind
of . . . Or wait, again memory is sort of failing me. It was either Lisa
Bosso’s father, or it could have been Warren Orville at the Truman Library.
There was some connection there that either of those two gentlemen knew
Dink and set him in the right direction to contact the park. As I recall, I
think it was a direct contact to Skip, from Dink to Skip, and then they got
Norm’s blessing for the project.
WILLIAMS: And as chief of interpretation, you had no objections?
RICHTER: I was leery [chuckling] about the overall result, because I was concerned
about the color of the roses. I would like to have seen them kept more their
. . . whatever documentation we did have from Mrs. Wallace or whoever
about the color of the roses. And if indeed in the later Truman years they
didn’t have any problem with the roses being planted helter-skelter, I would
like to have seen them planted helter-skelter. So I did have mixed feelings.
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Because, as a world-famous rose expert, Mr. Watskey took good care of
the roses, and much at a greater level of care than they would have received
by Reverend Hobby or other people tending the grounds. On the other
hand, I think it was important that there was a rose bed of some sort. If the
choice was either Dink’s rose bed or no rose bed at all, then I would vote
for Dink Watskey’s rose bed.
WILLIAMS: Did the exterior restoration pose any problems for your division?
RICHTER: Well, actually, you should come to Charleston, South Carolina, and the
National Association for Interpretation’s annual meeting. I’ll be giving a
program on how to cope with a major rehab of your primary resource. We
worked around that. Fortunately, most of their work was done on the
outside of the home, and we used it as a really good opportunity to promote
historic preservation and explain to visitors the correct way to do such a
project. We basically interpreted the project while it was in progress. We
sometimes lost access to one of the porches and so had to reroute the
visitors to get around that. But that’s where Skip was so good. I mean, he
worked real closely with me, and we just worked as a team on providing
visitor services while that project was going on.
WILLIAMS: You said that the two facility managers were different. How was Mike
Healy different?
RICHTER: Well, Mike was more of a traditional maintenance person, in that he came
up through the ranks of maintenance. In some ways he liked to chew the fat
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a little more. I think again it was just the climate of the times: Skip had so
much of a workload that he wanted to just get the stuff done and not really
spend a lot of time deciding or chewing the fat on what should happen.
Mike Healy’s role was more of a traditional maintenance role, in that the
major rehab work had been done and it was more a sense of keeping the
home up to the condition that it was after the rehab job. Mike had to deal
more with the state of the rehab of the ticket center, the Eastern National
project, but I thoroughly enjoyed working with Mike. You know, if
anything, with Mike I had to deal . . . When I would be alerted, the
superintendent would alert me to a problem that he saw in the visitor center
or down at the home, or mostly in the visitor center, and I would work with
Mike on correcting it. I would say, if anything, I had a more day-to-day
contact with Mike than I did with Skip, Skip dealing more with contractors.
WILLIAMS: Did visitor comments and complaints come under your supervision?
RICHTER: Oh, did they ever.
WILLIAMS: What were some of those in the first year?
RICHTER: Well, particularly that first year when many days we would be out of tickets
by eleven o’clock or 11:30 in the morning. As with most national parks, we
tried to resolve complaints at the lowest level of authority so as not to
reinforce to the visitor how important . . . that their grievance was very
justified. If you bring the superintendent in at the very beginning of a
complaint, that just reinforces the idea that it’s a very important, unusual
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complaint. The complaints were primarily the fact that we were either out
of tickets or else we were inconveniencing people by too long of a wait.
People complained about inadequate signs. They didn’t understand why
they couldn’t get their tickets at the Truman Library. They would have
some complaints against staff members, particularly the shuttle bus drivers.
Occasionally a complaint about someone in the ticket center or a ranger at
the home, not very often; usually it was shuttle bus drivers.
WILLIAMS: Did these comments and complaints have any major effect on management
policies?
RICHTER: We tended to hold the line. I mean, as I say, we did experiment with even
one extra person on the tours, and decided afterwards by unanimous verdict
of the interpreters unanimous verdict of the interpreters that it wasn’t a
good idea. The, uh, shuttle bus drivers, it was just a matter of me
spending a lot of time with the various managers of the shuttle bus
system. And they basically were trained to be drivers. Their forte’ was
really not customer relations and as a result we would have hurt feelings.
WILLIAMS: Take a break.
[End #4128B; Begin #4128C]
WILLIAMS: We were talking about visitor complaints, I believe?
RICHTER: Right. There would be a few complaints about how people were treated at
the Truman Library, and again it’s always with such hearsay, it was really
tough to resolve the complaints. Whenever you deal with a volunteer staff,
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particularly one that works . . . most of our volunteers would work, at most,
one day a week, it’s a bit difficult to keep up the quality of the standards.
So some of the complaints would be directed towards them. But on the
other hand, we had some excellent volunteers─some of which I understand
are still here to this day─true-blue, quality people.
I’d say the majority of the complaints were either because the
tickets were out, there was a long wait, or this business that they would go
to the Truman Library first, because that’s where the signs from the
interstate directed them. They would spend time enjoying the Truman
Library, then realize they had to get tickets for the home, and then they
would say, “Well, we could have gotten our tickets first and been enjoying
the library second.” Then we’d say, “Well, that’s what we try to get people
to do.”
WILLIAMS: What was the rationale behind requiring people to come in and sign,
everyone had to be there?
RICHTER: Well, first of all, we did have some fear at the very beginning that there
would be ticket scalping going on, or else at least a tour broker could come
in and just say, “Okay, I want 256 tickets.” And if we didn’t have a system,
what could we do but give them to him? We did want visitors to get the
experience of the slide show. We felt very strongly at that time that the
slide show was an important event to see before the tour, and it would set
the stage for the home tour, and it would also enable the interpreter not to
108
have to start from scratch about the Truman story. But it was primarily just
sort of to make the system as fair as possible for everybody, so again you
didn’t have somebody run in and bag twenty tickets and go running out the
door and maybe distribute them down the street.
SHAVER: As you recall, originally there was always some intention to have the ticket
center downtown away from the house. Is that the way you recall it? Or
were they going to have it at the─
RICHTER: Well, actually, when we were going to have the funeral home as our site,
there was some discussion about having the tickets distributed out of the
funeral home, as I recall. That was just a momentary thought, but then very
quickly we thought of having the ticket center downtown. And then
certainly once we were all going to be down there, then certainly we were
going to have the ticket center downtown. But my memory, for a short
while we thought of having the tickets come out of the funeral home,
around the corner. It’s very hazy to me. I mean, even thinking maybe of
working out a relationship with the RLDS parking lots, and having people
park over in the RLDS parking lots.
WILLIAMS: Since you mention that, was there a little bit of controversy with the
Mormon and RLDS churches, as far as neighborhood preservation also?
RICHTER: Well, as you can see this day, as far as what’s happened in other areas of
Independence with the expansion for the temple, the RLDS temple, when I
first arrived, there were some feelers that went out to me by way of, I think,
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Bill Bullard, the RLDS wanted to know if we’d be interested in taking over
the Center Stake Building as headquarters and a museum or whatever. And
again we were a bit concerned about the future of that building, because of
course we would like it to stay as it was and not have it be changed or torn
down or whatever. The building around the corner, that for a while was
owned by Park College─I don’t know who owns it now─we were
concerned about its fate, again because it’s a major dominating feature on
the urban landscape, you might say.
SHAVER: It’s William Chrisman High School, the old one.
RICHTER: Yeah, the old William Chrisman High School. We at one time, and I don’t
know if this is going to materialize or not, when the Reorganized Church
first put up their idea of having the great temple actually being built, they
were talking about a mall going all the way down to Truman Road and
taking out the houses that would have been just one block to the west. And
I know that that made Norm and me nervous because that would be getting
very close then to the immediate area of the Truman neighborhood. And
there was some talk of relocating Lexington Avenue and relocating the
street scheme of things to accommodate the new temple, so I know that that
was a complaint Reverend Hughes had that the preservationists always
focused on the Baptist church as being anti-preservationist. And he says,
“Well, what about our friends over at the RLDS?”
And even the Latter Day Saints after I had first arrived . . . When I
110
first arrived, there was still a sanctuary standing that had been the very first
Latter Day Saints sanctuary. In fact, their president at that time had served
time at that very center. Anyway, it had fallen into disrepair and was torn
down, I think the first year I was there, in ’83. So is that what you were
referring to?
WILLIAMS: Was that as an immediate threat as the Baptist church?
RICHTER: No, long-term. I mean, we were a little more nervous in terms of the longterm
effects.
WILLIAMS: You didn’t get embroiled in public meetings and controversies?
RICHTER: Nothing like that.
WILLIAMS: You mentioned the slide program, and I’ve always wondered, since it
seems to be such a well received program, who actually wrote it.
RICHTER: Well, I’m glad you asked that question.
WILLIAMS: I always assumed that you did.
RICHTER: Well, it was a very fortunate chain of events. I had been selected for a
training course at the Mather Training Center, which is just a stone’s throw
away from the Harpers Ferry Design Center, where a lady named Shirley
Wilt worked. She was another one that just really loved Truman. She was
of that generation and was really anxious to be involved in the Truman
home project. So, in January of ’84 I knew I was going back to Harpers
Ferry, and so I worked with Shirley, and what we arranged was that I would
stay a couple of days after. The training course was a Monday-through111
Friday course. I would stay through Tuesday or Wednesday, as I recall, and
work with both Shirley on the audiovisual program and with an editor
named Jane Hanna on the brochure that we wanted to be designed. So,
coming to Harpers Ferry, I first of all took all kinds, mass quantities of
slides that I could think of, and also took along prints of photographs,
historic photographs that I thought would be appropriate, and came up with
a script. The photographs pretty much came out the way I had selected
them. Shirley sort of had the last word on that, but pretty much as I had
come up with sort of a story line, we went with that. Shirley took my script,
as far as the narration, and changed it a bit. So I mean it certainly was a
team effort. I mean, I cannot claim to be the sole person behind that show,
but it certainly was a team effort. One of those things very quickly, I mean,
as I say, literally in just a couple of days Shirley and I had the script and
pretty much the story line worked out, and also made arrangements for Tom
Gray, who is a photographer at Harpers Ferry, to come out and do some
slide work for some other slides for use in the slide program. Basically, my
kind of amateur slides at least gave her an idea of the potential and sort of
camera angles and everything, and then she gave Tom Gray some
instructions on some additional work and more professional quality.
WILLIAMS: And then she chose the music and the narrator and all of that?
RICHTER: Right. Yeah, that was all done back at Harpers Ferry.
WILLIAMS: And you say the finished product─
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RICHTER: And please don’t ask me the name of the narrator, which everyone asks me,
and I kept . . . I called her a couple of different times, wrote down the
name, and then promptly lost it, so please don’t ask me. Hopefully,
someday we will have it enshrined somewhere where we’ll always know.
He had been used on many projects.
SHAVER: Did you have the site bulletin . . . Did you have the four-color site bulletin
on site when you opened up?
RICHTER: Well, no. You did have to ask me that, didn’t you? That was the one
disappointment, that that project did drag on quite a bit. It was almost a full
year later before we got our finished product. The production schedule at
Harpers Ferry is very tight, and we were like an add-on into that production
schedule, and we kept getting kicked backwards. And to be honest, until
the actual opening of the home, we had a lot of leverage saying, “We’ve got
to have this by the time the home opens.” Well, when we missed that
opening on the brochure, then we lost a lot of clout about “We need it just
this instant.” And there was also some problems, in that a lot of the . . . I
did write a lot of the copy, but then also did Jane Hanna, and some of it we
weren’t too pleased with and we wanted it rewritten. I rewrote most of the
captions below the little tiny photographs that are in there, because they
started out being pretty inadequate. So things went back and forth, and that
dragged things out also.
WILLIAMS: In your division originally there was a lead park technician, and we’ve
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talked a little bit about Palma.
RICHTER: That’s correct.
WILLIAMS: But that position no longer exists.
RICHTER: Yeah, for a while it even got stronger. She took on more of a supervisory
role of front-line supervision at the home, because it was . . . at least while I
was there at the very beginning when we were still doing a lot of these
paperwork kind of exercises, operations plans. And also in a new operation
there was more time being spent with the cooperating agencies, like the
library and the volunteer force and the shuttle bus system and the Jackson
County Historical Society, and then later on I spent a lot of my time with
Eastern National Park and Monument Association, for a variety of reasons.
WILLIAMS: So was that position envisioned as a temporary position?
RICHTER: Well, see, then by then I left. It was still, I felt, needed when I left. But
then Mr. Reigle and Palma decided that it wasn’t necessary and that the
money would be better spent with more front-line people.
WILLIAMS: When you moved back to Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in 1987 .
. . Right?
RICHTER: Right.
WILLIAMS: Did you feel like you were leaving things unfinished at the Truman home?
RICHTER: No, I thought it was a good time to leave. I did feel I had pretty much
contributed what I was going to contribute there, and that they . . . I think
national parks do need a fresh perspective from time to time, and that it was
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a good time. I just thought things were pretty well in order at that time. I
thought the visitor services was pretty solid. The Eastern National
operation had gone through a lot of hard times, but I felt it had pretty well
settled down also, that we had a quality selection of sales items. We had .
. . at least the exhibits were on order. Not all the exhibits were in yet, but at
least they were in the finishing processes of being prepared, so I felt it was
an appropriate time.
WILLIAMS: Are there any gaps in the operation of the park now or since then that you
can identify, as more the distant observer?
RICHTER: I’m not sure I’m distant enough yet, you know, because there are still
several personalities . . . Hardly any now, but there still are a few that are
still involved in the project, and in most of my visits I’ve tried to be very
polite and noncommittal.
I’m not sure how the walking tour is doing. I thought that was an
important aspect in our offering to the public, not so much to give visitors
an opportunity to do something while they were waiting for their tour of the
home, but just to make a point about what we see as important of the whole
national landmark district.
And I guess, as I say earlier, I think the one thing that I regret is the
fact that, at least up till now, that we have not been able to implement a key
part of the general management plan, being the neighborhood trust and
ensuring sort of the longevity of the neighborhood.
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WILLIAMS: Do you think there’s a need for any additional staff in the park?
RICHTER: Well, I guess it all depends on how you’re going to handle the Haukenberry
house and the Wallace homes, and again, I’m not really up-to-date on what
the plans are or how that’s really going to work its way out. Even though
we do have a couple of exhibits at the Truman home ticket center, I see the
need to use one of those homes sort of as a museum. If you think about all
the artifacts that are now down in storage, in curatorial storage, I could see
a never-ending series of special exhibits on life at the home, particularly
until someday in the future when we have the upstairs. And as I said
before, I see that as the other thing, that someday I really think that that’s a
relevant part of a visitor’s experience. Even though the logistics would be
very difficult, it would just really, to me, enhance the overall story of the
Trumans.
WILLIAMS: As a historian, did you ever argue for a historian staff position?
RICHTER: Oh, not myself. Again remember, I was there at the ground floor when I
was more concerned about just getting enough interpreters to do the job
right. Ron Cockrell had done a really fine job, I felt, in the work that he had
done, and so I felt more in terms of having summer historians there, giving
them specific projects. I think the oral history project needs to really be on
the front burner, with a lot of the eyewitnesses departing the scene, that that
needs to be an important focus of park management over there.
And certainly I was glad to see the “historic grounds study and
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plan” see the light of day. That was a long process, and of course that’s the
most challenging part of interpreting a historic site, that you can’t freeze the
grounds in one certain time period. You can’t stop trees from growing into
bigger trees and that sort of thing.
WILLIAMS: Mike, do you have any other questions?
SHAVER: A capsule summary of some of the folks at the Truman Library that you
dealt with.
RICHTER: A summary?
SHAVER: Well, your impressions of them and how they kind of played a role in the
development of the site, or at least your─
RICHTER: Well, certainly as I said, Dr. Zobrist was a key player, and particularly
when I was there as ranger in charge, you know, a lot of good, solid advice
on sort of the lay of the land, you might say, and the different players in the
community. Liz Safly was just a delight, and of course, with her role with
the inventory and having been in the home, and her longevity as far as
being an Independence resident, she provided a lot of insight. Pat Kerr in
the first few months had a lot of advice also.
SHAVER: What kind of advice?
RICHTER: Well, just more in terms of . . . maybe not so much advice. I take that back,
more . . .
SHAVER: Observations?
RICHTER: Observations maybe. Also her point of view about sort of the history of the
117
home, because again she was the other key person that had been in there
doing the inventory. So her opinions of . . . or not so much opinions, but
her memories of how Mrs. Truman was being cared for and that sort of
thing, or just the way life was at the home in the later years.
The support staff, I couldn’t say enough, you know. The
secretaries, which I consider much more . . . They do much more than a
secretary. They’re more like office managers. Mary Jo Colley, and at that
time Diane Farris worked there. She was tremendous to work with. Vicky
Alexander, who is Dr. Zobrist’s administrative assistant, was totally
supportive when I was there, in terms of support, office support, that sort of
thing.
SHAVER: Mary Jo had worked for Mr. Truman. Did she ever share any of her
reminiscences?
RICHTER: She felt honor-bound not to disclose such things, but she was a secretary to
Mrs. Truman for some years. But she doesn’t want to reveal anything.
SHAVER: So you never got any impressions or insights from her?
RICHTER: Nothing, no. Also, Pauline Testerman, of course, was of great help, the
photo archivist, and certainly a great help to Ron Cockrell. There was a
remarkable collection of photos of the early days, at least mostly of the
exterior of the home.
WILLIAMS: From the attic of the Truman home that the library removed for
safekeeping. [chuckling]
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RICHTER: That’s right.
SHAVER: Any of the archivists that you remember more than any that played
important roles in things?
RICHTER: Well, John Curry for one, mainly because he had a delegated authority also.
He was sort of a public programming person for Dr. Zobrist. So things like
planning the opening of the home, the dedication ceremony, I worked with
John. There were several times where Dr. Zobrist hosted us to have
planning meetings at the library, or even Norm had a zone meeting of the
superintendents at the library, so John Curry was real helpful in that regard.
Warren Orville, another Independence resident, he provided some
insight into the way the nature of Independence, what makes residents of
Independence tick, you might say. He tried hard to get me to join the Lions
Club, but unfortunately at that time it was a closed society to men only, so I
chose not to join his organization. [tape turned off]
WILLIAMS: You were talking about Warren Orville.
RICHTER: Right.
WILLIAMS: Any others?
RICHTER: Well, the others, I guess, was more in terms of moral support, or else
establishing that climate of just receiving me right away as a colleague, you
know, instead of as an outsider. People like Harry Clark and J.R. [Fuchs]
just went out of their way to be friendly. And Phil Lagerquist, of course, a
great memory. I mean, he goes back to when the documents came out from
119
Washington to Kansas City. And Mary Jo primarily worked for Phil, so
when Mary Jo would do favors for me, of course it was taking away from
her time for Phil, so he was very understanding about that. And Dennis
[Bilger]. I don’t want to forget Dennis, was very friendly and supportive.
And I know I’m forgetting some of them. Again, it’s─
WILLIAMS: There’s Neil Johnson.
RICHTER: Neil was sort of an interesting fellow because he did have a background in
western history, and of course that’s my background, so we sort of had a
kindred interest there in that regard.
WILLIAMS: He has a keen interest in the farm home.
RICHTER: Oh, I see, okay.
WILLIAMS: Would you say that your original impressions of the Trumans and
Independence were from the staff at the library?
RICHTER: Oh, just before I answer that question, I don’t want to forget Irwin, also one
of the other archivists, was also quite, quite friendly and interested in what
we were doing down there. Okay, could you repeat your question?
WILLIAMS: Would you say that your original impressions of Independence and the
Trumans were from the Truman Library staff?
RICHTER: I’d say more or less. I think so. Plus what Andy Ketterson . . . his
impressions over time.
WILLIAMS: And would it have been much more difficult for you to jump right in
without the─
120
RICHTER: I’d say almost impossible.
WILLIAMS: ─people there that actually knew the Trumans?
RICHTER: That would have been just almost impossible, and particularly with the
complexities of Independence and its politics and its different interest
groups, it would have been a pretty tough situation. Although not to slight
the role that Bill Bullard and Pat O’Brien and Sally Schwenk played, and
even Millie Nesbitt. I mean, there was support. I don’t want to say it was
just the Truman Library. I mean, there certainly was some good support
and advice. Basically, I measured and weighed this different advice and
then tried to be as noncommittal as possible until Norm Reigle showed up.
WILLIAMS: I’d like to thank you for your continuing interest in the Truman home.
RICHTER: Well, it’s been my pleasure.
WILLIAMS: And for spending the afternoon with us.
RICHTER: And certainly I think where I feel best about is the fact that I think we really
do have a solid visitor service program there and it does continue. I’m
confident the visitors are getting a really unique experience down there.
WILLIAMS: Thanks.
RICHTER: You bet.
END OF INTERVIEW
WILLIAMS: And for spending the afternoon with us.
RICHTER: And certainly I think where I feel best about is the fact that I think we really
do have a solid visitor service program there and it does continue. I’m
confident the visitors are getting a really unique experience down there.
WILLIAMS: Thanks.
RICHTER: You bet.
END OF INTERVIEW

Thomas Richter Oral History Interviews

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER: NOVEMBER 11, 1985.

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ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER :AUGUST 27, 1990

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ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER

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ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER: NOVEMBER 11, 1985.

EDITORIAL NOTICE

RESTRICTION

ABSTRACT

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER :AUGUST 27, 1990

EDITORIAL NOTICE

RESTRICTION

ABSTRACT

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS P. RICHTER

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