Dear Mamma and Mary (Truman) : April 12, 1945
Transcript
Welcome to the Dear Bess, Dear Harry podcast for April 12, 2024, brought to you by Harry S Truman National Historic Site, a unit of the National Park Service. We come to you from 219 North Delaware Street, Independence, Missouri, which from 1945 to 1953 was the second most famous address in the United States.
Today we would like to share with you a different type of letter written by Harry S Truman, one written by him as Vice President of the United States, and written to his mother and sister, Mrs. Martha Ellen Truman and Miss Mary Jane Truman, back home in Grandview, Missouri.
Just a note---we are grateful to have photocopies of the letters that Harry Truman wrote to his mother and sister. As former President Truman was writing his memoirs, he borrowed these letters from his sister, and had copies made. Mary Jane Truman for reasons unknown destroyed the originals.
Vice President Truman had been in that office for just over 80 days. Constitutionally, the Vice President serves as the presiding officer of the Senate, and Truman dearly loved the Senate, and had good working relationships with many of its members. Sometimes we live our lives not knowing what fate has in store for us. As Harry Truman wrote this letter to his mother and sister, he had no way of knowing that just a few hours later he would be President of the United States, and the radio address he mentions would never happen. His life would change forever, as would the lives of his family. We’d like to share this letter with you today.
April 12 1945
United States Senate Washington, D.C.
Dear Mamma & Mary: I am trying to write to you a letter today from the desk of the President of the Senate while a windy Senator from Wisconsin is making a speech on a subject with which he is in no way familiar. The Jr. Sen. From Arizona made a speech on the subject and he knew what he was talking about. The Wisconsin Senator is Wiley and the Arizona Senator is McFarland.
We are considering the Mexican Treaty on water in the Colorado River and the Rio Grande. It is of vital importance to South Western U.S. and northern Mexico. Hope we get it over some day soon. The Senators from California and one from Utah and a very disagreeable one from Nevada (McCarran) are fighting the ratification. I have to sit up here and make parliamentary rulings-some of which are common sense and some of which are not. Hope you are having a nice spell of weather. We’ve had a week of beautiful weather but it is raining and wintery today. I don’t think it’s going to last long. Hope not for I must fly to Providence R.I. Sunday morning.
Turn on your radio tomorrow night at 9:30 your time and you’ll hear Harry make a Jefferson Day address to the nation. I think I’ll be on all the networks so it ought not to be hard to get me. It will be followed by the President whom I’ll introduce.
Hope you are both well and stay that way.
Love to you both.
Write when you can.
Harry
On April 12, 1945, Vice President Harry S Truman was presiding over the United States Senate and decided to write his mother and sister back home in Grandview, Missouri...even encouraging them to tune into a radio broadcast where Truman was going to introduce President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Fate had other plans. A few hours later America would be mourning one president and learning about their new one. And the war was still raging on two fronts.
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/165042140