Never-Seen-Before Bess Truman Letters to Husband Harry Show a True Love Story

[SoCalDem]

October 16, 2009 9:18 PM
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/lady-bess-trumans-letters-president-harry-truman-show/Story?id=8831003&page=1

The Private Life of a Presidential Wife: Bess Truman Letters to Husband Harry Revealed to Public

Letters to Husband Harry Show One of the Greatest Marriages in American Political History

By KRISTINA WONG
Oct. 15, 2009



Michelle and Barack. Bill and Hillary. George and Laura. For many Americans, mention of these famous first couples can evoke strong reactions.
Harry and Bess Truman correspondence shows close, playful marriage.

But what about Bess and Harry Truman? Images of romance do not necessarily come to mind. But, as newly released letters written by Bess Truman show, their relationship was one of the most endearing in U.S. presidential history. Eight letters, revealed this week to the media for the first time ever by Truman's eldest grandson, Clifton Truman Daniel, shed insight into the intimate and close relationship shared by the Truman couple, who met at Sunday school when Harry was 6 and Bess was 5.

See Bess Truman's Letter to Harry dated July 16, 1923, here.

"He recalled in his memoirs, walking in and seeing this blue-eyed, blond-haired little girl, and he was just smitten," Daniel said. "He basically carried a torch for her from then on, all through grade school and high school.

"As far as we know, she had one or two other suitors, but he never looked at another woman from the age of 6 on." Twenty-nine years later, while overseas after the end of World War I, Truman implored Bess to marry him. "Please get ready to march down the aisle with me just as soon as you decently can when I get back," he wrote on Feb. 18, 1919.

snip

In one letter dated July 16, 1923, after Harry had taken off for the Missouri National Guard training camp at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as he did every July, Bess wrote to her husband:

"Dear Pettie -- I hope you didn't run into the rain we had about five-thirty -- It didn't last long but it was good and wet while it did last. It is now 10:20 and I am in bed. There was a big black bug on my bed when I turned the sheet down and I had to kill it myself -- but that wasn't the first time I had wished for you."


snip

[Captain Hilts]

1. Their marriage really suffered in the White House.

She was totally pissed he didn't consult her or tell her about The Bomb.

She spent extended periods of time in Missouri without him.

In this sense, she is very much like all other thinking president's wives. Many just hated living in the WH: Eleanor, Bess, Jackie, Laura....

[Walk away]

3. Laura???????? What was she thinking?

"Where do they keep the pills?"

I can see where you would mention Laura Bush as "thinking" and not Hillary Clinton. :sarcasm:

Hillary gets browbeaten by the country for not baking cookies, yet she makes a real good Sec. of State. Laura spends eight years looking dazed and then looks dazed in retirement. Good list!

[Captain Hilts]

4. Hillary had a love/hate attitude to being in the White House. LadyBird LOVED it. Nancy LOVED it...

Hillary did not hate it as Eleanor, Bess, Laura and Jackie did....

Not a slam against Hillary at all.

[liberal N proud]

2. Like Barack, Harry had to live with his mother-in-law

That could be tough on a marriage.

[Captain Hilts]

5. I think he likes the sense of family Mrs. Robinson contributes. Your first year in theWH it's

a good idea to bring your peeps with you, because of security, you get lonely really easily.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. Worse than that. His MIL thought he would never amount to anything and that extended into the WH.

[liberal N proud]

7. He was nothing but a poor dirt farmer

He was not worthy of her daughter.

[Captain Hilts]

8. Not quite. He'd been successful in the Army and was made an officer. nt

[liberal N proud]

9. But that is how Bess mother saw it.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

10. All Bess' mother did was complain.

She would sit in the White House and say "You think you're really something because you're the President of the United States, but you ain't nothing".

She sounds like a real Captain in the Broom Air Force.

[roguevalley]

11. bitchy mom in laws -fdr and hst- seem to be a plague sometimes