My grandfather Paul Bailey was a rock ribbed, small town Republican. Former President Harry Truman, a Democrat, was his friend. Grandpa Bailey once argued a case before Mr. Truman, when Truman was a Jackson County, Missouri, Commissioner.
“You must have won,” I grinned, “if you became friends?”
“No,” he said, “I lost. But I learned something about Mr. Truman that made me admire the man. He opened a hat shop in Kansas City after he came home from the front lines of World War One. The business failed. His partner declared bankruptcy. Truman did not. He moved in with his mother-in-law, so he could pay back every penny.”
The only asset Mr. Truman had when he died was that house. His wife had inherited the home from her mother and father and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire lives there.
As president he called home collect. Never billed the taxpayer.
“Mrs. Truman wanted Harry to buy a car,” Grandpa recalled. “He said, ‘We can’t afford one, but when we get out of this Great White Jail (the White House,) we’ll get one.”
After president Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess bought one. There was no Secret Service following them.
President Truman retired from office in 1952. His income was a U.S. Army pension. $112.56 a month. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an ‘allowance’ and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, Mr. Truman declined, stating, “You don’t want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it’s not for sale.”
One day on the way to Grandpa’s house, he stopped to show me the retired president mowing his mother-in-law’s lawn.
“Hi, Harry,” he waved.
Mr. Truman shaded his eyes and smiled when he recognized his friend. “Hi, Paul.”
Grandpa grinned and then said, “Okay, Bobby. Let’s get out of here before this Democrat stuff sticks to the tires…”
