Give ‘Em Hell
At 12 noon on January 20th, I was with the President. The 33rd President. I happened to be in Key West, where over 20 years earlier I’d really enjoyed a visit to Harry Truman’s Little White House. I decided to go back.
About a year and a half after succeeding FDR, Truman was exhausted by the pace and burdens of the presidency. He couldn’t shake a bad cold, and his doctor urged him to get some rest in a warm place. With a large naval base offering security and communications (and a temporarily-vacant commandant’s house), Key West seemed like a good idea.
Truman loved it. He got over his cold, and went back to DC tanned, rested, and ready. He would return 10 more times during his presidency.
On my earlier visit to Key West I was drawn to the Little White House by my father’s fascination with and respect for Harry Truman. He’d made sure that a family road trip included a stop at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence MO. He tried to call Mr. Truman one year on his birthday. Most of all, he drove home to us kids how Harry Truman was a reader. “He had a real sense of history,” my father would say, many times.
The Little White House, now a state park, looks almost exactly the way it did in the 40s and 50s. It’s not ostentatious (befitting a man who, according to the tour guide, made his own bed every day). There are books everywhere, some popular fiction, some serious history. Truman’s favorite chair is on display, in a perfect spot for reading.
I didn’t manage to escape the inauguration entirely. There was a celebratory party under a tent on the lawn, and red “Make America Great Again” hats were for sale in the gift shop. But it was comforting to be reminded of a President whose proudest boast as a child was that he’d read every book in the Independence library.
