Following the passing of former President Harry S Truman in 1972 and the passing of former First Lady Bess Wallace Truman in 1982, scholars and citizens alike to learn that thousands of letters had survived and were now entrusted to the Truman Library for posterity.
Some may have had a clue about the existence of these letters as early as 1955, when Margaret Truman published her memoir Souvenir. In that book, Margaret Truman told the story, now often repeated, on how on one night upon returning home one night from his office in Kansas City, Harry Truman came across his wife burning some letters. Truman, a student of history, implored his wife to "think of history." She curtly replied "I have."
We may never know, exactly, what Mrs. Truman burned. Did she burn her letters to him? Did she burn any of her letters to her? Other family documents? We'll never be sure.
But of the over 5,000 known letters that Harry S Truman wrote during his 88 years, some 1,316 of them were to the great love of his life, Bess Wallace.
The earliest known "Dear Bess" letter is from December 31, 1910. Then, Harry S Truman was a farmer, living on his maternal grandmother's farm near Grandview, Missouri, working the land in partnership with his father. The letters continued into Truman's post-presidency. In the letters Truman poured his heart out to Miss Wallace...the eventual Mrs. Truman...and never lost the awe and sparkle of being in love, despite his change from being a farmer to soldier to County Judge to Senator to Vice President to President to former President.
Unfortunately, if we assume that Mrs. Truman wrote an equal number of letters to Harry, we have few of those. It may well have been these "Dear Harry" letters that Mrs. Truman deliberatly destroyed. Thankfully, however, a relative handful of these have survived.
Via a podcast, we would like to share these letters with you on our website. At least once or twice a week, we will mark the anniversary of one of these letters, and share with you. We will also link to a digital copy of the letters on the Truman Library website.
We are grateful to Harry and Bess Truman for being wonderful authors, are grateful to their family for sharing them with us, grateful to the Truman Library for being good stewards of them. And we are grateful to you for allowing us to share them with you.
You can follow our podcast here: https://www.nps.gov/podcasts/the-219-north-delaware-street-podcast.htm?cs_forceReadMode=1&&sortby=date-desc
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January 03, 2022
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Last updated: January 3, 2022