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Date Posted: 08:24:46 02/13/04 Fri
Author: Shell
Subject: 'Love Story' Centers on Truman Letters

This is so sweet!Couples need more of this!

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. - As president, Harry S. Truman earned the moniker "Give 'Em Hell Harry." As a husband, he might have been better described as a man who gave his wife his heart.

AP Photo

In love letters to Bess Truman, the nation's 33rd president reveals his softer, loving and emotional side.

More than 1,300 letters he wrote over 50 years, along with a handful the first lady wrote to her husband, play out on stage this Valentine's Day (news - web sites) in "The Love Story of Harry and Bess Truman," at the Truman Presidential Museum and Library.

Workers at the museum and library know why only a handful of Bess Truman's letters to her husband exist.

They tell a story of Harry Truman finding his first lady at a fireplace, burning hundreds of letters she'd written him.

"But think of history," Truman pleaded.

"I am!" Bess replied.

But Bess Truman didn't torch the letters Truman sent her.

This is the third year the Truman Players, a small troupe of library employees, have put on the Valentine's Day show. The 40-minute performance includes a slide show of the Trumans growing old together, more than a dozen letters, Truman's personal writings and an interview with Ethel Nolan, Truman's cousin.

Library Archivist Ray Geselbracht was moved and inspired by the letters. He wrote and narrates the play.

"Truman had an ability to both feel very emotional conditions and express them without irony," he said. "How many men have ever written letters like this? He wrote them his whole life."

At 6 years old, when Truman met Bess Wallace in Sunday school, he fell in love, archivists said. They lived through a time when mail was delivered twice a day and couples courted through letters. In 1911 Truman even proposed marriage to Bess in a letter. She refused until he asked in person.

Truman's letters to Bess originally joined the museum's permanent collection in 1983 and were published that same year in "Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman."

Much of the writing reflects the couple's mundane day-to-day business, matters with their daughter, Margaret, or deciding what seat covers to buy for their Chrysler. The president also sought political advice from his first lady, archivists said. But other times, his words were genuine and affectionate. Occasionally, Truman would write five or six page letters.

"When you take all the political factors out of it, this is a love story about a couple that put a great deal of effort into their relationship," said Pat Dorsey, an archivist who plays Bess. "He literally put Bess on a pedestal and never took her down."

Dorsey said the couple shared a love for music, literature and theater. The first lady took comfort in Truman's sense of humor, honesty and devotion. In his letters, Truman condemned men who caroused or cheated on their wives.

In one letter, written in 1913, Truman wrote to Bess: "I'm all puffed up, and hilarious, and happy, and anything else that happens to a fellow when he finds his lady love thinks more of him than the rest of the bests."

And like any couple, the Trumans had quarrels. Archivists know of at least one angry letter the president never sent to his wife.

"You have to admire Truman's sincerity and the elegance of his language," said Niel Johnson, who plays Truman.

"Truman acted pretty naturally," Johnson said. "I guess I try to do the same thing."

___

On the Net:

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/

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Replies:

And this is not the Truman Show? -- BV, 12:20:25 02/13/04 Fri