Transcript: Chapter 04

Narrator: "Dear Bessie, I certainly enjoyed myself the evening I was there and you may be assured that I shall repeat the offense as often as I can or you will allow me. The cake and coffee couldn't be beat. ... There's nothing better than cake but more cake.

Bess was 25 when Harry first began to court her. She was a young woman on the verge of spinsterhood, the bonds forged by maternal need and filial duty drawing ever more tightly around her.

But Harry idolized her. All through elementary and high school, he had shyly loved her -- from afar. Even as a young man in Kansas City, he had dreamed always and only of Bess. Now he was 26. And he had never had a girlfriend.

ALONZO HAMBY: Truman from the time he was a kid had always been somewhat uneasy with the opposite sex. Maybe Bess' distance and his idealization of her provided an excuse for not getting involved with women for a long time. He's been hooked on this woman ever since he met her at the age of five, and he has never been able to get interested in any other women since.

NARRATOR: Harry saw Bess whenever he could, nearly every Sunday. They enjoyed concerts, plays, and continued to exchange letters:

"Dear Bessie, You may be very, very sure that your letters cannot possibly come too often or too regular for me ..."

"Dear Bessie, My voice is somewhat weary from yelling at the horses. Please write me when you have the time as I enjoy your letters very much ..."

Finally Harry drew up his courage and proposed -- in a letter:

"Dear Bessie, You may not have guessed it but I've been crazy about you ever since we went to Sunday school together. But I never had the nerve to think you'd even look at me. I don't think so now but I can't help from telling you what I think of you."

Were I an Italian or a poet I would use all the luscious language of two continents. I am not either but only a kind of good-for-nothing American farmer. ... If you turn me down, I'll not be thoroughly disappointed, for it's no more than I expect. Please write as soon as you feel that way. The sooner, the better pleased I am.

More than sincerely,

Harry

It took Bess three weeks to respond. She refused. And Harry wrote to thank her for not ridiculing him.

"You know you turned me down so easy I am almost happy anyway. I was never fool enough to think that a girl like you could ever care for a fellow like me.

NARRATOR: But Harry wouldn't give up. He bought a second-hand Stafford touring car to take Bess courting. When he learned that she liked tennis, Harry built her a grass tennis court out behind the farmhouse and threw a tennis party in her honor. She didn't come.

"I really worked all day Sunday getting that court ready for you," he wrote her. "We also had a supply of watermelons on hand. But you can make it some Saturday, and Mamma says you must come to dinner next time."

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: Persistence is a very strong theme in Harry Truman. He doesn't give up very easily. He really set his mind that Bess was the one. And she always would be. Never any variation in that. He just kept at it --

NARRATOR: Two years after she had turned him down, Bess began to change her mind. She told Harry that if she ever married anyone, it would be him.

"Dear Bess, It doesn't seem real that you should care for me ... I've always thought that the best man in the world is hardly good enough for any woman. But when it comes to the best girl in all the universe caring for an ordinary gink like me -- well, you just have to let me get used to it. I'm all puffed up and hilarious and happy."

But Bess would never marry a farmer. The farm was $12,000 in debt, and Harry was still working for his father. Then, in 1914, John Truman, straining to remove a boulder from a road, severely injured himself. X-rays revealed a tumor blocking his intestine. Doctors recommended surgery, but held out little hope. The operation failed. Harry saw his father grow weaker and weaker. Near death, the wiry, once ambitious man looked back on his life. "I have been," he told his son, "a failure." On the evening of November 2, 1914, Harry rested at his father's bedside. "I had been sitting with him and watching a long time," Truman said later. "When I woke up he was dead." Years later, when a writer asked Truman if his father had been a failure, Harry told him, "How could he be a failure if his son became president of the United States?"

ALONZO HAMBY: The death of John Truman was a liberation for Harry.

Once he gets past the point of grief and shock at his father's death, he is finally free to set out in directions of his own. And he decides pretty quickly that those directions are going to be away from the farm.

NARRATOR: After hearing tales of easy money to be made in Oklahoma, Harry headed south.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: He's going to do as his father had done, only make what his father had tried, work. His father gambled. His father gambled and lost. He was going to gamble and win.

NARRATOR: Harry borrowed several thousand dollars against his livestock, and gambled it on a zinc mine.

CHARLES BABCOCK: He decided he'd get rich quick to catch up with Bess, because Bess was well to do.

NARRATOR: "Dear Bess, Our foreman says we have a much better mine than he expected ... When I see you I hope to tell you that we are going full blast and making ore so fast it makes our heads swim."

ALONZO HAMBY: He seems to assume that things are not going to go wrong, you work hard, lady luck will be on your side and you'll make it. But what Harry doesn't understand and what he's never good at is that you buy low and you sell high.

NARRATOR: "Dear Bess, The mine has gone by the board. I have lost out on it entirely. There was never one of our name who had sense enough to make money. I am no exception. ... You would do better perhaps if you pitch me into the ash heap and pick someone with more sense and ability and not such a soft head."

But he sank another $5,000 in an oil well company and convinced Bess to risk some money too.

"Dear Bess, People seem to think our ... project has some merit. We got $225 yesterday. ... Hope to see you Sunday, and be so full of oil that I'll float."

ALONZO HAMBY: He is always optimistic. He comes out of this culture that says people can get ahead if they work hard. And then it also says if they have a little luck too.

NARRATOR: Harry's company ran out of money and went bust. Bess lost everything she had invested. Harry sold his stake to a better-financed outfit. The new company kept drilling, and struck it rich. If Harry had hung on, drilled just a little deeper, he would have been a millionaire.

"Dear Bess, I seem to have a grand and admirable ability for calling tails when heads come up. My luck should surely change. Sometime I should win. I have tried to stick. Worked, really did, like thunder for ten years to get that old farm in line ... and I have had a crop failure every year. Thought I'd change my luck and see [where it's got me]."

Harry Truman was thirty-three years old and had failed at everything he had tried. But Harry didn't feel sorry for himself for long. He closed his letter by asking Bess, "Can I come over Tuesday night? Just remember how crazy I am about you and forget all the rest."

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