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It has been said that if you wanted to stay on Harry Truman\u2019s good side, you never offended his wife. Harry had been smitten with Bess since they attended school together. They graduated from Independence High School in 1901 in the same class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was described as being sharp-minded and a great athlete. According to her daughter Margaret, Bess was \u201cthe best third baseman in Independence.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bess studied language and literature at Barstow, a girl’s finishing school in Kansas City, Missouri. The White House Chief Usher J.B. West in his memoir, Upstairs at the White House,<\/em> describes First Lady Truman as having \u201ckeen intelligence, calm reasoning, and unswerving devotion to her husband.\u201d Bess was the president’s “full partner in every sense of the word\u201d wrote West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My father once mentioned his appreciation of Mrs. Truman\u2019s candor and practicality. I regret that I didn\u2019t ask him to expound further on his impressions of this First Lady. But, after reading the correspondences between my father and the Happy Birthday, Bess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n _________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n West, J.B. with Mary Lynn Kotz, Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies,<\/em>(New York: Coward,McCann& Geoghegan, 1973), 127.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biography Bess Truman, Truman Library, Accessed 2\/13\/2019 https:\/\/www.trumanlibrary.org\/bwt-bio.htm On this day in 1885, Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, better known as Bess, was born in Independence, Missouri. She became Mrs. Harry S. Truman, wife of the 33rd President of the United States. It has been said that if you wanted to stay on Harry Truman\u2019s good side, you never offended his wife. Harry had been … Continue reading Happy Birthday, Bess<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[132,235,236,202,67,46,10],"class_list":["post-1037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flotus","tag-20-years-in-the-secret-service","tag-bess-truman","tag-flotus","tag-harry-truman","tag-rebecca-youngblood","tag-rufus-w-youngblood","tag-secret-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1037"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1046,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions\/1046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rufusyoungblood.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/RWY-letters-from-first-families-Bess-Truman-27012018_2-767x1024.jpg\")
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