Harry S. Truman, was born on a farm in Lamar, Missouri on May 8, 1884. At age 6, he moved with his parents to Independence, Missouri where worked on Saturdays as a Shabbos goy, doing chores for his Jewish neighbors who were prohibited by religious beliefs from working on the Sabbath. On Sundays, he attended the Presbyterian Sunday School, where he studied the Christian doctrine. His mother nurtured his interest in literature and history, and when Harry was 7 years old, his mother enrolled him in piano lessons with a prominent piano teacher in Kansas City.
Harry was schooled in the work ethic at an early age, rising every morning at 5:00 a.m. to practice on the piano and do farm chores. His formal schooling began when he was 8 years old and he progressed through the public school system, graduating from Independence High School in 1901 at 17 years of age. He then enrolled in Spalding’s Commercial College where he studied bookkeeping and shorthand. However, he left college at the end of his first year and, during the next 5 years, was employed in various semi-skilled jobs, serving as a timekeeper for the Atchison, Topeks & Santa Fe Railway and as a clerk for the National Bank of Commerce in Kansas City.
In 1906, Harry returned to his work on the farm, until 1917 when he entered the U.S. Army at the outbreak of World War I. His recruitment of new soldiers for Battery B artillery division won him the position as First Lieutenant of that unit. In April 1918, he was promoted to Captain and in July, was appointed commander of the notoriously undisciplined Battery D, 129th Field Artillery that was stationed in France. With a judicious application of “carrot-and-stick” motivation, he was able to establish discipline among the men under his command. In a crucial battle against the German offensive, Truman, in order to save members of another American regiment, disobeyed orders restricting his targets. The court-martial of Harry Truman that was threatened was reduced to a dressing down when it was recognized that his actions had saved the lives of many U.S. soldiers. Under Truman’s leadership Battery D did not lose any soldiers and for that, those who had served under his command rewarded him with a large trophy after the War.
On May 6, 1919, two days before Harry Truman turned 35 years of age, he received an honorary discharge at the rank of Captain, having developed leadership skills that would serve him well in his career ahead. Once again a civilian, he resumed a life outside the military, and on June 28, 1919, he married Bess Wallace who had refused his first marriage proposal eight years earlier. To support his family, Harry together with his friend, Edward Jacobson, opened a haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1922, he was elected as a judge in Jackson County. During that period, he took night courses at the Kansas City Law School with the intention of earning his LL.B., but dropped out in 1924 without a degree after he lost his bid for re-election to the judgeship. A short stint in the private sector convinced Harry that politics offered him a better career opportunity and by 1926, he was elected presiding judge and was on his way up the political ladder.
Through a series of political favors and paybacks, Harry Truman won a prominent place in the Democratic Party and was elected in 1934 as the U.S. Senator from Missouri–a position he would hold until 1945. During the Great Depression, Truman’s haberdashery had declared bankruptcy while Harry was garnering public popularity in blaming America’s economic woes on corporate greed and supporting Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Truman’s support of the New Deal, along with his reputation as a strong opponent of the Soviet Union, made him Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s choice as Vice-President on the Democratic ticket in the 1944 U.S. Presidential race. On the election Roosevelt for a fourth term, Harry Truman became Vice-President. When Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, Truman became the 33rd President of the United States of America, later lamenting, “It felt like the moon, the stars, and all of the planets had fallen upon me.” The War was still raging in Europe and the Pacific while the American public was becoming increasingly war-weary.
President Truman faced immediate challenges, including the decision to use atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that ultimately ended World War II. During the early years of his presidency, he issued the Truman Doctrine that sought to curtail the spread of communism by funding countries to fight communism and establishing NATO. He also initiated the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-torn Europe and issued an Executive Order to desegregate the military. In June 1948, when the Soviet Union violated the Potsdam Agreement by blocking access to the sectors of Berlin that were under the control of Western nations, Truman organized the Berlin Airlift whereby America and the Allies would fly food and supplies into Berlin to feed the starving German population. The success of that venture brought Harry Truman widespread support from the American electorate.
In his first Presidential election in 1948, Harry Truman gained a surprise defeat over Republican Thomas Dewey. However, his official first term as President was fraught with challenges. On June 25, 1950, China attempted to spread communism into the Korean peninsula by supporting a North Korean attack on South Korea. America sent aid and troops to defend South Korea, initiating the Korean War that would end in a stalemate 3 years later. The unpopular Korean War, labor strikes in the steel and coal industries, and corruption in the Truman administration caused Truman’s public approval rating to plummet to the lowest level of any previous President.
Recognizing that his chance of re-election was small, Truman decided not to run for a second term and left office on January 20, 1953, retiring to his home in Independence, Missouri. Harry Truman died of pneumonia on December 26, 1972 at 88 years of age. Truman’s willingness to take responsibility for his decisions was evident from a sign on his White House desk that read, “The buck stops here.”
