Word: bess
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Your obituary on Bess Truman, "A Lady in the White House" [Nov. 1], implies that a "lady" is one who confines herself totally to the private spheres of family and home, one who "would not rock the boat," and one who never expresses an opinion on anything. I am certain that Mrs. Truman possessed many admirable qualities, but that you should single out these attributes as most praiseworthy and ladylike simply perpetuates insidious stereotypes of women in general...
...husband called her "the boss" and "my chief adviser." But months after Harry Truman became President in 1945, First Lady Bess went shopping in Washington's big department stores and no one recognized her. That was the way she wanted it, and to a surprising extent that was the way it stayed...
...Bess Truman, who died last week at 97, went to Washington a Mid-western housewife who had lived all her life under the same roof with her mother. She did not smoke or drink or swear. She liked Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott but thought modern novels "a waste of time." After her husband succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House, Bess burned a stack of Harry's love letters. "But think of history," Harry protested. "I have," she said...
...family" and sparse prospects. Engaged just before Harry left for World War I, they wed on his return in 1919. The Trumans stayed married for 53 years, through a failed business, shabby local politics and Harry's sudden rise to the leadership of the postwar world, which Bess found the greatest burden...
...crowds, she could be slyly witty in private. When her husband was contemplating the propriety of their having dinner in a Rome restaurant that was once the villa of Mussolini's mistress Carla Petacci, Mrs. Truman settled the matter: "Well, after all, she won't be there." Bess endured thousands of teas, receptions and galas. Mobbed by delegates and newsmen at the 1944 Democratic Convention that nominated Truman for Vice President, she lamented, "Are we going to have to go through this all the rest of our lives?" Eight and a half years later, after a crowd...