Word: truman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Bess Truman...
...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...
...fifth generation of a prosperous family in Independence, Mo., Elizabeth Wallace Truman grew up a blue-eyed, blond-curled tomboy. She could bat a ball as far as any boy in the neighborhood and was better than any at mumblety-peg. She met her future husband when he was six and she was five and he always said he fell in love at that moment. They did not marry until 29 years later, partly because her mother opposed this boy of no "family" and sparse prospects. Engaged just before Harry left for World War I, they wed on his return...
...Truman figured in two major controversies: Harry's putting her on his Senate payroll in 1941 at $4,500 a year, almost half his Senate salary; and her acceptance while First Lady of a gift freezer that was linked to an alleged influence-peddling scandal. Neither issue did her much harm. During a Senate probe of the Democratic freezer flap, the highly partisan Republican Joseph R. McCarthy called her one of the "finest things about the White House" and declared her above suspicion...