Mystery writer Truman, daughter of president, dies
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -- Margaret Truman, the only child of
former President Harry S. Truman who became a concert singer,
actress, radio and TV personality and mystery writer, died Tuesday.
She was 83.
Truman, known as Margaret Truman Daniel in private life, died at a
Chicago assisted living facility following a brief illness, according
to a statement from the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in
Independence. She had been at the facility for the past several weeks
and was on a respirator, the library said.
Her father's succession to the presidency in 1945 thrust her into the
national spotlight while a college junior.
"I feel that I've lived several different lives and that was one of
them," she said in 1980. "Some of it was fun, but most of it was not.
It was a great view of history being made.
"The only thing I ever missed about the White House was having a car
and driver," she once said.
Her singing career attracted the barbs of music critics -- even the
embarrassment of having her father threaten one reviewer. But she
found a fulfilling professional and personal life in New York City
where she met her husband, journalist Clifton Daniel, who later
became managing editor of The New York Times. They married in 1956.
She published her first book, an autobiography titled "Souvenir," in
1956. She said it was "hard work" and told reporters: "One writing
job is enough."
But then she did a book on White House pets in 1969, and later more,
one a biography of her father. The idea of doing a mystery
called "Murder in the White House" came "out of nowhere," she said.
That 1980 title was followed by mysteries set in the Supreme Court,
the Smithsonian, Embassy Row, the FBI, Georgetown, the CIA, Kennedy
Center, the National Cathedral and the Pentagon.
By that time she was a grandmother and sang only in her church choir.
"I've had three or four different careers," she told an interviewer
in 1989. "I consider being a wife and mother a career. I have great
respect for women -- both those who go out and do their thing and
those who stay at home. I think those who stay at home have a lot
more courage than those who go out and get a job."
Mary Margaret Truman was born February 17, 1924, in Independence. She
was the only child of Bess and Harry Truman, who was a county judge
at the time.
For a few years after her father was elected to the Senate in 1934,
she split her school year between Independence and a private girls'
school in Washington, D.C. She later attended George Washington
University. She also had taken voice lessons, at the urging of a
church choir leader. After graduation, she used the political
limelight to launch her singing career.
"I wanted to establish myself as an individual capable of standing on
my merit, to experience the satisfaction of achievement,
explained.
She made her professional singing debut with the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra in 1947 and gave her first Carnegie Hall concert two years
later. Critics generally praised her poise but were less impressed
with her vocal talent.
When Washington Post critic Paul Hume wrote after a 1950 concert that
she "is extremely attractive on the stage ... (but) cannot sing very
well. She is flat a good deal of the time," her father fired off a
note on White House stationery scolding Hume for a "lousy review."
"I have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty
of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below," the president wrote.
The note made Page One news -- but was not the sort of publicity an
aspiring artist seeks. Years later she was able to laugh about it: "I
thought it was funny. Sold tickets."
She soon turned more to radio and television, where she made regular
guest appearances with Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle.
On radio, she was co-host, with Mike Wallace, of a daily talk show on
the NBC network and had her own nationally syndicated interview
program for eight years. She also worked with Fred Allen and Tallulah
Bankhead.
Her stage career began in 1954, about the time she quit the concert
stage.
"I learned my comedy timing from Fred Allen and Goody (Goodman) Ace,"
she recalled. "You couldn't do better than that. I'd still rather
hear an audience laugh than do a serious play."
Throughout her 20s, reporters were constantly asking about marriage
prospects, but she said she was pursuing her career for the time
being.
When she met Clifton Daniel at a dinner party in 1955, he was working
in New York after a decade as a foreign correspondent. It was not
until a month before their wedding in April 1956 that their romance
became public.
"We had a lot in common," he wrote in a 1984 memoir. "We were the
kind of people who wouldn't marry anybody our mothers wouldn't
approve of: a couple of citified small-towners, puritans among the
fleshpots."
She and Daniel had four sons; he died in February 2000. Son William
died in September 2000 when he was hit by a taxi; he was 41.
She was honorary co-chair of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute,
the nonprofit partner of her father's presidential library, and a
governing board member of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
Institute. Health issues had prevented her from visiting the library
in recent years, but she remained actively interested in its
operations, said Michael Devine, director of the library.
Source (w/pic):
http://www.cnn.
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