In honor of the 125th birthday of Bess Truman, the Harry S. Truman Little White House will be serving birthday cake visitors to the house on Saturday, February 13, 2010. Mrs. Truman was a frequent visitor to Key West, accompanying her husband during five of his visits to the Southernmost City. Saturday, February 13 will also mark the debut of a new exhibit Bess Truman.
Elizabeth Virginia Wallace Truman was born on February 13, 1885 in Independence, MO. She first met Harry Truman in the first grade and married him on June 28, 1919. Their only child, Margaret was born in 1924. In 1934, Truman was elected to the US Senate and in 1944, as Vice President of the United States. Upon the death of President Roosevelt in 1945, Bess Truman became First Lady when her husband became the 33rdPresident of the United States. An extremely private person, Mrs. Truman would spend much of her husband’s presidency in Missouri, returning to Washington only for the social season.
Bess Truman died in 1982 of congestive heart failure at the age of 97 and is the longest lived First Lady in US history. Mrs. Truman is buried next to her husband at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri.
Harry & Bess Truman on their wedding day June 28, 1919.
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address to dedicate the national military cemetery. “ Four Score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Starting in 1948, President Harry Truman began a series of five Executive Orders to help fulfill the dream that all men are treated as equals.