Word: truman
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Like the deaths of ancient kings, the passing of Presidents calls for certain dispensations for the populace. President Nixon declared a day of mourning last week upon the death of Harry S. Truman and ordered most Government services shut down. That meant, among other things, that some 300 men due to be sworn in that day will probably beat the draft. Daniel J. Cronin, assistant deputy Selective Service director, sent telegrams to draft boards around the country canceling the inductions. As it turns out, that was the last induction day of 1972. Officially, the group can still be called...
WHILE visiting Harry Truman in the closing months of his presidency, Winston Churchill spoke with blunt generosity: "The last time you and I sat across a conference table was at Potsdam. I must confess, sir, I held you in very low regard. I loathed your taking the place of Franklin Roosevelt. I misjudged you badly. Since that time, you, more than any other man, have saved Western civilization...
...Churchill was deceived at first, so were most of his contemporaries. Sir Winston, in fact, was some years ahead of other historians in his reevaluation. Truman was one of those public men whose reputations flourish only after years of retirement. His nondescript appearance, his shoot-from-the-hip partisanship, his taste for mediocre cronies who tainted the record with scandal -all the things that made him seem too small for the office-dwindled in importance with the passing decades. What loomed larger was a sense of the man's courage, a realization that he faced and made more great...
...them were evident right up to the end. After a tenacious 22-day struggle in Kansas City's Research Hospital and Medical Center (see MEDICINE), the nation's 33rd President died, at 88, from what doctors officially termed "organic failures causing a collapse of the cardiovascular system." Truman had detested Richard Nixon for years after the 1952 campaign, when Nixon implied that Truman might be treasonously soft on Communism, but the feud was since mended. Now Nixon proclaimed a 30-day period of national mourning and praised Truman as "one of the most courageous Presidents in our history...
...Truman had personally approved elaborate military plans for a five-day state funeral ("A damn fine show. I just hate that I'm not going to be around to see it," he had said), including attendance by heads of state. But a shorter, simpler schedule was ordered by his wife Bess, 87, whom he had often referred to fondly as "the boss." Instead of the planned procession with muffled drums, a casket-bearing caisson and the symbolic riderless horse, a caravan of 21 cars and a hearse briskly transferred the body from a funeral home to the Truman Library...