"She Needs Me"

Cold, drizzling rain dashed the white blooms of the spiraea bushes outside the yellow clapboard cottage. Inside, behind drawn shades, 94-year-old Martha Truman dozed fitfully. In the next room, the President of the U.S. sat working at the Mission oak library table. It was just a week since Harry Truman got the sudden telephone call which brought him hurrying to his mother's side.

Hardy Martha Truman had rallied briefly when her son first arrived, again when Mary Margaret canceled her Pittsburgh concert to fly to Grandview, Mo. Mrs. Truman had pork chops for lunch one day, fried chicken for dinner the next, wheat cakes and syrup for breakfast. With all her determined firmness, she announced: "I'm going to get better tomorrow."

Instead, she weakened day by day. She was sleeping more & more of the time, calling less frequently for "Harry," taking less & less nourishment. She did not seem to know that her feather bed had been replaced by a power-driven hospital cot, which tilted gently back & forth to ease her tired muscles.

The strain was beginning to tell on the President. Each morning he drove the 17 miles to Grandview from his suite in Kansas City's Muehlebach Hotel, spent the day working on urgent letters and messages to the Capitol. Whenever his mother woke, he joined the rest of the family at her bedside. In the evening he returned to Kansas City to work again until bedtime.

His secretarial staff tried to cut down the presidential load by sifting and digesting the documents flown in daily by courier plane from Washington. But the burdens of the presidency could be lightened only partially. Harry Truman, who rises at 5:30, was sometimes at his desk until midnight.

During his long vigil, the President: P: Renewed his plea to Congress for a long-range public-health program which would authorize: 1) national health insurance, supported by a payroll tax; 2) federal funds for expanded public-health services, increased medical research and education, more doctors and hospitals.

P: Nominated, to succeed Paul V. McNutt as Ambassador to the Philippines, Kentucky's onetime Representative Emmet O'Neal, whose ability to push Philippine interests in Congress may make up for his lack of diplomatic experience.

P: Asked a one-year's extension of his wartime powers to control the export and domestic use of critical raw materials.

P: Signed the $400 million Greece-Turkey aid bill (see INTERNATIONAL).

This week, as Mrs. Truman wavered fretfully between rally and relapse, the President decided to stay on in Grandview indefinitely. To an expression of sympathy, he replied: "She's sat up with me many times when I needed her, and I want to reciprocate when she needs me. Whenever she wakes up, she wants to talk to me. I want to be there."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.