Margaret Truman

Mary Margaret Truman Daniel (1924–2008) was an American concert soprano, broadcaster, and author, and the only child of President Harry S. Truman and Bess Wallace Truman.¹² Born in Independence, Missouri, she grew up between Independence and Washington, made her concert debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1947, and after abandoning the stage became a prolific writer — biographer of both her parents and the name on the long-running Capital Crimes series of Washington-set mystery novels.²³ She died in Chicago in 2008 and is buried beside her parents at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence.²³

Biography

Birth and Independence childhood

Margaret Truman was born February 17, 1924, in Independence, Missouri.¹² She was christened Mary Margaret — Mary after her aunt, Mary Jane Truman, and Margaret after her maternal grandmother, Margaret Gates Wallace.¹ Her childhood home was the Wallace–Gates house at 219 North Delaware Street, later the centerpiece of the Harry S Truman National Historic Site.⁴

She attended public school in Independence until 1934, the year her father was elected to the United States Senate.¹ From 1935 to 1942 her school year was divided between Independence and Washington, D.C., where she attended Gunston Hall, a girls’ preparatory school.¹² She graduated in 1942 and enrolled at George Washington University, receiving an associate’s degree in 1944 — the year her father was elected vice president — and a bachelor’s degree in history in 1946.¹

Singing career

Trained as a coloratura soprano, Truman made her professional concert debut in 1947 with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and went on to appear with major American orchestras and to record for RCA Victor.²³ Her tours took her across the United States and to Europe into the early 1950s.²

The most-remembered episode of that career was not musical. Reviewing a 1950 Washington recital, Washington Post music critic Paul Hume wrote that she was “extremely attractive on the stage” but “cannot sing very well.”³ President Truman replied with an angry personal letter telling Hume that when the two met, “you’ll need a new nose”; the letter reached the press and became an international story.³

Broadcasting and writing

Truman moved into broadcasting in the 1950s, signing with NBC in 1951 and appearing on radio and television, including a stint co-hosting NBC Radio’s Weekday with Mike Wallace after she gave up singing in 1957.²³

Her first book was the autobiographical Souvenir: Margaret Truman’s Own Story (1956).⁵ She became her parents’ biographer with Harry S. Truman (1973) and Bess W. Truman (1986), and also edited collections of her father’s personal writings and wrote popular histories of the White House and its residents.²³⁵

In 1980 she published Murder in the White House, the first of the Capital Crimes mysteries — whodunits set among the institutions of official Washington.²⁵ Roughly two dozen titles appeared under her name in the series from 1980 into the 2010s, with new installments arriving nearly every year.²³ Ghostwriter Donald Bain later acknowledged having written most of them.³

Marriage, family, and death

In 1955 Truman met Clifton Daniel, then an assistant to the foreign news editor of The New York Times and later the paper’s managing editor.¹³ They were married April 21, 1956, at Trinity Episcopal Church in Independence — the church where her parents had married in 1919.¹² The couple had four sons, born between 1957 and 1966: Clifton Truman, William Wallace, Harrison Gates, and Thomas Washington Daniel.³ They lived in New York and Washington.² William Wallace Daniel died in 2000, as did Clifton Daniel.³

Margaret Truman served on boards connected to the Harry S. Truman Library and the Truman Scholarship Foundation until the end of her life.² She died January 29, 2008, in Chicago at age 83, and was buried at the Truman Library in Independence.²³

Significance to Kansas City

Margaret Truman is the metropolitan area’s best-known presidential child and, through her books, one of the principal shapers of how the Truman family is remembered. Her biographies of Harry and Bess Truman remain standard reference points for the Independence years, and her editing of her father’s private papers helped establish the plainspoken public image that the Truman Library and the Truman Home now interpret for visitors.²³ Her long association with the library’s governing boards tied her to Independence institutions decades after she had left Jackson County for the East Coast, and her burial in the library courtyard completes the family plot at the center of the city’s best-known historic site.²

Sources

Footnotes

1. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum — “Biographical Sketch: Margaret Truman Daniel.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. State Historical Society of Missouri, Historic Missourians — “Margaret Truman.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷

3. Wikipedia — “Margaret Truman.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

4. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum — “219 North Delaware Street.” ↩

5. Encyclopaedia Britannica — “Margaret Truman.” ↩ ↩² ↩³