The Harry S Truman Library & Museum has been on my bucket list for a long time. This is the year I finally made it to Independence Missouri to visit the library. It is one of the oldest federal presidential libraries; Truman broke ground for the library in 1955. The oldest one is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s library with Truman’s coming in as the second oldest and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s the third oldest.
The property was completely renovated to the tune of thirty million dollars in 2021. I heard several other visitors comment that it looks completely different since their last trip to the library. It is smaller than the Ronald Reagan library but impressive. The only disappointment was not being able to walk the grounds due to an extensive thirteen million dollar renovation involving the removal of plants, etc. Both Bess and Harry Truman are buried at the library and access to their graves is temporarily blocked.
The museum has added a number of interactive displays and gives visitors the opportunity to express their opinion regarding Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb. It also provides testimony from Japanese citizens who survived the bombings.
I especially enjoyed the display of Truman’s cars as well as his courtship of Bess Wallace. Truman only met with President Roosevelt twice during the first 83 days of his fourth term as president. The library shows a very moving film of FDR’s funeral and Truman’s interaction with Eleanor Roosevelt. Truman’s early days of presidency include film clips of him inspecting the bomb damage in Berlin post WWII as well as his meeting with world leaders at the Potsdam Conference.
Truman lived close to twenty years post-presidency and the museum does a great job at detailing his life back in Independence. The library has film footage of his daughter Margaret Truman’s wedding in Independence as well as of a then Senator John F. Kennedy visiting the library in 1959 while campaigning for the presidential election.
NO time for boredom today 
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