Tag: museums

If you have not already visited Independence Missouri, I highly recommend a quick trip. It is a charming little town. My husband and I recently spent most of a week exploring Kansas City Missouri and the surrounding areas. For us, visiting Bess and Harry Truman’s home in Independence was a trip highlight.

Tours are conducted by the National Park Service and are limited to 8 people. The combined tour of the Truman and Nolan houses (Nolan is across the street) is free. Even better – there are no plexiglass walls or velvet ropes. Visitors are allowed to walk throughout the downstairs area with a few key restrictions: no touching, no leaning and no photo taking. Hence, I have no interior photos of Bess and Harry’s beautiful home. According to our ranger, an early tourist actually stole the bar of soap at the kitchen sink as a souvenir. Hence, the rangers are very strict about the no-touching rule.

Green was their favorite color so there’s plenty of green – including the lower kitchen walls as well as the last car they purchased 6 months prior to Harry’s death. I should add that the ceiling and upper walls in the kitchen are covered in a red, white and blue check-patterned wallpaper chosen personally by Harry. It is definitely a tad intense.

They were both frugal people. Bess’s father committed suicide due to financial difficulties and Harry and his entire family struggled during the depression. Consequently, the kitchen stove, with a faulty igniter, has a box of matches on top of it. They refused to purchase a new stove. The kitchen linoleum has multiple large rips in it. Again, they opted to not replace the flooring.

The couple’s favorite room was a spacious screened-in porch and that is how our tour entered the home. Privacy became an issue for the couple upon their return to Independence post presidency. Consequently, an entire section of the porch screen is covered by grape vines.

The parameter of the home has a black wrought iron gate surrounding the home and yard that was installed in 1949. Prior to its installation, the Secret Service actually caught someone trying to rip off a board from the house as a souvenir. Another agent caught a woman digging up some of Bess Truman’s prized white tulips. When the agent confronted her, she told him that Bess would not mind.

Bess Truman’s First Lady portrait hangs in the living room. Apparently, it took eleven years for the White House personnel to notice it was missing. Lady Bird Johnson personally called to request that Bess return the portrait. Bess refused and the artist was commissioned to paint a copy for the White House. Another duplicate was then created for the President Truman Library & Museum.

During their post-presidency years, many world leaders and former U.S. Presidents visited them at the house on North Delaware Street – from Lyndon B Johnson and Jimmy Carter to Billy Graham.

Harry died in 1972 at the age of 88. He died in a nearby hospital. Bess outlived him by 10 years and died in the ground floor bedroom adjacent to the living room. She was 97. She was the longest living First Lady. They are both buried at the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.

The much more modest Noland Home directly across the house was owned by Harry’s Aunt and Uncle and their two daughters. His two cousins, Nellie and Ethel, remained in the house their entire lives. The entire Noland family was very close with the Trumans. The tour starts at the Noland house and ends across the street at Bess and Harry’s home. On the other side of the Truman house, adjacent to the garage, sits two smaller homes. During the Trumans lifetime, Bess’s two brothers lived in them. One house is now office space for the Truman Home and the other is housing for the park rangers.

I hope you enjoy your visit as much as we did ours.