Harry Truman Day, that is. My favorite modern president and the only modern president to not have a college degree, Harry Truman was born on May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri. He was a selfless son who returned to the family farm to help his parents, a soldier in World War I, an unsuccessful haberdasher, and a devoted husband and father. He became an incorruptible politician who supported Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and worked to reduce mismanagement and waste in U.S. military spending. When Roosevelt chose him to be vice-president for his fourth term, Truman was sidelined and kept out of important briefings about the impending use of the atomic bomb, and upon Roosevelt’s death April 12, 1945, became a president faced with world-shaking challenges. If you want to know and love Harry Truman as I do, read David McCullough’s excellent Truman, and for more HT goodness, try these fine reads:
