Funeral of Harry S. Truman

The Funeral of Harry S. Truman turned the Truman Library into the center of both public mourning and private farewell. Though a five-day state funeral had been planned, the ceremonies were scaled back to honor the wishes of Bess Wallace Truman and to fulfill Truman’s own choice of burial in the library courtyard rather than in Washington. Thousands of mourners filed past his closed casket; the ceremony joined the measured formality of military tribute to the place he had chosen as his enduring home.

A State Funeral Reconsidered

The Army had prepared an elaborate plan, known as “O Plan Missouri,” running to several hundred pages and specifying a five-day observance conducted by the Fifth Army from Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Its original design would have taken Truman’s body to Washington to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda before returning it to Missouri for burial. Even as Truman lay dying, the preparations had included flights to ready the Army’s horse Black Jack for the journey to Missouri.

Truman had reviewed the plan years earlier in his office at the library and approved nearly all of it, subject to any changes his family might want. He thought it sounded like a “fine show” and regretted that he would not be able to see it. But he rejected one central feature: lying in state in Washington. Turning in his chair toward the courtyard, he said he wanted to be buried “out there,” where he could imagine getting up and walking into his office. His preference made the library more than a convenient burial site: it was the place from which he wanted his final public and private worlds to remain connected.

The Farewell in Independence

Truman died at Research Hospital and Medical Center in Kansas City on December 26, 1972. The next day, the planned ceremony was greatly reduced in scale, in keeping with Bess Wallace Truman’s wishes. Her instruction to Margaret Truman Daniel and Elbert Clifton Daniel Jr. was to “Keep it simple, keep it simple.” Simplicity did not mean an absence of public honor: several thousand troops arrived in Independence to take part.

After a private family service at Carson’s Funeral Home, the hearse carried Truman through the town to the library. It moved slowly along Lexington, River Boulevard, Maple, and North Delaware, streets lined with soldiers. An honor guard stood at the library steps, and six howitzers were arranged on the front lawn. The route brought the procession through the town whose residents had known Truman long before he became president, while the military presence marked the national office he had held.

President Richard Nixon and his wife came to pay their respects and placed a wreath of red, white, and blue carnations on the casket. Lyndon B. Johnson attended with his family. Johnson looked gaunt and greatly aged; he would die three weeks later. The presence of two former presidents gave the gathering a national dimension, but the ceremonies remained anchored in Independence and in the site Truman himself had selected.

The Public at the Library

Truman lay in state in the lobby of the Truman Library, before the mural by Thomas Hart Benton. Through the day, overnight, and into the following morning, an estimated 75,000 people filed past the closed casket. The line stretched half a mile, reaching beyond the highway. One man told a reporter, “This whole town was a friend of Harry’s.” The scale of the turnout made the library a public gathering place as well as a repository for Truman’s papers: visitors came not only to see a former president honored, but to take part in a local farewell.

The library’s role in the funeral reflected Truman’s sustained investment in preserving public institutions and historical memory. He had taken an intense interest in restoring the White House, regarding it as a symbol of the presidency and a democratic shrine; his satisfaction in that work had been unusually deep. In death, however, the lasting civic setting was the library in Independence. The public passed the casket inside it, and the burial that followed placed his grave within its courtyard.

Burial and the Final Ceremony

On December 28, as he had wished, Truman was buried in the library courtyard. Because the auditorium could accommodate only 250 people for the service, invitations were limited. Among those attending were Averell Harriman, Clark Clifford, Charles Murphy, Rose Conway, Harry Vaughan, and Samuel Rosenman. Bess Wallace Truman, Margaret Truman Daniel, Elbert Clifton Daniel Jr., and their four sons sat behind a green curtain, screened from the other mourners.

The service followed Bess Wallace Truman’s wishes. It was Episcopal, with a Masonic rite included and a Baptist minister reading a prayer. There was no eulogy, and no hymns were sung. The restraint of the service distinguished the family’s farewell from the elaborate state ceremonies that had first been planned: the burial was public in setting and military honor, but deliberately spare in its spoken and musical forms.

Outside, a twenty-one-gun salute sounded as Taps was played. The weather was cold and raw, and the day seemed to grow colder as the ceremony continued. Snow later hung in the air. Library staff remembered watching from a window as workers filled the grave in the cold and dark. The funeral thus ended not with a speech, but with the burial in the courtyard Truman had chosen—a final return to the place where he had wanted to remain close to his office.