Harry S. Truman's farsightedness

Harry S. Truman's farsightedness was a long-unrecognized part of his childhood that abruptly changed how he experienced the world once it was diagnosed and corrected. The condition also had a lasting practical consequence: his eyes disqualified him from the United States Military Academy.

Recognition and Diagnosis

For years, Truman's poor eyesight had gone unnoticed. The problem became apparent during a July Fourth fireworks display when his mother, Martha E. Truman, saw that he responded more to the sound of the skyrockets than to the spectacle overhead. She took him to an optometrist in Kansas City, who diagnosed hypermetropia, a rare malformation described in the account as flat eyeballs.

Glasses and a Changed World

Martha E. Truman agreed to pay $10 for wire-rimmed, double-strength spectacles. The glasses corrected a difficulty Truman had characterized as being blind as a mole. Their effect was immediate: the world seemed transformed to him, as if by magic. In rural Missouri, a small boy wearing eyeglasses was unusual, and Truman consequently became a curiosity to other children.

Consequences

The correction did not erase the larger consequences of his eyesight. The United States Military Academy had rejected him because of his eyes, closing off the route he had hoped to take. The episode therefore joins a sudden expansion of perception to a constraint on opportunity: glasses made the visible world newly accessible, but could not reverse the institutional decision his condition had already brought about.