Research Hospital and Medical Center

Research Hospital and Medical Center in Kansas City was the setting for two pivotal episodes in Harry S. Truman’s later life: emergency surgery in 1954 and the final hospitalization that ended with his death in 1972. The hospital first became a place of acute concern and recovery, then, eighteen years later, the place where his family kept vigil through his last weeks.

The 1954 Emergency

In June 1954, Truman had agreed to make a surprise appearance as himself in the final act of the musical Call Me Madam, which had come to an outdoor theater in Kansas City. On the evening of June 18, while waiting backstage, he became suddenly ill with severe stomach pains. Bess Wallace Truman took him home, and two days later he underwent an emergency operation at Research Hospital and Medical Center. Surgeon Wallace Graham removed Truman’s gallbladder and appendix.

An infection followed, and Graham reported that Truman was in serious condition because of an unusual sensitivity to modern drugs. The hospital staff treated him with antibiotics, and for several days his condition caused considerable concern. The crisis passed, and Truman began to recover rapidly.

Recovery in the Heat

Truman’s recovery unfolded during a fierce heat wave in western Missouri. Temperatures outside the hospital windows reached 110 to 114 degrees by midday, and the hospital had no air conditioning. When its director offered to install a unit in Truman’s room, he initially refused, unwilling to receive special treatment. He changed his mind after Tom Evans pointed out that Bess, who had been sitting with him day after day, was suffering in the heat. Truman then asked the director to install the air conditioner.

The episode places the hospital’s clinical setting alongside a revealing detail of Truman’s conduct as a patient: his reluctance to accept an accommodation for himself, and his willingness to accept it when he understood that Bess needed relief. After the immediate danger had passed, he was described as a model patient, and his recovery was rapid.

Final Hospitalization and Death

On the afternoon of December 5, 1972, an ambulance took Truman from his home on North Delaware Street to Research Hospital and Medical Center for the last time. His condition was initially reported as fair; he was suffering from lung congestion. The next day it was listed as critical. Doctors treated him with antibiotics and oxygen, while bronchitis and hardening of the arteries complicated his condition and periodically caused his heart to race.

Truman grew weaker on Christmas Eve. By Christmas morning he was in a deep coma and near death. Bess had been staying overnight at the hospital and spending most of every day with him, but had become nearly exhausted. Margaret Truman Daniel persuaded her to return home that night. Truman died at Research Hospital and Medical Center on December 26, 1972, at 7:50 a.m. Central Standard Time. The hospital thus frames a stark passage in his later life: an operation from which he recovered, followed years later by a final illness from which he did not.