Ted Marks

Ted Marks, a Liverpool-born tailor and Army officer, was Harry S. Truman’s closest friend among the men from Missouri. Their connection began before the First World War, endured through military service, and continued after Truman returned to civilian life. Marks appears at important crossings in Truman’s life—as a fellow officer, best man, and familiar companion—while his own unusual path from England to the National Guard and back to tailoring gives the friendship a distinctive shape.

Background and first meeting

Marks was two years older than Truman. Born in Liverpool, he ran away from home at sixteen, served three years in the Grenadier Guards, and later came to the United States. In civilian life he worked as a Kansas City tailor, making custom suits that could sell for as much as seventy-five dollars. His English origins and military bearing set him apart from the other Missouri men Truman knew in uniform; the book describes his face as open and pleasant, with prominent ears.

The two men first met in 1906, more than a decade before they served together in the war. Marks entered the National Guard offices to enlist and found Truman, then a bespectacled young corporal, behind the desk. Truman asked how long Marks had been in the country. When Marks answered that it had been six months, Truman remarked, “You speak pretty good English for the time you’ve been here,” leaving the new arrival to wonder what kind of country he had come to. The exchange, remembered by Marks, captures an early difference between them: Truman was the established local serviceman, while Marks was a recent immigrant whose English was native.

Friendship and military service

By the time they served together, Marks was a first lieutenant and, in the biographer’s account, Truman’s closest friend. One episode at Camp Doniphan places their friendship within the pressures of military advancement. On a bitterly cold day, Marks, Truman, and another lieutenant, Newell Paterson, went before General Lucian D. Berry for promotion examinations. They waited outside Berry’s office after Paterson was called first; Truman’s examination lasted more than an hour and left him angry and fearing the worst. Marks then had a much shorter turn—about thirty minutes, as the lunch hour approached. All three officers passed. Truman was not told of his promotion for several months, and he learned only that he and Paterson would go to France ahead of the others for further training. The account does not say that Marks joined that selected group, but it does show the two friends facing the same examination and waiting together through the ordeal.

Marks’s military career also connected directly to his civilian trade. After the war he returned to tailoring, and when Truman married Bess Wallace on June 28, 1919, Marks made the groom’s gray, checked, three-piece suit on credit. He was Truman’s best man. Truman wore Army pince-nez spectacles with the suit, bringing a reminder of his military years into the wedding. The garment was not simply a professional service: the credit extended to his friend at a major life event, while Marks’s place beside the groom made his continuing personal importance visible.

A continuing presence after the war

At the station after the wedding reception, Marks turned to Truman’s mother and said, “Well, Mrs. Truman, you’ve lost Harry.” She answered, “Indeed, I haven’t.” The brief exchange places Marks among those close enough to share the family’s parting moment, and gives the scene a lightness without suggesting that Truman’s marriage severed his earlier bonds. Marks was present as the couple departed for their train, after a reception at the Gates house attended by relatives, friends, and several of Truman’s former fellow soldiers.

Marks remained part of Truman’s ordinary social life in the postwar years. Truman and Eddie Jacobson opened a men’s furnishing store, while Marks had returned to his old occupation as a gentleman’s tailor. Truman sometimes ate at the Savoy Grill with Marks or Jim Pendergast. These details establish recurrence rather than a single ceremonial friendship: Marks appears again in Truman’s everyday company, alongside the work and routines of civilian life. The evidence does not describe their private conversations or assign Marks a role in Truman’s business or political decisions; it shows instead the durable familiarity of a friend who remained close across the transition from Army service to marriage and homecoming.

Narrative role

Marks’s significance lies in the continuity of his presence and in the particular kinds of support the account records. He knew Truman first as a young corporal, stood with him during a difficult military examination, used his tailoring skill to make the wedding suit on credit, and remained a companion at meals afterward. Each appearance joins friendship to a practical circumstance—enlisting, waiting, clothing, travel, or dining—rather than treating affection as an abstract quality.

His story also offers a contrast to Truman’s local roots. Marks came from Liverpool after leaving home as a teenager and serving in the British Guards; Truman was the Missouri corporal who first greeted him at the enlistment desk. Yet the contrast did not keep them apart. Their friendship persisted through different stages of life, with Marks repeatedly appearing at moments when Truman’s identity was changing: from Guardsman and immigrant to American officer, from returning soldier to husband, and from wartime companion to civilian friend. The surviving account is selective, but its repeated appearances support a clear portrait of a close, enduring relationship.