Only Child of President Truman Dies at 83

Jan 29, 10:50 PM

She was 83 and died of complications following an infection.

Daniel was the glamour of the homespun Truman presidency. A singer, writer and commentator, she lived much of her adult life in the public spotlight.

In April 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt's death elevated her father to the presidency. From that moment on, Daniel embraced a largely public life as presidential daughter. In this role, she invited the spotlight that her mother had shunned and maintained the public's memory of her father's service.

Daniel was born Mary Margaret Truman on Feb. 17, 1924, in Independence, Mo., and her parents were thrilled upon her arrival. Her mother, Bess W. Truman, who previously had suffered two miscarriages, had avoided buying nursery furniture.

So, upon her birth, Daniel's parents outfitted a bureau drawer with a pillow.

"Be just one half as good and as good-looking and you'll be the daughter I want," Daniel's father wrote in a note that accompanied a necklace that she received on her 10th birthday in 1934.

Perhaps the most celebrated moment of Daniel's public life occurred in December 1950 when she, while pursuing a singing career, appeared at a sold-out Constitution Hall in Washington.

A Washington Post music critic panned the performance, writing that Margaret Truman "cannot sing very well." In reply, President Truman wrote a personal note to the critic, suggesting that if he ever met him he would need "a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes and perhaps a supporter below!"

Some thought Truman's outburst reflected poorly upon his office; others considered it gallantry.

"I think many fathers would have done the same thing," said Mary Shaw Branton, a longtime friend of Daniel who grew up not far from the Truman home in Independence.

In later years, Daniel turned to writing, including several best-selling mysteries.

Her 1973 biography of her father, Harry S. Truman, appeared soon after his death the previous year. But a decision she made following her mother's death in 1982 proved a watershed moment in preserving the public's memory of Harry Truman.

In the family home, workers discovered hundreds of letters from Truman to his wife. Daniel gave permission to open the letters to scholars.

"So soon after her mother's death, she could have asked that those letters remain closed," said Ray Geselbracht, special assistant to the Truman Library director.

"But she did not."

Today some historians consider the roughly 1,300 letters, known as the "Dear Bess" letters, to be the among the best collections of presidential manuscripts, detailing Truman's early career and Army service during World War I.

Daniel's 1986 book about her mother, Bess W. Truman, proved candid about Truman family dynamics. For instance, she detailed the atmosphere inside the family car in 1944 on the way back from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. At the convention Truman had accepted the nomination as Roosevelt's running mate.

Bess Truman hadn't liked the idea.

The mood inside the car, Daniel wrote, had been "arctic."

Daniel's 1956 marriage to Clifton Daniel, then an assistant foreign news editor of The New York Times, prompted news correspondents from across the country to descend upon Independence.

Said Branton, who served as a bridesmaid: "Everybody was happy that day, and we all thought Clifton was great and that everything was going to be just fine, which it was."

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, while rearing four sons, Daniel and her husband occasionally visited Independence. Her return trips grew less frequent following her parents' deaths.

"She wasn't being aloof, it was just that her life was in New York City," Branton said.

However, she continued to represent the Truman Library, helping to persuade former President Bill Clinton to speak last summer in Independence to observe the library's 50th anniversary.

"She had always been a friend of the library and offered her support when we requested it," said Michael Devine, director of the Truman Library.

Her husband died in February 2000. That September a son, William Wallace Daniel, died after being struck by a taxicab in New York. She spent most of her remaining days in that city until her illness forced a transfer to Chicago.

"I think in her advancing years she was quieter," Branton said. "I don't know that she was surrounded with a lot of happiness. Her husband and son had died, and it was hard."

Daniel likely was best-known to readers as the author of a series of murder mysteries. In 2002 The Weekly Standard magazine published an article suggesting that author Donald Bain had ghostwritten the books. Bain denied it.

Ghostwritten or not, Daniel's mysteries long have found a public. The 23rd book in the series, Murder on K Street, was published in October.

In 2002, Daniel and several other authors, among them Evan S. Connell and Daniel Woodrell, contributed essays to The Kansas City Star marking the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In her essay, she recalled her father's usual response to crises during his presidency.

"When Dad talked of these situations in later years," Daniel wrote, "he used an interesting word. He never doubted that we would `meet' each crisis as we had met earlier challenges to our survival as a nation. His confidence in the American people and our system of government never wavered.

"I like that word, `meet' _ it has a quietly determined sound," she added. "It eschews breast-beating and strutting and spouting about how tough we are. It is the voice of experience."

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(McClatchy Newspapers correspondent John Mark Eberhart contributed to this report.)

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(c) 2008, The Kansas City Star.

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Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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