Independence

This post title could mean a variety of things, but it is actually the name of the town we spent the night in on July 4th, 2017 on our 16 day road trip to Wisconsin and back. The timing couldn't have worked out more perfectly than it did. As noted in my last entry, we got into town late in the afternoon after driving across the state of Missouri. We had time to check into the motel, grab a bite to eat and then wander around a little bit watching different fireworks displays that were set up in different parts of town. It was a nice way to spend our 4th of July. 

We spent the better part of the next day touring the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site, which includes the home he and his wife spent most of their married life in when he wasn't in Washington D.C. We also toured the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. We knew time wasn't going to be a problem today since our next stop was not a very long drive into Kansas.

Our first stop was the visitors center of the Harry S. Truman NHS for information and tickets to tour his home. We walked through the small museum and then wandered over to the historic courthouse. On the back side of the courthouse, we spotted a marker indicating the beginning of the Oregon Trail. By the time we'd gathered in some of the history of the area, it was time for our tour of Truman's house, so we walked the four or five blocks over to the house and took the tour.

Truman's house was built by his wife's grandfather and he and Bess Truman lived there for their entire married life from 1919 until his death in 1972. This was the "summer White House" during the time he was President of the United States from 1945 until 1953 and where he retired to after serving as our commander in chief. Touring the home, you get a real feeling as to how much of a down to earth kind of guy Truman was, not a whole lot of presidential trappings, just an average guy living out the best way he could.

Following our tour of the house, we then walked back over to the visitors center. That's when I saw some fake news, but this was really fake news. The visitors center had an actual print of the famous Chicago Tribune newspaper headline from November 1948, when they famously predicted that Thomas Dewey would defeat Truman based upon phone samplings they'd taken over the past several days. I inquired as to whether this was genuine, or a printed up copy of the paper and was assured that it was genuine. I also learned that the newspaper will not print any copies of that particular newspaper, because it is wrong and they will not be a part of printing things that aren't truthful. The interesting thing about this is, that it literally is fake news, because it has been proven incorrect, unlike a lot of other news stories that are just called fake news because someone doesn't like the coverage. Faulty polling by the Tribune caused the error, they owned up to the error, didn't double down on their error and admitted they were wrong and later printed a retraction.

Following our visit to the visitors center, we then hopped back into the Jeep and drove over to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. The museum and library I found very refreshing and much different than the Lincoln Library that we'd visited a couple of days earlier. While Lincoln's Library was very high tech, I felt that it lacked a lot of memorabilia that one would expect from a presidential library.

The presidential library I've visited the most, mainly because it's the closest to where I live is Richard Nixon's library. Because Nixon's library was created through private funds and through organizations like "Friends of Nixon" I felt that there were many aspects of Nixon's life that got whitewashed in the telling, most notably, Watergate. You don't get that at the Truman library.

On the side of Truman's library is a quote by Harry Truman which reads, "The Truth is all I want for History." Truman felt that a presidential library should reflect the history of the time, the truth of the time, be it good or bad. There was an interactive exhibit regarding the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Visitors could weigh in with their opinion on whether it was right or wrong. Just wandering through the museum, I felt that the exhibits overall, gave a very balanced detail of his time as President and as a human being, complete with all the frailties that come with being human. It wasn't whitewashed at all.

The last place we visited after walking through the entire museum was the garden and then over to President Truman's gravesite which is on the grounds of the library. We paid our respects to a great man, then got back in the Jeep and headed west into Kansas.