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October 1994 | Volume 45, Issue 6
Truman Scholar
Text Complexity Grade Level
9
From the time I was a young boy, one of my heroes was President Harry S. Truman. To me, the former haberdasher and county judge epitomized the model public servant.
Truman even had a physical impact on me. When I was in elementary school I read that he walked at a rate of 120 steps per minute. For months I practiced his pace, walking long distances and timing myself with a stopwatch until it became second nature. To this day I walk with a “Trumanesque” gait. And though I never had the privilege of personally meeting Harry Truman, he did come to know me, albeit fleetingly.
In 1969 I was attending the seventh grade at Ben Franklin Junior High School in Colma, California. During that year my history teacher, Mr. Puhr, assigned the class our first long-term homework project. We were to research and type a five- to seven-page biography of the subject of our choice. Naturally I chose Truman. I dived into my task with zeal: Instead of taking the allotted three months, I finished my paper in three days.
After completing my project, I reflected on something I had read in Truman’s book Mr. Citizen . Truman said a former President was obliged to answer mail from young people. I decided to take him up on his claim.
I wrote to Truman, told him about my assignment, enclosed my report, and asked him to read it over, make any necessary corrections, and let me know what he thought of it. I mailed the letter and report to Truman’s home at 219 North Delaware Street in Independence, Missouri.
I never thought to make a carbon copy of the report (I don’t think I knew carbon paper existed), and hard as it is to imagine now, copying machines were not commonplace in 1969. So I sent the only existing copy of my essay. It simply did not occur to me that I might never get it back.
Weeks passed, then months. On the day our papers were due I still had not heard from the former President. I went to class empty-handed and explained my dilemma to Mr. Puhr. He held me up to ridicule before the whole class, calling me a liar and accusing me of neglecting the assignment.
“Don’t tell me you sent your paper to Harry Truman,” said Mr. Puhr. “Truman’s been dead for almost twenty years. I ought to know. I watched his funeral on television!”
His funeral on television? There was no arguing with the teacher. I was a liar, Truman was dead, and I got an F.
As the weeks rolled by, I forgot about the unhappy incident. Then one day after school I came home and found waiting for me a large white envelope bearing the postmark of Independence, Missouri. In the upper right corner was the free-frank