General Notes

Name Prefix:<NPFX> President
Ancestral File Number:<AFN> 8QSM-M5

President Truman's Obituary

[From page 1 of The New York Times, December 27, 1972]

TRUMAN, 33D PRESIDENT IS DEAD; SERVED IN TIME OF
FIRST A-BOMB, MARSHALL PLAN, NATO AND KOREA


Funeral to Be Tomorrow In Independence Library


By B. Drummond Ayers Jr.
Special To The New York Times
KANSAS CITY, Mo., Dec 26 -- Harry S. Truman, the 33d President of the United States,
died this morning. He was 88 years old.
Mr. Truman, an outspoken and decisive Missouri Democrat who served in the White
House from 1945 to 1953, succumbed at 7:50 A.M., central standard time, in Kansas City's
Research Hospital and Medical Center.
He had been a patient there for the last 22 days, struggling against lung congestion,
heart irregularity, kidney blockages, failure of the digestive system and the afflictions of
old age.
In the more than seven years he was President, from the time Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's death suddenly elevated him from the Vice Presidency until he himself was
succeeded by Dwight David Eisenhower, Mr. Truman left a major mark as a world leader.
He brought mankind face to face with the age of holocaust by ordering atomic bombs
dropped on Japan, sent American troops into Korea to halt Communist aggession in Asia,
helped contain Communism in Europe by forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
and speeded the postwar recovery of Europe through the Marshall Plan.
His domestic record was somewhat less dramatic, for his proposals were often
premature. He ended up on the losing sides of fights other Presidents later won -- Federal
health care, equal rights legislation, low income housing.
His other legacies were perhaps less tangible but no less remembered -- the morning
walk, the "Give 'em hell" campaign that nipped Thomas E. Dewey at the wire, the desk
plaque that proclaimed "The Buck Stops Here!" and the word to the timid and indecisive "If
you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
Towards the end of his struggle for life, the former President weakened steadily. Early
yesterday his doctors warned that death might come "within hours."
When it came, the doctors announced that the cause was "a complexity of organic
failures causing a collapse of the cardiovascular system."
A state funeral will be held Thursday in nearby Independence, Mr. Truman's hometown,
to mark his passing. Much of the ceremony will be subdued and private at the family's
request.
State funerals are conducted only for former commanders in chief, although the
President can direct that a state funeral be held for an individual. Modifications in state
funerals, which usually cover 4 or 5 days with considerable ceremony, are made at the
request of the family, as in this case.
President Nixon has declared the day of burial, Thursday, to be a day of national
mourning. The American flag is to be flown at half-mast for thirty days.
The former President's body will lie in state at the Truman Library in Independence
from 1:35 P. M. tomorrow until 11 A. M. Thursday. Burial will follow on the Library
grounds at a spot chosen by Mr. Truman himself.
President Nixon will fly to Kansas City tomorrow afternoon, then go to the library to lie
a wreath at the base of Mr. Truman's coffin. Although it was understood that the
President's name was included on the official list of persons invited to attend the funeral,
it was expected that, in keeping with the subdued and private nature of the ceremony, he
would not stay overnight for the funeral service and burial.
Tomorrow morning the coffin will be transported to the Library on a route that will pass
the Victorian Truman home on the way from the Carson Funeral Home a few blocks away.
The service, scheduled to begin at 2 P. M. Thursday, will be held in the Library's
250-seat auditorium. Attendance will be by invitation. Burial will follow immediately.
A memorial service for Mr. Truman here will be held at