Presidential Boyhood Home gets Recognition

The boyhood home of Harry Truman in the photo above located at 619 S. Crysler was recognized this summer by officials from the City of Independence. Unfortunately, the officials were from the Health Department and the recognition was for problems with weeds and trash/rubbish/garbage in violation of Property Maintenance Codes. Truman spent his impressionable boyhood years from age 6 to age 12 at this home. From this family residence, he enters the Independence Public Schools, he attends First Presbyterian Church Sunday School where he meets Bess Wallace, and he recalls his father’s celebration after the 1892 election of Grover Cleveland. In this rare Democratic Party victory celebration, his father decorates the weathervane mounted on top of the cupola of the home (the cupola has since been removed), which undoubtedly left an impression on young Harry. Other Truman residences in the city and the state are National Historic Sites, State Parks, and/or are marked with interpretive signs. This one (on the other side of the railroad tracks and approxmiately 1/2 mile from the Truman NHL Distrct) is one city officials would prefer you drive by without noticing. At Truman’s birthplace home in Lamar, Missouri, he only spent 11 months there and today it is a State Historic Site and House Museum and represents a source of pride for this rural community. We do learn from the Crysler property how absentee landlords maximize rental income while minimizing investment. There are actually 7 mailboxes on this property. Independence has many stories to tell but with this property we get a bonus lesson plan in economics. Anywhere but Independence, this would be national shrine. Here it is considered just another local public nuisance.

Victorian Home Well Done

This evening is the 3-year anniversary of the fire 306 N. Pleasant Street in the heart of the Harry S. Truman National Historic Landmark District and within view of the Truman Home National Historic Site. The event was actually a non-event and received no coverage in the local media, even though it was considered to be a felony arson and actually came dangerously close to the home next door with human lives inside. “The Examiner” did print a few lines three days later on the inside pages of the newspaper. To put this news event in perspective, it was published next to a larger story about the local supper club hosting a singing group at the Community of Christ Auditorium. National historians back in 1971 thought this building was important enough to include in the original 22-page National Register form prepared for the district designation. Three of the 18 photographs in this document include images of this home. Two weeks after this fire, the community hosted Nobel Peace Prize recipient, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, for his farewell address to America at the Truman Library, only a few blocks down the street. It’s ironic that this part of the neighborhood looked like a war-zone while the Secretary-General was giving his speech on, yes, “World Peace.”