Margaret Truman Daniel Dies - Read Below
Margaret Truman Daniel, the only child of former U.S. President Harry S. Truman and the author of 32 books, including a biography of her mother Bess, died today. She was 83.
Daniel died in Chicago after a brief illness, according to a news release posted on the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum's Web site. She was a longtime resident of New York.
Her books included a 1956 memoir of her early life, ``Souvenir: Margaret Truman's Own Story,'' as well as the 1986 biography, ``Bess W. Truman.'' She also wrote 23 novels in a series called ``Capital Crimes,'' including ``Murder in the White House'' and ``Murder at the National Cathedral.''
In a 2005 book about the White House, ``The President's House: 1800 to the Present,'' Daniel reflected on her own personal experience in the pinnacle of American power and prestige.
``I have lived in several houses and apartments, and spent some time in splendid establishments, including a few royal palaces,'' she wrote. ``But not one of them -- nor all of them together -- can compare to the feeling I recalled from my White House days.''
Yet her eldest son, Clifton Truman Daniel, wrote in his 1995 memoir that his mother also harbored darker feelings about Washington politics.
``My mother seems to have a strong opinion, often bad, of almost everyone in Washington,'' he wrote. ``That's why she writes those murder mysteries; so she can kill them off, one at a time.''
Protecting Legacy
Margaret Daniel protected her famous father's legacy, sometimes fiercely. In a 1992 interview on NBC's ``Today,'' she took issue with how President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, sometimes compared himself to Truman, a Democrat.
``The major difference is night and day, my father being day and George Bush being night,'' she said. ``My father looked on the presidency as a very historic and honorable job that should be done to the best of his ability.''
In her 1986 book, Daniel said her mother Bess struggled to adjust to life in the White House after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt elevated Truman to the presidency. Daniel wrote that her mother felt ``a smoldering anger that was tantamount to emotional separation.''
Daniel helped arrange ceremonies in 1995 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the start of the Truman presidency and last year to mark the 50th anniversary of the Truman Library.
Presidential History
A devotee of presidential history, she served as honorary co-chair of the Truman Library's nonprofit institute and a governing board member of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.
``Her legacy is as much a part of this presidential library as her parents', and we are extremely grateful for her many contributions,'' Michael Devine, director of the Truman Library, said in a statement.
Mary Margaret Truman was born Feb. 17, 1924, in Independence, Missouri. She graduated from George Washington University in 1946, one year after her father became president in the final months of World War II.
Before writing, she pursued a career as a singer, performing at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1949
When her father left the White House at the start of 1953, Daniel moved to New York to work for the National Broadcasting Co., which had signed her in 1951. In 1955, filling in for Edward R. Murrow on his TV show ``Person to Person,'' Daniel interviewed her parents in their Independence home.
She married Clifton Daniel, then assistant to the foreign news editor of the New York Times, in 1956. He would go on to serve as the newspaper's managing editor from 1964 to 1969. He died in 2000.
The couple had four children, three of whom survive her.
News From: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=appXknpWf.0Y&refer=us
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