This outline of the facts of his mother's life was penned by President Truman ten weeks ago. Afraid then that she was dying, he was speeding to Grandview on the presidential plane. There was more to remember.
Her father was a Missouri bullwhacker, a driver of the 16-hitch ox teams that pulled Conestoga wagons over the old Santa Fe trail.
Martha Ellen Young had seen the Federal "Redlegs" of the Civil War storm out of Kansas and slaughter her family's hogs. Her girlhood memories were of dances in the front parlor. "I was what you might call a light-foot Baptist."
She raised her three...
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