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Truman had personally approved elaborate military plans for a five-day state funeral ("A damn fine show. I just hate that I'm not going to be around to see it," he had said), including attendance by heads of state. But a shorter, simpler schedule was ordered by his wife Bess, 87, whom he had often referred to fondly as "the boss." Instead of the planned procession with muffled drums, a casket-bearing caisson and the symbolic riderless horse, a caravan of 21 cars and a hearse briskly transferred the body from a funeral home to the Truman Library in Independence. There some 75,000 people queued patiently through the night, some carrying sleeping children in their arms, to file past the mahogany coffin. Explained one mourner from Independence: "This whole town was a friend of Harry's." A wreath of red, white and blue carnations (Truman's favorite flowers) was placed at the casket by President Nixon, who, with Pat, also visited the plain white frame Truman house on Delaware Street. Nixon told Mrs. Truman that the simple ceremonies befitted her husband—"He didn't put on airs." A similar visit was made by Lyndon Johnson, now the only living former President, and Lady Bird. Johnson called Truman "a 20th century giant" and "one of the greatest men to lead freedom's cause."
The funeral itself, held at the library, was basically an Episcopal service, although a Baptist minister and a Masonic leader also participated (Truman, past Masonic Grand Master, was baptized in the Baptist church at age 18; Bess is an Episcopalian). At Truman's request, no hymns were sung and there was no eulogy. Bess and her daughter Margaret watched the ceremony from behind a green curtain that screened them from the 242 invited mourners, all relatives or close friends of the family. At the burial site in the library courtyard—a spot Truman had selected 15 years ago—a frail but composed Bess accepted the folded flag that had covered the coffin, after a trio of traditional military touches: three musket volleys, a final 21-gun salute from howitzers of Truman's beloved World War I Battery D and the blowing of taps.
Lightfoot. Harry Truman was the country boy of legend who comes to the big city and outwits all the slickers. His parents and grandparents were people of the Middle Border, the odd blend of Midwesterner and Southerner that enriches Missouri with all the paradoxes of that mid-continental mixture. He was innately religious and believed in daily prayer, but like his mother, he was a lightfoot Baptist; he looked on dancing, cardplaying and bourbon drinking with a tolerant eye. He wore his provincialism as proudly as he did his loud sports shirts, which, to much of the world, represent the American tourist.
And what, Harry Truman would have asked, is wrong with the American tourist? He never pretended; better than most men, Truman knew himself. He possessed some hard inner kernel of conviction—partly moral, partly intellectual, partly folk wisdom —that was neither proud nor ashamed. It made him secure.
Though he was born provincial, he was not born poor. The family farms ran to hundreds of acres. But wheat futures went bad just when young Harry graduated from high school in 1901, and college was out of the question.