Truman, Margaret 1924-2008 (Margaret Truman Daniel, Mary Margaret Truman)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born February 17, 1924, in Independence, MO; died January 29, 2008, in Chicago, IL. Concert singer, television and radio personality, biographer, and novelist. Truman was a young woman when her father, Harry S. Truman, became president of the United States in 1945, and that could have been her primary claim to fame were it not for her own talents and hard work. She was a professional concert singer in the 1940s and 1950s, and a frequent guest and occasional host of radio and television programs after that. Her career was a modest success, but with marriage in 1956 and motherhood, Truman embarked on a new career as a writer, beginning with a nostalgic look at her own childhood in the nation's heartland titled Souvenir: Margaret Truman's Own Story (1956). She wrote best-selling biographies of both her father and her mother, Bess, as well as other books related to life in the White House. In 1980 Truman published her first mystery novel, Murder in the White House. The novel reflected Truman's intimate knowledge of the nation's capital: its people, places, byways, and most of all, perhaps, the ways and means of national politics. Critical reception was mixed, but sales were brisk, and Truman's future as a novelist was assured. Over twenty-five years or more, she published almost as many crime novels, all set in Washington, DC, and all populated by characters typical of the city's diverse inhabitants. Critics continued to chip away at her plots, her language, and her pace, but readers continued to buy the books. Truman once told CA that she never found writing to be an easy or comfortable occupation, but she was a writer of the most professional kind. Her last Washington novel, Murder on K Street, was published in 2007, when she was in her mid-eighties. Her last nonfiction title was The President's House, 1800 to the Present: The Secrets and History of the World's Most Famous House, published in 2005. In conjunction with her writing career, Truman was also affiliated with the Harry S. Truman Institute at Georgetown University, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, and the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Fund.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Daniel, Clifton Truman, Growing Up with My Grandfather: Memories of Harry S. Truman, Carol Publishing Group (Secaucus, NJ), 1995.

Truman, Margaret, Souvenir: Margaret Truman's Own Story, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1956.

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, January 30, 2008, sec. 2, p. 11.

New York Times, January 30, 2008, p. C13.

Times (London, England), February 2, 2008, p. 72.

Washington Post, January 30, 2008, p. B7.