Thread by @BeschlossDC

Both looking alert in the Oval Office, Harry Truman and his Vice President, Alben Barkley: #AP

Reelected to the Senate as a junior member after his Vice Presidency, Barkley told a Washington and Lee audience in 1956, "I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty.” Then he collapsed and died of a heart attack.

Audio of ex-Vice President Alban Barkley’s last words and death, 1956:

Truman said of Alben Barkley, “He died working in the harness. That’s the way I hope to go.”

In a night image from a now-vanished political age, Vice President Alben Barkley, in pajamas, sits on edge of his railroad berth and prepares a speech while campaigning for Democrats, 1950: #Getty

The term “Veep” originated with Vice President Alben Barkley, whose young grandson invented the term:

VP Alben Barkley ardently pursued his second wife, Jane Rucker Hadley, who was thirty-four years younger:

Alben Barkley’s widow Jane went on to write the sprightly “I Married the Veep.” (So far, the title has not been recycled by any other Vice Presidential spouse.) In it, she speculated that after his sudden death, Alben stopped at the gate "to tell St. Peter one of his stories."

After Alben Barkley’s death, his widow Jane moved with her mother into a Connecticut Avenue apartment, became secretary and then assistant to the president of George Washington University and died in her sleep at fifty-two.

Vice President Alben Barkley was a cousin of Adlai Stevenson (left), who defeated Barkley to become Democratic Presidential nominee in 1952 and whose grandfather had been Grover Cleveland’s Vice President:

Thank you to Stephen Truitt, grandson of Vice President Alben Barkley, who, as I mentioned earlier, invented the term “Veep.” See below:

@frankrichny