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:
Lorraine Motel, night of April 4, 1968: #Groskinsky
Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where MLK was assassinated, was named in 1945 for “Sweet Lorraine,” popularized by Nat King Cole, who stayed there, as did other Black stars such as Sarah Vaughn, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Louis Armstrong:
Dr. King's still-open briefcase, photographed in his room at Lorraine Motel, Memphis, just after his assassination, tomorrow night 1968: #Groskinsky
Bed like this, designed by Max Ernst, was donated by VP Nelson Rockefeller for main bedroom of Vice President’s Residence (although he refused to live there) at Naval Observatory in Washington DC — had seven-foot mink coverlet, tinted mirrors, trap doors:
Trap doors in Nelson Rockefeller’s Max Ernst bed for Vice President’s official bedroom were used for lamps, stereo controls, telephones. Or so Rockefeller claimed.
Nelson Rockefeller ordered that mirrors on the Max Ernst bed he purchased for Vice President’s bedroom be painted over in order not to offend some voters. Rockefeller insisted that he had haggled over price of the bed for weeks before buying it.
James MacGregor Burns (1918-2014) wrote about the notion of transforming leadership. A transforming President seeks not only to make deals and solve problems but bring enduring changes to the political system for the better.
With the subject’s cooperation, James MacGregor Burns also published the first book-length biography of JFK, in 1960 (shown here with Kennedy in Palm Beach after his victory over Nixon): #Burns
Jacqueline Kennedy wrote a long letter to Jim Burns in November 1959 to complain that his biography of JFK (then pre-publication) did not take him seriously enough:
Politico reports that ex-President will soon be taking many meetings at home with authors writing books on him:
Citizen Kane’s biographer interviewed some of Kane’s ex-friends, including this one, who was by then confined to a psychiatric hospital:
Interview by Citizen Kane’s biographer with Kane’s ex-wife, whom Kane had cut off financially. By then almost penniless, the ex-wife was trying to support herself by performing in a seedy nightclub:
Had he survived, would Robert Kennedy have been nominated and elected President in 1968?
RFK was an astounding candidate in 1968 and would have had a formidable chance to beat Richard Nixon, but he knew that the Democratic convention in Chicago would be tough because, under the old rules, LBJ, as party leader, still controlled an awful lot of those delegates.
Remember how easily LBJ, operating by telephone from his ranch, was able to block any anti-Vietnam War platform plank at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.