Margaret Truman - Biography

Biography

Born in Independence, Missouri, she was christened Mary Margaret Truman (for her aunt Mary Jane Truman and maternal grandmother Margaret Gates Wallace) but was called Margaret from early childhood.

She attended school in Independence until her father's 1934 election to the U.S. Senate, after which her education was split between schools in Washington, D.C. and Independence. In 1942, she matriculated at George Washington University, where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi and earned a B.A. in History in 1946. In June 1944, she christened the battleship USS Missouri at Brooklyn Navy Yard; in 1986 she spoke at the ship's recommissioning.

On April 21, 1956, Truman married New York Times reporter (and later editor) Clifton Daniel in Independence; he died in 2000. They had four sons:

• Clifton Truman Daniel (born 1957), Director of Public Relations for Harry S Truman College.
• William Wallace Daniel (1959–2000), a psychiatric social worker and researcher at Columbia University struck and killed by a New York City taxicab.
• Harrison Gates Daniel (born 1963)
• Thomas Washington Daniel (born 1966)

In later life, Truman lived in her Park Avenue home. She died on January 29, 2008, in Chicago (to which she was relocating to be nearer her son Clifton). She was said to have been suffering from "a simple infection" and had been breathing with the assistance of a respirator. Her ashes, and those of her husband, were interred in Independence, in her parents' burial plot on the grounds of the Truman Library.