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Senate Years of Service: 1935-1945 Party: Democrat
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TRUMAN, Harry S., a Senator from Missouri, a Vice President, and Thirty-third
President of the United States; born in Lamar, Barton County, Mo., May 8, 1884;
moved with his parents to a farm in Jackson County, Mo., in 1888; attended the
public schools in Independence, Mo.; engaged in agricultural pursuits; during
the First World War was commissioned a first lieutenant, later a captain, and
served with Battery D, One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Field Artillery, United
States Army, with service overseas; discharged as a major in 1919; colonel of
Field Artillery, United States Army Reserve Corps 1927-1945; engaged in the
haberdashery business 1919-1921; studied law at Kansas City (Mo.) Law School;
judge of the Jackson County Court 1922-1924, and presiding judge 1926-1934;
elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1934; reelected in 1940
and served from January 3, 1935, until his resignation on January 17, 1945;
chairman, Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program
(Seventy-seventh and Seventy-eighth Congresses), formed at Trumans initiative
and widely known as the Truman Committee, which called nationwide attention
to military contracting procedures; elected Vice President of the United States
on the Democratic ticket with Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, and inaugurated on
January 20, 1945; upon the death of President Roosevelt on April 12, 1945,
became President of the United States; elected in 1948 for the term ending
January 20, 1953; was not a candidate for reelection in 1952; returned to his
home in Independence, Mo.; engaged in writing his memoirs and took an active
interest in the creation of the Truman Library; died in Kansas City, Mo.,
December 26, 1972; interment in the Rose Garden at the Truman Library,
Independence, Mo.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography;
Dictionary of American Biography; Hamby, Alonzo L.
Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995; McCullough, David.
Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
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