Yesterday, December 26th, marked the 50th anniversary of President Harry S. Truman’s death. Truman was 88 years old and had been hospitalized for several weeks prior to his death at 7:50am, the morning after Christmas, 1972. Ottawa City Manager, Richard Nienstedt, was in the armed forces at the time. He reflects on his duties at the time and became a part of history
More than 75,000 people came from far and wide to pay their respects to the small-town boy from Missouri, who made it to the highest office in the land. President Nixon and former President Lyndon B. Johnson came to see the veteran of World War I, who ended World War II with the dropping of the atomic bomb. Truman was the author of the Marshall Plan, creator of the United Nations and NATO. He desegregated the U. S. armed forces, recognized Israel as an Independent Nation and then entered the Korean Conflict in 1950.
