Harry and Eddie A Hometown Friendship that Changed the World

By Shirley Christian n the afternoon of May 17, 1948, City shopkeeper Eddie O Jacobson slipped out of the White House after taking leave of his nearly lifelong friend Harry Truman and boarded the first flight to New York.

Independence was once a bustling For two years, the pudgy cobbler’s son with an eighth-grade education international trade center linking Europe had been at the center of negotiations between Zionists and President Truman over the future of Palestine and whether Jews would have their and the westward expanding United own nation. States to . See story on page 20. Generally operating beneath the radar of the press, which knew him only as the president’s jocular war buddy and one-time business partner, Table of Contents Jacobson had enjoyed regular access to Chaim Weizmann, the patriarch A hometown friendship that of the Zionist movement, and for a time had been the only Jew outside changed the world ...... 1 the government whom Truman would receive. Eddie told his wife and daughters that his heady experiences in the seats Editor’s note ...... 2 of power were the result of what his Yiddish-speaking parents would have called besheret – being there at the right time. A man with a talent Diary of Independence police for loyalty and friendship, Eddie was trusted by both sides to carry officer who protected Truman 10 proposals and arguments. Kansas City is the “cradle of He paid from his own pocket for the frequent trips to Washington and animation” industry ...... 15 New York and joked to his daughters that he was spending their inheritance. But wealthy acquaintances, those he met after he agreed to Independence once was an argue the case for a Jewish state before Truman, had shown their international center for trade .. 20 gratitude with such things as the diamond cufflinks he now wore. Phog Allen’s roots are in In recent weeks, as the Truman Administration engaged in a ferocious Jackson County ...... 25 internal debate over whether to recognize Israel as an independent nation, Eddie had had to defend Harry to Zionists, who became An unusual photographic infuriated when Truman seemed to be waffling on the deal they thought record of area buildings ...... 27 had already been struck. Letters poured into the small office at the back (Continued on page 3) JCHS Journal — Summer 2014 3

(Continued from page 1) just after Eddie’s birth in New of his shirt shop at 39th and Main York in 1891. from people “telling me what a The Jacobson family had arrived terrible traitor my friend, Harry S. in New York around the time that Truman, turned out to be, and the city’s affluent, long- how he betrayed the Jewish established German Jews were People …” becoming concerned about the Then, in one stroke, Truman had image projected by the large brushed aside the protestations of numbers of poor Russian Jews General George Marshall and the crowding into the Lower East entire State and Defense Side. These concerns led to the establishments and recognized diversion of some ships carrying Israel at 6 p.m. on May 14, 1948, Central and Eastern European Jews to the Port of Galveston, immediately after the new nation proclaimed its independent Texas, from which the new existence. That was three days arrivals established themselves in communities up and down the mid before this visit. Now, the burden Chaim Weizmann (left) and Eddie Jacob- and the tension were lifted from -section of the country, including son (right) in a photograph circa 1949. Kansas City. Eddie, whose tendency toward The event and location are unknown. stress and over-excitement kept In fact, Jewish immigrants had Copyright Unknown, Courtesy of Harry him under the watchful eye of been making their way across the S. Truman Library, Accession number cardiologists. Mississippi River since long 2004-36. ver the months of before the arrival of the Jacobsons and those from the so-called conversations with Chaim same day, and laid out O “Galveston Project.” Weizmann, Eddie came to idolize Weizmann’s requests and the brilliant scientist who had concerns. Without committing y the 1840s Jewish peddlers crusaded for a homeland for Jews himself on any of the points, B and small shopkeepers were for most of his adult life and who Harry told Eddie to invite already working at the confluence was now, at 73, exhausted by Weizmann to visit Washington a of the Missouri and Kansas rivers, respiratory ailments and nearly few days later and stay at Blair drawn perhaps by President John blind with cataracts. House. Tyler’s 1841 appeal for new arrivals to head west “as members As soon as he learned of After he landed back in New York of our rapidly growing family.” Truman’s recognition of Israel, that evening, Eddie took a Less that twenty years after Eddie had flown to New York limousine to the Waldorf, where French fur traders put down the from Kansas City and presented an excited crowd was gathered first footprints of the future himself in Weizmann’s suite at outside. For the first time, Israel’s Kansas City the ledgers of the the Waldorf-Astoria. Weizmann blue and white Star of David was Jewish-owned businesses told him to go to Washington flying overhead beside the Stars recorded trade with the French immediately and plead Israel’s and Stripes. Eddie got out of the and the arriving farmers from the case to Truman on three points: car, stood on the sidewalk, looked eastern areas of the country. urge him to lift the arms embargo up at the two flags, and sobbed. against the Jewish settlers in “This is the payoff,” he thought, Perhaps the unwelcoming scene in Palestine, back Israel’s request for “my reward.” New York led the Jacobsons to a $135 million American loan, join the westward tide, or perhaps and try to halt Britain’s arming of Lithuania to Leavenworth it was the lure of boom times Arabs. Eddie Jacobson’s parents never around Kansas City, where the Eddie went to Washington devoted much time to explaining population had multiplied rapidly Monday morning, saw Harry the to their six children how they after the Civil War. They settled came to Leavenworth, Kansas, in Leavenworth, the military

4 JCHS Journal — Summer 2014 outpost twenty miles up the the mansions stretching south Hemingway learned to gather , where relatives from Quality Hill, and built their news and write a declarative had preceded them. Eddie and his own housing settlements among sentence in time to go off to drive siblings went to school, and his the hidden ravines and almost an ambulance in World War I. father made and repaired shoes inaccessible bluffs. Somewhere in this milieu Eddie until the family moved to Kansas Like the fictional cowboy Will Jacobson and Harry Truman City in 1905, by which time Eddie Parker in the Rodgers and crossed paths. Eddie, who was had completed the eighth grade. Hammerstein musical about fifteen when his family A Wild, Wicked, "Oklahoma," countless young moved to Kansas City from Sensual Place men from five or six surrounding Leavenworth, found work as a states found excitement at "the big stock boy in the garment Kansas City at the beginning of theatre they call a burle-que," businesses opening on the west the Twentieth Century was where strippers displayed side of the city’s downtown. changing rapidly from a town of attributes that were "absolutely Harry Truman’s family had the Old West astride a Civil War real." fault line to an urban hothouse of farmed and dabbled in related immigrants, former slaves, youths The writer Edward Dahlberg, trades and businesses, including escaping family farms, white shoe whose mother Lizzie ran a freighting and livestock brokering, bankers, and upwardly striving barbershop where young women and had some social and economic Babbitts. gave shaves and trims, and pretensions, but his father was sometimes more, to traveling never successful enough to Jesse James and Cole Younger salesmen disgorged from arriving advance the family dreams. After were gone from the scene. Also trains, remembered the city of his bouncing around various Missouri gone were the New England youth as “a wild, concupiscent” farming communities, the abolitionists who had poured into place. Trumans settled in Independence, the adjacent Kansas Territory a It was already the wide-open town where Harry attended public high half-century earlier to make a school and received the benefits of stand against slavery. Their for which it would gain notoriety during Prohibition, its rivers the a classical education. After high crusade over, most of them had school, Harry found his first job returned East. The French-Osage “washpots of joyous Dianas from St. Joseph and Joplin.” There were opportunities a streetcar ride who once farmed the bottomlands away, in , where the two rivers meet had “more sporting houses and saloons than churches,” and vice where the banks of the Kemper given way to cattle barons and family and the Jewish-owned was good for business. money men who developed the garment factories were near- teeming livestock yards. John Edwards, skillful P.R. man neighbors. ow, Slavs and Mexicans put for Jesse James and chronicler of the Missouri Confederate arry was seven years older N their shoulders to the than Eddie, and they came grinding labor of the meatpacking dreamers who fled to Mexico after H the Battle of Westport in 1864, from vastly different places in houses and railroads. Irish did the Kansas City’s spectrum, but they had drunk himself to death in laundry and the street work, shared common desires to be good tended the taverns, and had not yet 1889. By 1901, the newspaper he founded, The Kansas City Times, citizens and to advance in a taken over the police force. Jews challenging world where neither sought places to ply their needle had been acquired by William Rockhill Nelson, who came from had a toehold on privilege. Civic trades and planted the beginnings spirit led both of them into the of the garment industry. Italians Indiana vowing to elevate the standards and culture of a tasteless Missouri National Guard. Its ran gambling tables in the back activation for service in World rooms of restaurants where bullets town. Nelson converted Edwards’s Times into the morning War I started them on the path of sometimes settled disputes. Blacks influencing, and being influenced came from the South and from edition of his afternoon Kansas across Missouri, found work in City Star, where Ernest

JCHS Journal — Summer 2014 5 by, each other for the remainder of for his part, was immensely battery commander in the 129th their lives. grateful to Harry for the fact that Field Artillery, Harry saw the he forgave him when he wrecked inside of a few chateaus and other

the future president’s little red elegant spots. Private Jacobson, Fort Sill to Meuse-Argonne Stafford roadster during a buying assigned to a supply battery, trip to nearby Lawton. found himself slogging through In September 1917 Harry and the mud. When the war ended he Eddie were sent to Camp The stint at Doniphan sealed their was in the hospital with a foot Doniphan at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, friendship, and the subsequent wound. for training as part of the National months in France positioned both Guard’s 35th Division, made up men among a group of “Raining, cold,” Eddie wrote on mostly of men from Missouri and contemporaries who would September 18 inside his three-by- eastern Kansas. A Guardsman become successful and influential four-inch copy of Readings from since 1905, Harry held the rank of in Kansas City after their military the Holy Scriptures for Jewish second lieutenant; Eddie reached service, or who would provide Soldiers and Sailors. “Hope I the rank of sergeant in the Guard, loyal support and friendship for as never see another Yom Kippur but was eventually listed on long as any of them lived. By far like this. Hiked all night wet regular Army rolls as a private. the most significant of those was through and through.” Jim Pendergast, whose father and Soon after they arrived in t is unlikely that Harry or uncles were then building the Oklahoma Harry was assigned to I Eddie, or anyone else in the dominant Kansas City political th organize a commissary where the 35 Division, was aware of events machine. Lieutenant Truman had men could buy toiletries and other that had occurred in the Middle pulled Jim Pendergast from the personal items. Assuming, as he East during the months they had been preparing for combat in France. With the Ottoman Empire disintegrating, Britain’s General Sir Edmund Allenby had marched into Palestine on Christmas Day 1916 and into Baghdad in March 1917. This marked the beginning of British involvement in the Middle East that over the coming Truman and Jacobson met in at Camp Doniphan, Ok where they operated a successful three decades would lead to creation of the nation states of canteen for the 129th Field Artillery. The photograph is marked “A Jolly Bunch.” Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Truman is fifth from the right; Jacobson is seventh from the left. F.G. Willard, 1917, Lebanon, and, above all, set the Courtesy of Harry S. Truman Library, Accession number 97-2024 stage for the explosive future of Palestine. All of this would be ranks of privates and wrote his girlfriend Bess Wallace, handed off to Harry Truman when recommended him for officer that Jews had a good head for he became president of the United training. Like Truman, Pendergast business, Harry chose Eddie as his States in 1945. eventually made captain in assistant. France. Outfitters to Gentlemen ach man in the regiment They sailed from New York provided $2 in startup capital, But the returning war buddies had E harbor on May 20, 1918, aboard and the partnership quickly a lot to do before they would both the R.M.S. Saxonia, landing at returned a handsome profit, which become players on the global LeHavre on June 8. They entered put Harry in good standing with stage. Back in Kansas City after combat on August 25 in the the men as well as the officers the war, Harry married Bess, and Vosges sector and finished at above him. He always gave credit Eddie married his sweetheart Verdun on November 11. As a to Eddie for their success. Eddie, Bluma Rosenbaum, a daughter of

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German Jews who had moved to Kansas City from Memphis. Together, the young men opened a classy haberdashery on Twelfth Street in the heart of the downtown business district, an idea that apparently just popped into their heads on the homeward- bound ship. The store became a gathering place for the boys from Battery D and other units of the 129th, who shopped when they had money. Many turned to “Captain Harry” for advice and occasional loans. Eddie did the buying for the store. Harry kept the books. They had one clerk. This is a well-known photograph of the Truman & Jacobson Haberdashery located at By then, the wide-open town that was Kansas City at the turn of the 104 W. 12th Street, Kansas City. Jacobson is on the left; Truman on the right with two century had gradually come under unidentified customers. Circa 1919. Source: Truman Library, Accession number 2009- the control of Tom Pendergast, 1680. whose nephew Jim had been made an army officer on Harry’s office. Harry jumped at the racing fanatic, simply recognized recommendation during the war. opportunity. a horse worthy of a large bet. Just about anything still went in Kansas City, but it was done with In 1922, the Pendergasts backed Hit hard by the bankruptcy, Eddie, Boss Tom’s authorization. In the Harry Truman for eastern district Bluma, and their toddler daughter representative on the Jackson Elinor moved in with Bluma’s years before the war, two of th Tom’s older brothers, Mike and County Court, essentially the parents at 36 and Garfield. Eddie James, had laid the groundwork county commission. The seat that again found work in the garment for one of the most effective city Harry won served Independence industry. He and Harry continued political machines in the country. and the more rural parts of the regular contact, even after settling The fourth of the brothers, John, county, where voters had little to their business affairs. do with Kansas City’s machine ran the family saloons. n his politicking forays politics. Tom Pendergast’s nephew Jim O around the rural parts of the was one of the war buddies who In his campaign, Harry county, Harry would stop by a stopped by Truman & Jacobson successfully straddled the urban weekend cottage that Eddie and and rural camps of the Democratic his family rented on a lake. The from time to time, and probably noticed when the store began to Party, and his wartime network Jacobsons enjoyed no reciprocal struggle under the weight of a enabled him to draw Republican socializing with Bess in the national economic recession and support as well. Thus began impressive house in Independence competition from nearby Harry’s rise in Jackson County – not then, and not ever. It’s not department stores. One day, as the politics, which culminated in his clear whether that was Bess’s future was looking grim for the election to the U.S. Senate in doing, or that of her mother, who young businessmen, Jim’s father 1934. To his detractors Truman still ran the household. Mike came by and asked Harry if became “the man from Years later, when people began to he would like to run for political Pendergast,” but his defenders ask Eddie whether the Trumans might say that Tom Pendergast, a were anti-Semitic, he would insist

JCHS Journal — Summer 2014 7 that Harry was not, adding: “I alongside Arabs for many letters from European Jews understand his problems as he generations, but when the League seeking visas or other help in understands mine.” of Nations gave Britain a mandate leaving Europe. There were weekend getaways over Palestine after the Great War Although Eddie’s rabbi and with National Guard buddies, the British government opened the temple remained non-Zionist in when Harry usually read and did territory to increased Jewish perspective, the concern for their the cooking while the others settlement. This was the response brethren in Europe focused their fished and hunted. Later, when of Colonial Secretary Winston attention on the issue. Some Eddie had a home of his own, Churchill and Prime Minister Kansas City Jews gradually there were poker games in his David Lloyd George to the became sympathetic to the idea of basement, which sometimes appeals of British Zionists, Jewish statehood as a way to included one or more of the particularly Dr. Chaim Weizmann provide a homeland for those and Lord Rothschild, for eventual Pendergasts. suffering in Europe. creation of a homeland in Eddie apparently found no Palestine for Jews. On rare occasions Eddie turned to contradiction in socializing with his friend Senator Truman for the Pendergasts at the same time By the 1930s Eddie was the help in obtaining visas for that his rabbi, the widely representative of a Baltimore shirt German or Polish relatives of respected Samuel Mayerberg, had manufacturer, driving his big Kansas City Jews, and Truman a leadership role in civic groups Chevy around several states to sell obliged. Harry, who had become a seeking to bring down the the line to shopkeepers. He had an major figure in Washington as office in downtown Kansas City Pendergast regime. chairman of a Senate committee and made regular business trips to investigating government waste The Tug of Roots Baltimore. Gradually, he found and fraud, was also receiving himself drawn into the far-away By the late Twenties the world regular letters and reports from problems of Europe. His relatives that Eddie’s family had left the World Zionist Organization, and acquaintances began receiving behind in Europe was beginning to change in ways that would shape the lives of both Eddie and Harry as neither could have imagined from the relatively small and benign setting of Kansas City. Nor had it occurred to them during their combat days that the war they saw as a battle to protect France and Belgium from Germany would have the far- reaching consequences brought on by the collapse of both the Austro- Hungarian and Ottoman Turkish empires. These multi-ethnic dynasties had provided a degree of protection to the Jews living under them while also holding in check the nationalist passions that would soon engulf Eastern and Central Europe and the Arab and Moslem kingdoms of the Middle East. Eddie Jacobson opened a new clothing store—the Westport Men’s Wear Company — Small numbers of Jews had lived located at 39th and Main in Kansas City. Circa 1945. Copyright Unknown, Courtesy of and farmed peaceably in Palestine Harry S. Truman Library, Accession number 66-2953

8 JCHS Journal — Summer 2014 the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Zionist Organization noting that newspaper could resist the story the American Palestine twice during his Senate years and photo. Soon, Eddie was being Committee, and smaller groups Truman had given his support to interviewed regularly by the detailing repression of Jews in the concept of establishing a national press for personal Germany and expressing the Jewish homeland in Palestine. anecdotes about the President and desire of Zionists for a Jewish Over the coming year, Truman their shared history. He sometimes homeland. Truman responded by received a barrage of requests had to work his way through joining a number of senators in from Zionists and refugee aid waiting journalists when he signing a statement of general groups urging him to resolve visa arrived to open the store in the support for creating such a problems for Jewish refugees in mornings. Rabbi Mayerberg took homeland. the , to pressure the advantage of the moment to write British to allow 100,000 displaced a profile of Eddie that appeared in The Presidency and the Liberal Judaism and the Kansas President’s Shop European Jews into Palestine, and to receive men seeking to shape City Jewish Chronicle. The article In February 1945, Eddie wrote his his thinking on the future of concluded with Eddie’s comment that he would never ask the friend – by then vice president Palestine. under the ailing Franklin D. President for a personal favor but Roosevelt – with the news that y then, a half-million Jews would be happy “to urge the “after twenty-five years I am back B were living in Palestine as President to use every influence he in the retail business again, and if the result of Britain’s gradual has to rescue and save as many of only 1/10 of the people will come opening of the area to Jewish the desperate and homeless Jews in my store and trade with me, settlers. At the end of World War of Europe as possible.” II pressure mounted on Britain to who told me before the election Wooing of Eddie Jacobson that they bought goods from us on open Palestine to even more Jews, 12th street, I should have a real big and warfare broke out between Among those who saw Eddie business.” Eddie had bought a Jews and Arabs there. Having Jacobson’s photo with Harry and store from a retiring owner at 39th developed close Arab ties during read the interviews about their and Main Street in the midtown the previous three decades at the friendship was Frank Goldman, Westport district of Kansas City. behest of Lawrence of Arabia and national president of B’nai B’rith. His new letterhead said Westport British military leaders, the Goldman quickly picked up the Men’s Shop. London government now seemed phone in New York and called a to weaken in its support for Jewish man in Kansas City who was “I am pleased to death you are rights in Palestine. Angry Zionists active in national B’nai B’rith back in the game again,” Harry set out to prevent such restrictions. affairs, the lawyer Abe Granoff. told Eddie, warning him against getting caught in “an inflation Meanwhile, the genial and “Do you know this fellow Eddie?” squeeze,” which he blamed for accommodating Eddie Jacobson asked Goldman. Yes, Granoff their failure in 1922. Continuing was becoming a media star. In said, explaining that Eddie gave an arrangement begun during June 1945, Harry made his first him shirts in exchange for legal Harry’s Senate years, Eddie visit back home as president and work, and their children shared mailed shirts, ties, hats, and even stopped by Eddie’s new store rides to religious school. surrounded by the Secret Service underwear to the new vice Goldman and other committed president. and trailed by the Washington press corps. A flustered Eddie Zionists went to work educating Much more significant issues were showed Harry around the store. Eddie about why they wanted a soon to arise involving both of They discussed merchandising and Jewish national state. Despite his them. On April 12, 1945, posed for photographs with Harry concern for the plight of European Roosevelt died, and Harry Truman looking over the neckties. Jews during the war years, Eddie, became President. The next day like his rabbi, had remained the new President was the subject In a nation weary of war, the story noncommittal about the need for a of an unsigned memo written by of the decades-long friendship separate Jewish state. The subject someone at Weizmann’s World became front-page news. Hardly a was apparently never discussed in

JCHS Journal — Summer 2014 9 the Jacobson household. Eddie’s he escorted Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of those concerned with Palestine younger daughter, Gloria, who of New York to the White House, and the Jewish refugees, but started college shortly after the along with Charles Kaplan, the became angry and testy when he war, recalled her boyfriend and Baltimore shirt manufacturer thought they were demanding too future husband much of him. At times he telling her that he tried to divert the policy was a Zionist. Not questions to Secretary of understanding the State Byrnes or his successor, term, she asked, General George C. Marshall. “Will I have to keep “You can’t satisfy these kosher?” people,” Truman was soon Eddie was not an saying. “The Jews aren’t avid reader of books, going to write the history of but he did read the United States or my newspapers and history.” magazines. His e took off on tangents admiration for Harry H about how ungrateful made him a keen the Jews were. At first, he follower of public saw little distinction between affairs, and he was a Zionists and all Jews. “I am quick learner. Frank not from New York,” he told Goldman and New York’s Senator Robert Maurice Bisgyer, the Wagner. “I am from the national executive Middle West. I must do what director of B’nai I think is right.” B’rith, began regular trips to Kansas City On July 21, 1947, after a to meet with Eddie telephone call from former in the homes of Treasury Secretary Henry people committed to Morgenthau Jr. seeking the cause. As his permission for a ship loaded daughters recalled, with refugees to land in still the visitors educated British-controlled Palestine, Truman exploded on the Eddie in Zionism pages of his diary. “He’d no and the geopolitics —July 21, 1947. Truman Library of the Holy Land. Truman diary entry business whatever to call whose line me,” the President fumed. “The “Frank Goldman and Maurice Eddie represented. On his frequent Jews have no sense of proportion, Bisgyer used to come out to trips to the East to buy nor do they have any judgment on Kansas City to court my father in merchandise Eddie also made a world affairs. … They care not the parlors of many of the rich point of stopping by Washington how many Estonians, Latvians, Jews in Kansas City. I remember to see Harry or one of his senior Finns, Yugoslavs or Greeks get them all very well,” Elinor said aides so he could stay abreast of murdered or mistreated as D. P. years later. Although most of his developments. (Displaced Persons) as long as the teachers were men, Gloria recalled Jews get special treatment.” her father also making friends Efforts to influence Harry became with “a lady named Nell Peiser, more intense in 1947 after the (To be continued in the Winter United Nations General Assembly and she taught him a lot.” 2014 JCHS Journal) began considering a proposal to ddie was soon seeking partition Palestine between Arabs Copyright © 2014 Shirley Christian. E appointments with Harry on and Jews. Truman received many behalf of Zionists. In June 1946,