Bess Truman Read Online Free PDF Page B

primary force was sheer necessity. Someone had to take charge of their family, and Madge Wallace was incapable of it. At nineteen, Bess became the parent of her three brothers - and the semi-parent of her mother. Even then, it was obvious that Madge Wallace would never resume a normal life.
    I am speaking here of leadership, of a person as a spiritual and psychological force in others’ lives. Grandfather Gates’ money paid for servants and food and clothing. Although he was sixty-nine and his wife was sixty-three, they should not be underestimated as forces in their own right. But they had four other children, all of whom had produced grandchildren. Their feelings for the Wallaces, however poignant, were inevitably diluted by these other descendants.
    The Wallaces were acutely aware of these other relatives. Although there was little overt hostility, there must have been some rumblings of discontent about the possibility that the Wallaces would devour all Grandfather Gates’ money and leave nothing for the rest of the heirs. At any rate, soon after the return to Independence, Frank Wallace decided to quit high school and get a job because he did not want to take any more help from his grandfather. Only someone who knows the importance Bess Wallace attached to a college education can appreciate the pain this decision must have caused her.
    In 1905, twenty-year-old Bess enrolled in the Barstow School in Kansas City. Founded by Wellesley graduate Mary Barstow in 1884, the school’s chief purpose was the preparation of young women for admission to the leading Eastern colleges - Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar - whose requirements were printed in the back of the Barstow catalog. Well-to-do people in Independence and Kansas City also sent their daughters to Barstow for the academic course, which offered a “broad and thorough” education to those who did not plan to attend college. Barstow was a finishing school, but a tough one. Mary Barstow believed that “to educate women was to educate a nation.”
    A glimpse at Barstow’s approach emerges from an account of their first basketball game with Kansas City’s Manual Training High School. As the Manual team came out on the floor, its supporters shouted: “I yell, you yell, all yell, Manual!” To which Barstow replied: “Ho oi, yo ho! Ho oi, yoho! Barstow!” an adaptation of the warrior maidens’ cry in Wagner’s Die Walk ü re. Adding injury to this elitist insult, Barstow won, 12-10.
    Bess enjoyed her year at Barstow. As usual, her marks were excellent, an A in Rhetoric, an A+ in Literature, an A in French. She made new friends, in particular Agnes and Laura Salisbury, whose father owned a 600-acre stock farm outside Independence. She came in touch with the larger world of Kansas City. She used her athletic ability to become the star forward on the basketball team and in a spring track meet she won the shot put.
    For Bess, one of the high points of the year was the challenge match with Independence High School. Barstow was used to playing basketball outdoors, and the game was their first under a roof. The girls had to become used to the “inconveniences of the ceiling,” which suggests it was a rather low one. But they were soon playing, according to the reporter in the Weathercock, the Barstow paper, as though they always had practiced under a roof amid cheers. Bess and her fellow Barstow warrior maidens trounced poor Independence, 22-10.
    During this same year, Bess resumed her social life in Independence. Her name appeared as a guest at various receptions, in particular at the Swope mansion. But there was no mention of Madge Gates Wallace’s name in the social notices. That year was the beginning of a lifelong retreat from the world around her. Other Independence women busied themselves in charitable activities, such as The Needlework Guild, which made clothes for the poor, pursued culture in study clubs, and enjoyed themselves at weekly bridge club meetings. Sadly,