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47 Mr. Truman IN THE SPRING of 1962 I was working a part-time job as a special assistant under Tom Eagleton, Missouri’s attorney general, in which I got to brief and argue three cases a year before the Missouri Supreme Court. I had an office in the Supreme Court Building in Jefferson City, and Susie sometimes accompanied me down from Lexington, where I still worked with my father in private law practice. I was in the back office visiting with George Draper, an assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, when a secretary came in and said a Mr. Burrus was on the phone. I thought it might be a Wentworth classmate named Burrus, but it turned out the man on the phone was his father, Mr. Rufus B. Burrus, an influential lawyer from Independence and a confidant of former President Harry Truman. Mr. Burrus told me in that call, “This is the last day of filing for the 1962 primaries and President Truman wants you to file for Congress against the Democratic incumbent, Bill Randall.” Well, I thanked Mr. Burrus but told him I had been married just a short while and wanted to get my law practice going, and that was the end of the conversation. But pretty soon another secretary came running into George Draper’s office, crying out that Harry Truman was on the phone! Indeed he was. In that familiar confident voice, President Truman was urging me to file against Bill Randall, who was no favorite of the Man from Independence . I told him the same thing I had told Mr. Burrus—I thanked him for his interest, but I didn’t think this was the time for me to run for Congress. I wrote the former president a follow-up note on April 27, 1962: Dear President Truman, May I take this opportunity to express my appreciation to you for your encouragement and kindness when you called me in Jefferson City the other day. It was a most difficult decision to make, especially after we talked on the phone, but I sincerely felt that it would be best not to run at this time. Earlier this year, I had considered M r . T r u M a n 48 the race for Congress, but I could not see my way clear to enter it. I felt that present circumstances compelled me from filing, and to continue in the practice of law for the time being. Mr. President, let me again thank you for your interest and encouragement . I hope to someday merit your kind thoughts. At some convenient time, Susie and I would like to come by Independence and have a visit with you. Most sincerely, Ike Skelton, Jr. On May 16, Mr. Truman replied: Dear Ike, I appreciated your letter of April 27, and I am as sorry as I can be that I have been so long in acknowledging it. I understand the situation and all I am interested in is to see that we have a Democratic Congressman in Washington who will have an interest in the welfare of this district. I hope we will get him before we get through. Sincerely yours, Harry S. Truman The Man from Independence and I remained friends until his death in 1972—a decade after Mr. Truman first urged me to run for the congressional seat I eventually assumed from Bill Randall in 1977. And as Mr. Truman wished, I have tried to be what he wanted—“a Democratic Congressman in Washington who will have an interest in the welfare of this district.” I am particularly honored that, as far as I can determine, I was the only member of Congress in 2011 who was personally urged by Harry Truman to run for the House—even though I initially turned him down. The Skelton family’s relationship with the Truman family dated back to September 17, 1928, when Mr. Truman’s daughter, Margaret, would have been a four-year-old and I wasn’t even a twinkle in my dad’s eye, since he didn’t get married until that December. On that day, a monument was dedicated in Lexington to the pioneer mothers of America’s westward movement. The keynote speaker at the dedication of the Madonna of the Trails was the county court judge from neighboring Jackson County, Harry Truman. Representing the American Legion at the same event was my father, who like Judge Truman was a World...

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