“Harry,” she said, “the president is dead.” Four words raced through Truman’s mind: The lightning has struck! “I was fighting off tears,” he later recalled. “It was the only time in my life I think that I ever felt like I’d had a real shock. I had hurried to the White House to see the president and when I arrived I found I was the president. No one in the history of our country ever had it happen to him just that way.” He gathered himself. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked the First Lady. “Is there anything we can do for you,” Eleanor Roosevelt answered. “For you are the one in
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