Georgia May Schwabe Oral History Interview

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened May, 1997
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[1]

JOHNSON: I also have here with me June Schwabe, and Maxine Schwabe Lusk. That means you have...

SCHWABE: Two daughters.

JOHNSON: Two daughters. Any sons?

SCHWABE: No sons.

JUNE SCHWABE: Actually it is Dr. June Schwabe.

JOHNSON: What is your field?

JUNE SCHWABE: I'm in education administration.

JOHNSON: Mrs. Schwabe, I'm going to start out by getting a little genealogical information -- your birthplace, birth date and your parents' names.

[2]

SCHWABE: Columbia, Missouri, 1906.

JOHNSON: What was your father's name?

SCHWABE: James W. Ashlock.

JOHNSON: And your mother?

SCHWABE: She was a Sappington, Laura Sappington.

JOHNSON: Weren't there Sappingtons at Arrow Rock that are famous?

SCHWABE: Yes, there are a lot of Sappingtons in Missouri.

JOHNSON: Well, for these family historians, we get this sort of information. Of course, you have the two daughters and a son-in-law.

SCHWABE: And great grandchildren.

JOHNSON: Yes, I've met some of them.

JUNE SCHWABE: Three grandchildren.

JOHNSON: Where did you grow up?

SCHWABE: In Columbia [Missouri].

JOHNSON: When did you marry Max Schwabe?

[3]

SCHWABE: In 1930, in Columbia.

JOHNSON: What was the month and day?

SCHWABE: July 12, 1930.

JOHNSON: I don't think I got the month and day of your birth date.

SCHWABE: May 1, 1906

JOHNSON: When did your husband get into politics?

SCHWABE: He wasn't. He really wasn't. The only thing he ever wanted to be in was to be a member of Congress, so he was never in politics and that's all he was...

JOHNSON: Well, what was his occupation before he went to Congress?

SCHWABE: Mostly insurance, and then we had a farm and we raised cattle. We did not live on the farm.

JOHNSON: You lived in town and he was in insurance. You also had a cattle farm?

SCHWABE: Yes, and raised black Angus.

JOHNSON: And when did he first run for office?

[4]

SCHWABE: In 1942.

LUSK: May I interject that he always studies politics and one of his buddies was Dean William Bradshaw, who was with the University of Missouri.

JUNE SCHWABE: He was a professor in business administration at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Dad loved to study trends, make charts, made all sorts of charts. The district that he lived in was very, very traditionally democratic. The incumbent Congressman at that time Will O. Nelson, he had been in Congress I guess...

SCHWABE: Twenty-one years.

JUNE SCHWABE: So, my dad, through the studies of trends, got the idea that 1942 was a year when a Republican might just slip in.

JOHNSON: Is that right? So he had studied the electoral trends?

SCHWABE: And Will O. Nelson, he was a friend of mine.

JOHNSON: I notice that he is on this list, here.

[5]

SCHWABE: Well, he was the man that Max beat. I was a dental assistant and he [Nelson] had his Columbia office next door, and so he used to tell me all about Washington and other things. It was so interesting to me. That was before I was married.

JOHNSON: Oh, I see. So you were acquainted with him before...

SCHWABE: Oh, yes.

JOHNSON: I notice in the 1942 election, the Second District, that your husband apparently won by only 566 votes.

JUNE SCHWABE: I think that's correct.

JOHNSON: According to this count, in 1942 your husband got 37,635 votes and Will Nelson received 37,069.

JUNE SCHWABE: That's about correct.

JOHNSON: In the next election it was even closer.

JUNE SCHWABE: That's correct.

JOHNSON: It was 60,857 to 60,587, a 270 vote margin.

LUSK: That's correct. For many years dad was the only Republican elected for that area. He was first, and I guess the last, until they redistricted him.

[6]

JOHNSON: I see. Apparently in '46, the margin grew. Of course, '46 is the year the Republicans got a majority in the House, and he received 44,292 votes to 42, 437 for Will Nelson, so that was a 1,855 vote difference.

LUSK: Wasn't that an off-year for Presidential elections?

JOHNSON: Yes. Yes, '46 was an off year election, which probably helped.

SCHWABE: Then he lost...

JOHNSON: He lost in 1948.

LUSK: He ran again in 1952, I guess it was.

JOHNSON: Do you remember who the opponent was in 1952?

JUNE SCHWABE: Morgan Moulder. Morgan Moulder was the incumbent then, and my dad lost that time by such a small margin that they had to wait. He was ahead, in fact, until the absentee votes were counted and then he finally lost. So it's always like that.

SCHWABE: Joe Martin wanted him to demand a recount, but he didn't want to.

JOHNSON: Do you remember when he, or you, first met Harry Truman? Did you meet Harry Truman?

[7]

SCHWABE: Oh sure. I guess I really knew him when he was Vice President.

JOHNSON: Did you know him when he was a Senator?

SCHWABE: I knew her, but I did not know him.

JOHNSON: You mean you knew Bess?

SCHWABE: Yes. I remember we had a Missouri delegation dinner out at the country club, and they were there. I sat by him. I remember him telling me that momma said, "Why can't you come to see me without all these people coming with you?" She was sick and tired of it.

JOHNSON: You mean...

SCHWABE: That's what Harry told me. That his momma said...

JOHNSON: Oh, his mother, Martha Ellen.

SCHWABE: Whatever her name was.

JOHNSON: This would have been a Missouri delegation meeting? Do you know when this was?

SCHWABE: We had a lot of different clubs. We had the 78th Club; that was the women, and they were always non-partisan. That was [named for] the Congress that Max was elected to...

[8]

JUNE SCHWABE: When they're first elected, they have a club.

SCHWABE: Each year of Congress has a club, and then we had the Missouri delegation. That was the one where I really knew her, because she was a Senator's wife, and we only had about ten or twelve members. She was just a lovely lady.

JOHNSON: So you met Bess Truman when her husband was Senator?

SCHWABE: Oh yes. Yes, that's when I really knew her.

JOHNSON: But you say you didn't meet Mr. Truman until after he became Vice President.

SCHWABE: Max knew him well, but I didn't. I had met him. Once a month, at that time, they had a meeting for all of the people that were from Missouri, in Washington. They'd have a big dance and party out at the Shoreham Hotel.

JOHNSON: Is this the Congressional delegation from Missouri, and their families?

SCHWABE: Yes, this was the whole thing.

JUNE SCHWABE: That, as well as what I believe you are saying: all Missourians that were living in the area.

[9]

SCHWABE: Were invited to this.

JOHNSON: All Missourians living in Washington...

SCHWABE: Yes, or working there.

JUNE SCHWABE: Or involved in Government in some way.

JOHNSON: You couldn't do that nowadays.

SCHWABE: But it was nice. They had them about once a month. They'd have a big dance and party at the Shoreham Hotel. And all of the Members of Congress and the President would have to stand in the receiving line, and meet all the people.

JOHNSON: So, Senator Truman was in the receiving line.

SCHWABE: Oh, sure.

JUNE SCHWABE: I remember, mother and daddy took us. We were such lovely well behaved little girls, that they took us along to a lot of these things. I recall dancing with Harry. As a little girl he asked me to dance around with him.

JOHNSON: Is that right, because he wasn't known as a dancer?

JUNE SCHWABE: I know that.

[10]

SCHWABE: Neither was my husband.

JUNE SCHWABE: And nobody believes me when I say that.

JOHNSON: Twirled you around a little.

JUNE SCHWABE: But he danced with both of us.

JOHNSON: And you were about how old?

JUNE SCHWABE: I was maybe in fifth grade.

LUSK: About thirteen and twelve years old. Young girls, we should say.

JOHNSON: Well, what about your first impressions of Harry Truman?

SCHWABE: I don't know.

JOHNSON: Did you think he was a good Senator at the time?

SCHWABE: I didn't think anything about it. I liked him.

JOHNSON: Did you vote for him?

SCHWABE: No.

LUSK: Only because she didn't vote for Democrats.

JOHNSON: Were you traditionally Republicans in your family?

[11]

SCHWABE: No.

JUNE SCHWABE: No, but my father was. And so she voted Republican.

LUSK: At that time you always voted the straight ticket. They didn't split the ticket. You put your X under the elephant or under the donkey.

JOHNSON: A straight ticket. Party loyalty?

LUSK: Well, we believe in the two-party system.

JUNE SCHWABE: But when you got to Washington, in amongst everybody, politics were pretty well put aside.

SCHWABE: And with all the women's organizations, it was non-partisan.

JOHNSON: So social life in Washington didn't really take account of party affiliation?

SCHWABE: No, not with the women. No, not with any of it, or with the Missouri thing that we had at the Shoreham.

JOHNSON: You say they had that every year, at the Shoreham?

SCHWABE: I think they had it about once a month or once every few months. No, we didn't think of parties. Some of our best friends were Democrats.

[12]

JOHNSON: Well, a lot of them...

JUNE SCHWABE: See, we wouldn't have had any friends in Columbia had it not been that way.

JOHNSON: That's right. Well, how did you husband decide to run in '42?

SCHWABE: Because of his interest in politics, and he was interested in economics and trends of all kinds.

JOHNSON: Yes, we've mentioned these trends that he was charting, sort of following.

JUNE SCHWABE: He thought that it was an opportunity to win.

LUSK: He was about 33 years old.

SCHWABE: The only thing that really turned him off was when he was in law school. I think he went to sleep in class, and I've forgotten who this professor was that yelled at him and said, "I'll see you in Congress some day."

JUNE SCHWABE: Which was a put-down that put dad down, but he took it very seriously.

SCHWABE: He did. He did.

[13]

JOHNSON: Do you remember, after your husband was elected, whether he followed the Republican policies? Did he ever say anything about whether he would vote for any Truman policies, or was it strictly party line?

SCHWABE: No, he was very independent about the way he thought. He was a truly honest man. And he voted for what he thought was the very...

JUNE SCHWABE: He was very much opposed to the Marshall plan.

JOHNSON: He was.

JUNE SCHWABE: I guess in those days there was still a great deal of people who were pretty seriously involved...

JOHNSON: Was he isolationist?

JUNE SCHWABE: I don't believe my dad at that time thought in world terms. So I think that he thought the Marshall plan was a give-away program. He also was not in favor of Federal aid to education, which was a big issue at that time.

JOHNSON: I noticed he wanted to do away with the OPA immediately. There's a letter to the President in December of '45.

JUNE SCHWABE: He was certainly opposed to that, as well, because he very definitely believed in less, not more, government.

[14]

JOHNSON: Kind of laissez faire?

JUNE SCHWABE: I would say so.

JOHNSON: So he was against the New Deal?

SCHWABE: Oh, yes.

JOHNSON: Did he ever mention the Fair Deal, President Truman's Fair Deal?

JUNE SCHWABE: Well, sure.

JOHNSON: And he probably voted against many of Truman's policies.

SCHWABE: I'm sure he did.

JUNE SCHWABE: I'm sure he did.

SCHWABE: But he liked Truman personally. He liked him very much.

JOHNSON: Did he follow Robert Taft? Did he ever say that he admired and followed Robert Taft?

SCHWABE: Well, Max was on the Labor Committee. He helped write the Taft-Hartley Act.

JOHNSON: He helped write that?

[15]

SCHWABE: Yes, he was fifth on the committee, on the Republican side. Nixon sat at the very end on the Republican side of that committee, and JFK on the other end. They were freshmen.

JUNE SCHWABE: They were freshmen, and very unimportant at the time.

JOHNSON: In 1946.

JUNE SCHWABE: My dad used to laugh about that in later years, because he said, "There they were, and nobody ever paid any attention to either one of them."

SCHWABE: By the time they had a chance to ask a question, they all had been asked.

JOHNSON: There was a majority of Republicans after the election of '46.

SCHWABE: Yes.

JOHNSON: And of course, Taft-Hartley was passed in '47. Truman vetoed it, and it was passed over his veto.

SCHWABE: Yes.

JOHNSON: As far as foreign affairs are concerned, Vandenberg, who was a Republican leader...

SCHWABE: Arthur, of Michigan.

[16]

JOHNSON: Yes. He spoke up for the Truman Doctrine. How about aid to Greece and Turkey? Did your father favor that?

LUSK: You see, Vandenberg was known at that time as something of a liberal Republican. At least that's my recollection, and he would not have been particularly in my father's camp.

JOHNSON: So your father was a conservative Republican?

LUSK: I'll tell you, my father was an admirer of Nixon. I'll tell you the truth. My mother didn't care for him at all.

SCHWABE: No, I didn't care too much for Nixon.

LUSK: But my dad thought a great deal of his mental abilities, I guess you'd say. He thought he was bright.

JOHNSON: Yes.

LUSK: My father admired Reagan a lot, Ronald Reagan.

JOHNSON: Were there any encounters, or contacts, with the Trumans that kind of stand out other than these social events?

[17]

SCHWABE: Well, just places where we were. I mean, we had another dinner at the country club for the Missouri people when he was President. I know they were all so concerned because somebody left the room to go to the rest room, or something, and they had one heck of a time getting back in, because they had so much security. When they were with those groups, they were just regular.

JOHNSON: Where was this country club?

SCHWABE: It was in Maryland.

JOHNSON: Oh, it was in Maryland.

JUNE SCHWABE: There was a congressional country club at the time.

SCHWABE: I don't remember which one. I remember we went there a lot.

JUNE SCHWABE: Remember when we went to a golf tournament out there?

LUSK: Yes, but I don't remember the name of it.

JOHNSON: Another item here. In the correspondence we have in the Library's collections, we have a reply by President Truman to a letter from Mr. Schwabe. This is March 10, 1948. "Dear Congressman Schwabe: Replying to your letter of the 8th regarding a stamp for the Arrow Rock Tavern, I appreciate your interest in this project, and we will see what can be done about it." Do you recall if they got a stamp or anything about it?

[18]

SCHWABE: No I don't.

JUNE SCHWABE: That was within daddy's district.

SCHWABE: Yes, Arrow Rock.

JOHNSON: I notice also in July of '48 that Mr. Schwabe, Congressman Schwabe...

SCHWABE: That's his last term.

JOHNSON: Yes, that was his last year as a Congressman. He forwarded to the White House some reports, the Fair Employment Practices Committee Report, and the report, To Secure These Rights prepared by the President's Committee on Civil Rights. He also sent along some science research reports. Do you remember what he had to say about Truman's civil rights policies?

SCHWABE: No I don't. You see, I wasn't into their correspondence there. I didn't work in the office. I was not one of those.

JOHNSON: Well, of course, Harry Truman had to explain that his wife was on the payroll for a while.

LUSK: It was a common practice at that time.

JUNE SCHWABE: I do remember that.

LUSK: In fact, daddy was approached to put mother on somebody else's payroll.

[19]

SCHWABE: Yes, they did that so much...

JOHNSON: Trade favors, sort of?

SCHWABE: But it was done. It was done all the time.

LUSK: We were not very old, but nevertheless, we have very vivid memory of that, so it must have been common.

SCHWABE: The reason June and Maxine remember so much about it, we lived out southeast of the Capitol, just over into Maryland, which is on the wrong side of the tracks, in Fairfax Village. There were about 33 members of Congress that lived out there. It was just a little old congregation of them. I took my children to school out in northwest every day. They went out to Alice Deal and Woodrow Wilson [schools], and so I had to pass the Capitol each day. Every morning I'd have someone riding with me. It was so fascinating. You ought to get three or four Congressmen; you have never see such a bunch of egotists.

JOHNSON: Your husband being an exception?

SCHWABE: No. And his brother lived out there too, and he was the biggest.

JOHNSON: He had a brother, you say, who was a Congressman from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

SCHWABE: Yes.

[20]

JOHNSON: In those same years.

SCHWABE: Yes.

JOHNSON: What was his name?

SCHWABE: George B.

LUSK: He died in office. He was there a term or two longer than daddy.

SCHWABE: Yes.

LUSK: But daddy was in before him.

SCHWABE: We have an article at home about Max and his brother being the first two members, brothers, to sit together in Congress for the last hundred years. The only other two were the Lodge brothers, but one was in the House and one was in the Senate.

JOHNSON: That is something.

LUSK: In the same House.

SCHWABE: Yes. That was for the last hundred years.

JOHNSON: In 1948, what happened, in your opinion, that caused your husband to be defeated in that election?

[21]

SCHWABE: It was the union votes in Moberly, Missouri, where they had a whole congregation of railroad people, you know, and they were...

JOHNSON: Railroad unions?

SCHWABE: Yes, such as that. I think that's what really came in and defeated him. Max had gotten a lot of letters congratulating him on being elected, and then he got this letter from Clarence Cannon -- they were really lovely people -- saying that he was so sorry that if he had to have a Republican, he'd like for it to be Max.

JOHNSON: This was in the '48 election, after he was defeated?

SCHWABE: Yes.

LUSK: Of course, that was the election that shocked everyone, that Dewey was supposed to win. My memory was that Dewey just really didn't photograph all that well either, you know, and he just kind of looked like a suspect person with a little mustache and beady eyes and everything.

JUNE SCHWABE: And that was the time when it [image] was coming to be important in my opinion.

LUSK: I think that went against him among other things, but obviously Truman fooled everyone, and obviously carried some with him.

SCHWABE: And himself, I think.

[22]

JOHNSON: Well, he was very specific, whereas Dewey was very general.

LUSK: They were coattails, is what I'm saying. In the general election there were always coattails.

JOHNSON: How about the whistlestop campaign? There was a whistlestop speech I suppose in Columbia.

SCHWABE: Well, no, they usually stopped in Jefferson City.

JOHNSON: Did you get in on a whistlestop speech?

JUNE SCHWABE: Yes.

SCHWABE: No. I never heard one of Truman's speeches.

LUSK: I don't know that we did hear one of his. We certainly heard Eisenhower's, who came to Jefferson City.

JOHNSON: But now, if your husband was against the Marshall plan...

LUSK: Yes he was.

SCHWABE: He was hung in effigy on our street in Columbia.

LUSK: And on the courthouse lawn.

[23]

JOHNSON: Do you know if he was against the Truman Doctrine -- the so-called Truman Doctrine, aid to Greece and Turkey? I suppose that he would have been, if he was against foreign aid.

JUNE SCHWABE: He was quite against foreign aid, and I'm quite certain the Marshall plan.

JOHNSON: Did he ever change his mind about the Marshall plan?

SCHWABE: No.

LUSK: No.

JOHNSON: He never did? He didn't see that in reconstructing western Europe, we made it strong to resist Communism?

LUSK: No, he didn't.

JUNE SCHWABE: He didn't admire McCarthy either.

JOHNSON: Joe McCarthy?

JUNE SCHWABE: No, he didn't admire him either.

JOHNSON: In other words, he was anti-Communist, but "witch-hunting" as Truman called it, he was against this witch hunting? Smearing people.

[24]

LUSK: Yes, he was, because that would have gone against my dad's Christian attitude, I think. When mom mentioned awhile ago that he was truly a good person, he truly was.

JOHNSON: He had a sense of Christian charity, you say?

SCHWABE: Oh, yes.

JOHNSON: But it was charity more toward Americans not...

LUSK: No, it would be charity towards everyone but, see, my dad being more interested than anything in economics, he was very concerned about inflation and things of this nature.

JOHNSON: I suppose he voted for reducing taxes.

LUSK: Oh, yes.

JOHNSON: Under Truman.

LUSK: Oh, yes, I'm sure.

JOHNSON: So he followed the pretty standard Republican line, then?

[25]

LUSK: He was always convinced that the nation was going to be in difficulty because of their overriding, spending beyond their means. As a matter of fact, the things that he said to us then would sound very much like somebody talking today, like [H. Ross] Perot perhaps. It's the way my dad talked then, but he was just too soon for his time, I'd say. He was not in favor of those things. I'm sure he was in favor of Truman's ending the war.

JOHNSON: The way he did.

LUSK: Yes.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

Bradshaw, Dean William, 4

Eisenhower, Dwight, 22

Fairfax Village, 19

Kennedy, John F., 15

Marshall Plan, 13
Martin, Joe, 6
McCarthy, Joe, 23
Moulder, Morgan, 6

Nelson, Will, O., 4, 5
Nixon, Richard, 15, 16

Party affiliation, attitude toward, 11

Reagan, Ronald, 16

Taft-Hartley Act, 15
Taft, Robert, 14
To Secure These Rights, 18
Truman, Bess, 7, 8, 18
Truman Doctrine, 16
Truman, Harry S., 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22
Truman, Martha Ellen, 7

Vandenberg, Arthur, 15, 16

Whistlestop Campaign, 22