World Focus: He played poker with Truman – Daily Press

In the wake of my recent column about historian David McCullough and Roger Tubby, President Harry S. Trumans former press secretary, there was public demand to shed light on how I, a refugee from Communist Czechoslovakia, became a friend and confidante of Tubby.

Tubby served as press secretary to the President Truman during the Korean War years. After retirement from government service, he became the co-owner and co-publisher with Jim Loeb another retired, high-ranking government official of the Adirondack Daily Enterprise and the Lake Placid News.

I served as a columnist for both papers.

Prior to the 1980 Winter Olympics, held in Lake Placid, Tubby and I teamed up to establish the Lake Placid Council on Foreign Policy. We organized monthly open forums in the Lake Placid Olympic Arena and through Tubbys connections, managed to have top speakers.

Once, during a winter-snow storm, people arrived on snowmobiles and in four-wheel trucks.

Tubby was a great storyteller, with a prodigious memory for details. But to make sure everything he said was accurate, he kept diaries over four decades. These were deposited at Yale University, his alma mater, with the stipulation that they not be available for research until the year 2000.

Obviously, they contained details about people in government that he wanted to remain sealed during his lifetime.

However, during our long conversations and interviews, Tubby was ready to tell stories about his White House years.

He recalled how once, President Truman saved him from being a big loser at a Friday night poker game at the White House. He knew I had four kids, and I couldnt afford the loss, Tubby said. The president came to my rescue.

But there were more substantial memories that Tubby shared with me. He recalled how when he was recommended to President Truman to be chosen as press secretary, he reminded the president that he used to be press secretary to Republican Senator George Aiken of Vermont. The president replied, If you were good for Senator Aiken, you are good for me.

According to Tubby, during informal meetings between the president, cabinet officers and friends, Truman was often asked what the hardest decision was that he had to make during his presidency. Truman, without hesitation, always said it was the decision to order the use of the atomic bomb.

The president, however, never regretted the decision, Tubby said, because he weighted it, first against the danger of enormous casualties among young Americans, which had been predicted by military planners in an assault on Japanese home islands. Second, the prospect of Soviet intervention and eventual occupation of Japan loomed heavily.

Tubby recalled that President Truman, like his predecessor in the White House, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, hoped for a peaceful post-war cooperation with the Soviet Union. But he soon realized Stalin had other plans.

When the Soviet Union reneged on the agreement to hold free elections in Poland, it became obvious that the U.S. would have to stand up to Moscow expansionist policies, Tubby said.

According to Tubby, Truman never lacked decisiveness. This was acknowledged by no lesser personality than Winston Churchill.

Tubby recalled a dinner party at the White House at which he was present: We were sipping brandy after dinner when Churchill suddenly said, You know, Mr. President, at the time of the Potsdam conference I held you in very low regard. Since that time sir, you, more than any other single man, have saved Western civilization. At the time when Britain could no longer hold out in Greece, and the Communists were at the gates of Athens, you and you alone made the decision to help the Greeks and drive the Communists out.

Churchill, Tubby said, went on to describe and acknowledge the many statesmanlike decisions Truman had made during his tenure in office.

There may have been less flattering episodes that took place in the White House during Roger Tubbys service there, and those are surely recorded in Tubbys diaries deposited at Yale University.

Shatz is a Williamsburg resident. He is the author of Reports from a Distant Place, a compilation of his selected columns. The book is available at the Bruton Parish Shop and Amazon.com

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World Focus: He played poker with Truman - Daily Press