Ike And Kay

The co-authors of “Plain Faking?” (May/June) are skeptical that Truman ever knew of any correspondence between Marshall and Elsenhower regarding the latter’s desire to divorce Mamie and marry Kay Summersby because they seem to doubt that such correspondence ever existed.

In fact, Truman alluded to it in writing, and his daughter and biographer described it in some detail. He wrote, “There’s been some speculation since then that Eisenhower dropped those lines about George Marshall because he was paying Marshall back for a big fight that the two men had had at the end of the Second World War.” Margaret Truman wrote in a footnote, “My father gives no details and mentions no names here, and even threw out the correspondence … as a courtesy to Eisenhower, when Dad left the Oval Office. … Eisenhower wrote Marshall at the end of the war, asking to be returned to the United States so that he could divorce Mamie Eisenhower and marry Kay Summersby. Marshall responded with fury, telling Eisenhower that his conduct was disgraceful and that if he went through with his plans, Marshall would kick him out of the Army and harass him in other ways for the rest of his life.”

These two quotations appear on pages 71–72 of Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman , edited by Margaret Truman and published by Warner Books in 1989.