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Her full name was Elizabeth Virginia Wallace when she was born on February 13, 1885 in the place she now rests, Independence, Missouri. Her father was David Willock Wallace, a County Treasurer and Deputy Surveyor in the U.S. Customs Bureau. Her mother was Margaret (Madge) Gates Wallace, the daughter of George Porterfield Gates, co-founder of the local Waggoner-Gates Milling Company. Bess's father committed suicide in 1903 and Bess, her mother and brother lived for a year in Colorado Springs, Colorado. When they returned to Independence, they moved in with her maternal grandparents. It would be the home of Bess Truman for the rest of her life. Bess was the eldest of four siblings. She had three younger brothers: Frank, George and David.
Bess Wallace was a classmate of her future husband starting in the fifth grade. She was a noted athlete in high school, winning many tennis tournaments and also throwing the shot-put. She graduated in the same class as Harry Truman and attended Miss Barstow's Finishing School. After her father's suicide, Bess helped her mother run the household. She maintained an acquaintance with Harry Truman, whom her mother did not approve of because of his more humble origins. This blossomed into a romance and they were engaged in 1917, but waited to marry until he had finished his service in World War I. They were married on June 28, 1919, in Independence. The couple had one child, a daughter Mary Margaret Truman who was born February 17, 1924, in Independence, Missouri.
Following their marriage, Bess worked in the Truman-Jacobsen Haberdashery, in Kansas City, Missouri, in a variety of unsalaried positions. As Harry Truman rose in local politics as a district county judge, Bess Truman remained at home in the traditional role of homemaker and caretaker of her mother.
When Harry Truman was elected to the US Senate, the family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1934. Bess Truman preferred her life back home in Missouri and when Congressional sessions were over, she and Margaret returned to Independence. During World War II, she remained in Washington, D.C., joining the Senate Wives Club's efforts to aid the Red Cross, and volunteering at the H Street USO.
When Senator Truman became the chairman of the Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, he hired Bess Truman to work as an office clerk, and she answered constituent mail and helped to edit his committee reports. She was federally salaried at $4,500 a year. After Truman's 1944 nomination as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, she was dubbed "Payroll Bess" by Republican Clare Booth Luce, but Truman kept his wife on the payroll, defending her genuine ability and work. At the 1944 Democratic National Convention, Bess was angry when she learned that her husband had accepted the offer of President Franklin Roosevelt to run as his vice-presidential running mate. "What if he should die?" she asked him. "Then you would be President." When Roosevelt died less than three months after the January 1945 Inauguration, she was overcome with grief and with fear. She and her daughter rushed down to the White House on 12 April, several hours after FDR's death to witness Truman's swearing-in as president, in the Cabinet Room.
When Bess Truman returned from the funeral of President Roosevelt, she asked Labor Secretary Frances Perkins if it was necessary for her to conduct press conferences as Eleanor Roosevelt had. In fact, her predecessor had already scheduled one for them both to appear, as a way of introducing Bess Truman to the reporters. Assured that she could do as she wished, Bess Truman cancelled the press conference and never held one. Bess Truman also differed from Eleanor Roosevelt in deciding not to address social issues of her era. When she accepted an invitation to an autumn 1945 Daughters of the American Revolution tea, African-American Congressman Adam Clayton Powell called her the "last lady of the land" in protest, and said that her attendance at the event amounted to her tacit approval of their upholding the city's segregation rules which forbid non-white performers from taking the stage at their Constitution Hall. Bess Truman released a strong statement to the press that, "I deplore any action which denied artistic talent an opportunity to express itself because of prejudice against race or origin."
Following the end of World War II in August of 1945, Bess Truman signed a "housewife's pledge" of voluntary food rationing in the White House, setting an example for other Americans to limit their consumption so as to permit food donations to be sent to the many devastated populations of postwar Europe, in short supply of basic food staples.
In 1948, when it was learned that the old mansion was in danger of collapsing, the Trumans had to immediately vacate the premises. A debate ensued as to how best address the problem. There were some who suggested the house be torn down and a new replica built in its stead. Bess Truman believed strongly that although it might be more expensive, it was important to preserve at least the four walls of the original house and have it serve as the shell for a modern, structurally sound presidential mansion. This was the solution chosen. The Trumans relocated to the double-house complex across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Lee-Blair House, and lived there from 1948 to 1952.
Bess Truman was not in harm's way when two Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire at the entrance to the Blair-Lee House, in an attempt to assassinate President Truman in November 1950. But following the incident, her movements became even more limited due to security concerns.
Bess Truman was implicated in a political scandal during her husband's Administration. In 1949, it was learned that the President's military aide Harry Vaughan had accepted a $375 deep freezer for the First Lady from a Chicago firm seeking federal contracts. Senator Clyde Hoey opened congressional hearings on the contractor, but as the role of Bess Truman was investigated, it was found she had simply accepted it as a routine gift and was cleared of wrongdoing. Ironically Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, then leading a rabid anti-Communist campaign, praised Bess Truman, declaring she was "the only good thing about the White House."
Harry Truman declared to reporter Marianne Means in 1962, that he never made an important decision without first seeking the advice and reaction of his wife. Although their daughter Margaret would later claim otherwise, Truman told Means that he had consulted Margaret on the dropping of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Bess Truman later defended his decisions, affirming that it ultimately saved the lives of countless Americans. She also vigorously defended Truman's controversial decision to fire General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 for insubordination.
When the Trumans moved back into the newly completed White House, now with air-conditioning throughout the rooms, Bess Truman was said to have expressed some disappointment in the loss of the feel of the old house. She was visibly thrilled when he publicly announced that he was retiring from politics. Bess Truman's last month in the White House was overshadowed by the death of her aged and ill mother, who had lived with her throughout the Truman presidency.
Bess Truman was eager to retire with her husband from the life of politics in Washington, D.C. and to return to the home she had known all her life in Independence. She returned to her weekly bridge club, and served as the editor of her husband's memoirs. She traveled to Hawaii in 1953, and then Europe for six weeks with her husband in 1956, and made a second trip two years later. She also made a rare television appearance ion 27 May 1955, on the CBS television show, "Person to Person." Both Trumans were interviewed by their daughter Margaret, who was substituting for the regular host, Edward R. Murrow.
Bess Truman was also a breast cancer survivor, having undergone a mastectomy in 1959.
While she remained on good terms with her successor Mamie Eisenhower, Bess Truman was excited with the return of the Democrats to the White House in 1960. She joined her husband in a July 30, 1965 ceremony with President Lyndon Johnson, when the President came to present the Trumans with the first two membership cards entitling them to Medicare coverage. Like her husband, she remained supportive of the LBJ Vietnam War policy. She was also present to greet Richard and Pat Nixon, when that presidential couple came to see the Trumans in 1969. Bess Truman strongly supported the Nixon Administration's mining of Haiphong Harbor.
Bess Truman's last appearance at a public event was the funeral of her husband in December of 1972. She lent her name in support of Thomas Eagleton's campaign for the U.S. Senate from Missouri. She remained an avid baseball fan and rooted for her home-team, the Kansas City Royals. In her last years, she enjoyed reading murder mysteries, and her daughter eventually became known for a murder mystery book series under her name. Although she remained loyal to the Democratic Party, she welcomed President Gerald Ford and his wife Betty, and it was later suggested that she privately supported his candidacy in 1976. But she welcomed President Jimmy Carter in her home when he campaigned for re-election in Independence, Missouri.
Bess Truman died at the age of 97 on October 18, 1982. Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter and then-incumbent First Lady Nancy Reagan all attended Bess Truman's funeral.