He was an Independence teen when Truman died 50 years ago. Now he’s part of the history

It can be a cruel slog, getting older, but occasionally you crest a hill and happily discover that you have aged into something, rather than the opposite.

That happened for John Pritchard, 65, a couple of years ago, when he and his 8-year-old daughter walked past a mural on Independence Square featuring Harry S. Truman. She pointed at the former president and remarked that Pritchard looked just like him.

“I thought, ‘Really, you think so?’” Pritchard, a lifelong Independence resident, recalled. “I didn’t see it. Then a little while later, my wife was helping organize a gala luncheon event for the Bess Truman Scholarship awarded by the Junior Service League of Independence. And she asked me to come dressed as Harry. So I went and got a double-breasted suit and a fedora hat, a bow tie and a cane — that look from later in his life, when he was back in Independence.”

Pritchard now regularly appears around town as a Truman re-enactor: at Halloween parades, Independence Square Association events, SantaCaliGon Days. And his vicarious immersion into the headspace of the 33rd president of the United States recently got him thinking about other connections he had to the man.

Truman died on Dec. 26, 1972 — exactly 50 years ago. The following morning, as Independence prepared for a presidential funeral, Pritchard, then 15, grabbed the family’s Super 8 video camera and walked around town, filming the day’s events. He recently fished the original reels out of a metal can in his attic and donated them to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. His grainy footage of the day is now part of the National Archives.

“It was quite a bold and forward-looking act for a boy to go out and capture history in his hometown, and we’re very grateful for it,” said Kurt Graham, director of the Truman Library. “Certainly, there was media here covering it, but this kid was able to get things nobody else got.”

Pritchard’s footage, which Graham said the library will soon post to its YouTube channel, amounts to about six minutes of material. He visited the George C. Carson Funeral Home, where Truman’s body was being held and where Army, Navy and other military police were rehearsing for the funeral the following day. He caught a 21-gun salute at the Truman Library. And he caught then-President Richard Nixon and first lady Pat Nixon departing on the Marine One helicopter.

“I overheard from somebody that Nixon’s helicopter was at Mill Creek Park, so I walked up there and shortly after I arrived, the motorcade pulled up and I was one of maybe 10 people there,” Pritchard recalled. “There was no media or photographers or press. So I got some film of the Nixons getting out of the limousine, Pat Nixon walking in the wrong direction toward the tennis courts, then turning around and getting on the helicopter and taking off.”

Truman’s death on Dec. 26 was not a surprise. He was 88 years old, and his health had been steadily deteriorating for several weeks at Research Hospital, where he was suffering from kidney blockages, heart irregularities and lung congestion. He had signed off on his own funeral arrangements long in advance, but it didn’t go off exactly as planned.

“The plan was that he would be flown to Washington, lie in state at the Capitol, have a full state funeral, then be flown back to Independence for the funeral,” Graham said. “He was adamant about being buried at the (Truman) library.”

But in the hours after Truman’s death, it was decided that a trip to Washington would be too hard on the family — particularly Bess, who was frail and exhausted from having kept vigil by her husband’s bedside for three weeks. “Bess said, ‘Keep it simple,’” Graham said.

So all the services were held in Independence instead. A private family service was held Dec. 27 at the Carson Funeral Home, then Truman’s body was taken to the Truman Library, where he lay in state in front of the library’s Thomas Hart Benton mural. Nixon and former president Lyndon Johnson flew in to pay respects to Bess and the family on the 27th as well.

(Bess also received a telegram from U.S. Sen.-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who’d won his race in Delaware the previous month. “President Truman’s political career made me realize that it was possible to be a candid politician and get elected,” Biden wrote her.)

The funeral and burial were held Dec. 28 at the Truman Library, which hosted approximately 75,000 people over the course of those two days. Buses shuttled the masses of mourners from the Truman Sports Complex and Independence Square to the library.

Bess, who died in 1982, is buried next to him in the Truman Library’s courtyard.

“I think we can learn a lot about Truman and this community by looking at what happened in those days in late December 1972,” Graham said. “He cared deeply about Independence, so I think it says a lot about him and the family that the services were held exclusively here.”

Pritchard, whose policeman grandfather, Max Gould, served as one of Truman’s bodyguards shortly after he moved from Washington, D.C., to Independence after his presidency, estimated that he hoofed it “10 or 12 miles” around Independence that day, camera in hand.

“It was that sense of participating in history, I think,” he said. “Independence has a lot of opportunities to enjoy history, and this was a big one. It seemed like a once in a lifetime event.”

A certified public accountant, Pritchard said he’s always thought it would be nice to work at the Truman Library after he retires. Between donating his 1972 footage to the library and his new calling as a Truman impersonator, he’s just about there.

“To be honest, without the hat, I don’t look all that much like Truman,” Pritchard admitted. “But you put on a hat and those little round glasses, and talk in his accent, and it’s close enough. The accent especially is easy for me. I’m from Missouri too.”