Othman: Ol’ Tanglefoot
By Fred Othman
WASHINGTON – V-E Day was a surprise to me. I was looking for dancing in the streets.
President Truman made the announcement. There was a whoop and a crash in the White House.
Then throughout the capital the biggest news of the generation had no more outward, superficial effect on the population than the rain that slithered down outside. Thankfulness, yes – and on with the job.
So it was at the Senate too.
For a solid hour I listened to the Senate War Investigating Committee investigate the carbon black situation. Carbon black is a kind of soot. Our current capacity is 1,104,000 tons of the stuff per year, or enough to make about all the auto tires we’ll need, the War Production Board hopes. The experts talked about carbon black and nobody jumped up or down or even mentioned the fact that there was no war in Europe.
I went over to the House (after stopping off for a porkchop lunch) and there was some oratory there under the floodlights. But it was no joyous celebration. Mostly they were talking about the hard job ahead in the Pacific. They were right, of course.
Widow Smith disappointed
Downtown the federal clerks were clerking as usual. There were a couple of streamers of sodden ticker tape hanging from a press building window. Three ladies stood in a second-floor beauty parlor around the corner and threw out torn-up bits of paper, but nobody paid them any attention.
By all outward signs it was just another May 8; a wet one at that. And it brought disappointment to the Widow Smith. Poor gal.
She’s the wife of Merriman Smith, White House correspondent of the United Press. Her husband spent so much time traveling with the late President Roosevelt that people began to call her a widow.
When President Truman went into the White House, she thought perhaps she’d get to see her husband occasionally. It was not to be. Smith soon began spending a lot of his might hours in the executive offices, waiting for peace to be announced.
The widow then began pinning her wifely hopes on V-E Day. Surely, she said, the coming of peace would let her become acquainted again with her husband. That’s what she thought.
Breaks fast at barrier
Glance back at the second paragraph of this dispatch. You’ll note a reference to a whoop and a crash. That was Smith.
His job is to get the news and deliver it in a hurry. This involves a foot race from the executive office to the White House press room when there is hot news in a presidential press conference.
Smith got away from Mr. Truman’s desk in near-record time, but at the door hit a protruding ladder left there by a photographer and tripped to the floor. Picking himself up on the bounce he kept going and threw himself into his phone booth and began dictating the story you probably read about the presidential speech on peace. It was a good story.
When he’d finished dictating, doctors took over and discovered that he’d seriously dislocated his shoulder when he hit the floor. To the hospital went Smith.
He’s resting easily at this writing. Eventually he’ll get to go home – the widow hopes.