Truman's Friends: The Love Story of Mary Paxton and Charlie Ross

Truman's Friends is the enduring saga about what could be termed the "eternal" love between Mary Paxton an Independence socialite, journalist, and Charlie Ross, a professor, journalist, and eventually Press Secretary to Harry S Truman.

While Mary and Charlie did not have a close relationship during High School, love blossomed at the University of Missouri in Columbia. They may have been dating before Mary became a journalism student. Charlie, at 23, was one of the first professors of Journalism in the United States and Mary's mentor. Secretly engaged, they hoped to protect Charlie.

When Mary graduated in 1910, as the first female journalism student, she was offered a job as a reporter at the Kansas City Post. It was an exciting time for her. Meanwhile back at MU, Charlie missed Mary and asked her to leave her job. They planned to be married in 1911. Marriage plans failed because of Charlie's family who demanded him to support six sisters and a mother. He could not also support a spouse. This sent Mary into a terrible dungeon.

While Mary was experiencing a mental and physical breakdown, Charlie quickly married Florence in 1913, a young coed at MU and became the father of two children. Charlie was on his way to wealth and notoriety. Mary's breakdown lasted for at least two years. Rambling from job to job until 1918, she finally volunteered to become a Canteen girl in France during WWI. While in France, she kept a fascinating diary. Upon the return to the United States in 1919, a war-torn Mary, unexpectedly married Mike, a farmer and they soon had one child.

Very early in their marriage, Mike became mentally ill, violent, and unable to cope with life because of an inherited kidney disease. This sent Mary into another black hole where she became very sick. Her father urged her to return to college and obtain a master's degree. In the same year that her father died, she graduated from MU, and Mike passed away.

During her years as professor of journalism at Christian College, now Columbia College, she wrote to Charlie and they met occasionally. They expressed their love for each other, but Charlie could not divorce Florence probably because she was Roman Catholic. The divorce would have harmed both of Mary's and Charlie's careers. Mary continued writing and created love sonnets to be given to Charlie at her death. Ironically, Charlie passed away 36 years before Mary, who eventually lived to be 100 years old.

During their lives Mary wrote several books, plays, magazine articles and more. Charlie advanced his career with the Saint Louis Post Dispatch and became a national influencer. He had his own syndicated byline, "The Washington Letter." When Harry S Truman took over the White House in 1945, he named Charlie as his first Press Secretary.

Mary knew her students well. Later in life she wrote, "I see so many college graduates, who never read a book after they take off their cap and gown. In fact, of all the women I know, and they are people I like and even love, have no intellectual curiosity. Something a college teacher only encounters once every few years."

Learning was also one of the things that kept Mary alive so long. "When you quit wanting to learn things, you are dead, and might as well be buried, except there is a law against burying people who are physically alive, but dead mentally. Intellectual curiosity is something rare, and when a teacher finds a student who possesses it, that is a great day."

Truman's Friends tells their love story and remembers their famous writings and influence on the United States, the world, and particularly Columbia, Missouri.