CTL, talking about middle names… I always believed President Truman’s middle name was just the letter S. I once wrote to the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. The correspondence, which you will find fascinating, follows:
Dear Sirs,
I have just visited your website for the 1st time and I noticed you have the name of President Truman as Harry S. Truman. Surely it is more correctly spelled Harry S Truman without the period, because S is a name and not an abbreviation.
Kind regards,
…
Their reply:
Dear (my name…),
Thank you for your e-mail message of November 4th.
Harry S. Truman’s middle initial did not stand for any specific name, but was a compromise between the names of his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. It was Mr. Truman’s practice to include the period after the “S” in his correspondence. It may interest you to know that Mr. Truman’s memoirs include the period after the “S”; Margaret Truman Daniel’s biography of her father is entitled “Harry S. Truman”; and in “Mr. Citizen,” Mr. Truman, the author of the book, uses the period after the “S”.
I am not aware of any public statement that Mr. Truman ever made on the subject of his middle initial. Nor am I aware of him having mentioned the subject in his diary or in private correspondence.
Thank you for your interest in the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.
Sharie