Margaret Truman, American singer, Died at 83

  Music

Dead, Mary Margaret Truman Daniel on January 29, 2008 at the age of 83, also known as Margaret Truman or Margaret Daniel, she was an American singer who later became the successful author of a series of murder mysteries and a number of works on U.S.

First Ladies and First Families, including a biography of her father, President Harry S. Truman, born in Independence, Missouri on February 17, 1924, she was christened Mary Margaret Truman (for her Aunt Mary Jane Truman and maternal grandmother Margaret Gates Wallace) but was called Margaret from early childhood.

She attended school in Independence until her father’s 1934 election to the U.S. Senate, after which her education was split between schools in Washington, D.C. and Independence.

In 1942, she matriculated at George Washington University, where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi and earned a B.A. in History in 1946.

In June 1944, she christened the battleship USS Missouri at Brooklyn Navy Yard (and spoke again in 1986 at the ship’s recommissioning).

After operatic vocal training, Truman’s singing career began with a debut radio recital in March 1947.

Reviewers were not always kind, but her father was fiercely protective: when in 1950 Washington Post music critic Paul Hume wrote that Truman was “extremely attractive on the stage, but could not sing very well.

She was flat a good deal of the time.

And still cannot sing with anything approaching a professional level,” President Truman wrote to Hume, “Some day I hope to meet you.

When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!” A 1951 Time Magazine cover featured Truman with a single musical note floating by her head.

Margaret met Clifton Daniel, who was then assistant to the foreign news editor of The New York Times, at the home of friends in the fall of 1955.

On April 21, 1956, they were married in Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church in Independence, the same church where her parents were married in 1919.

The Daniels had four sons from 1957 to 1966.

The family lived for years on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Clifton Daniel died in February 2000 at age 87.

Seven months later, their son William, 41, died in a taxi cab collision near his mother’s home.

Margaret Truman Daniel, died on January 29, 2008, in Chicago following a brief illness.

Daniel was in the process of moving to be near her eldest son, Clifton Truman Daniel, when she fell ill with a “simple infection.”

She had been transferred to an assisted living facility and was on a respirator.

She was survived by her three other sons, Clifton Truman Daniel, Harrison Gates Daniel and Thomas Gates Daniel, and five grandchildren.

In 1983 and 1984 she was a member of the Executive Committee of the Truman Centennial Committee which made plans for the observance of the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of her father.

Mrs. Daniel was the 1984 recipient of the Harry S. Truman Public Service Award presented annually by the City of Independence to an outstanding American citizen.