Truman and Eisenhower’s grandchildren take the stage at Avila

By Don Bradley

Clifton Daniel, grandson of Harry Truman, tells a story about riding in a car.

He and Lynda Bird Johnson Robb and Grover Cleveland’s great-great grandson climbed in the back.

Tweed Roosevelt took shotgun.

“And Ulysses Grant Dietz was driving,” Daniel said.

Sounds like the start of a joke.

But no, this bunch of U.S. Presidential descendants and a whole lot more get together regularly and on Jan. 29, three will be on stage at Avila University for “Dialogue with Descendants.”

The Avila event, the 2026 Harry S. Truman Lecture Series, will feature speakers Clifton Daniel and Mary Jean Eisenhower, granddaughter of Dwight Eisenhower.

Moderating the Truman-Eisenhower Legacy Conversation at Avila’s Goppert Theatre will be Merrill Eisenhower, Mary’s son and Ike’s great-grandson.

They are part of the Society of U.S. Presidential Descendants along with 160 or so others with names like Hayes, Garfield, Bush, Carter, Taft, Reagan and so on.

For the record, the earlier mentioned great-great-grandson of Grover Cleveland — his name is Massee McKinley. He is also a descendant of President William McKinley.

“We call him Double Whammy,” Clifton Daniel said.

They all get together regularly for events. They find a kinship in each other. It’s like their bloodlines to the White House somehow circumnavigate the toxic minefield of today’s politics.

Look at the Truman and Eisenhower families. Those two presidents famously mixed it up. They argued, probably called each other stubborn SOBs and now their descendants get together and socialize.

It also might show the contrast of political eras.

“Harry Truman and my great grandfather had the ability to listen,” Merrill Eisenhower, who lives in Overland Park, said last week. “They didn’t draw conclusions immediately.

They listened and they discussed.”

In 1952, President Truman looked out at the political landscape and suspected the country wanted to replace him with Eisenhower, the hero of World War II.

So, Truman told Eisenhower, who had never declared a political party, that if he ran as a Democrat, Truman would defer and join the ticket as his vice president.

That would have Truman, who got the top job when Franklin Roosevelt died, going vice-president, president and back to vice-president.

Eisenhower answered by choosing to run as a Republican, angering Truman, who then decided to leave politics.

Eisenhower would go on to beat Adlai Stevenson in November. Truman went home to Independence and for the next few years complained that Eisenhower never invited him to the White House.

After years of snipping, the healing for the two started when they got together at the funeral for John F. Kennedy in 1963. They met several times after that.

Today, more than a half-century after the two died, their families are close. They visit, they know each other’s kids, they’ve been to reunions.

“Mary and I go way back,” Clifton Daniel said recently from his home in Chicago. “We know her son, Merrill, well and we all stay in touch.”

Daniel, who has played the role of his grandfather in the play “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!”, thinks any political differences between Harry and Ike were mitigated somewhat by shared midwestern values of “work hard, be honest and do your best.”

Merrill Eisenhower agreed and added a shared chronology.

“When these two gentlemen were born, we were in the horse and buggy era,” he said. “When my great-grandfather died, we were on the moon and when Truman died the internet was coming.

“These two men are shining examples of raising yourself up by your bootstraps. Truman didn’t have a college degree; Ike used to wear his mother’s old shoes to school.

“Truman integrated the military and Eisenhower integrated the schools. I think the world today could use more Truman and Eisenhower foreign and domestic policy.”

Today, Mary Eisenhower, formerly the president and CEO of People to People International, lives in Abilene not far from the presidential library that honors her grandfather.

She knows the history well, but says Ike and Harry were born of the same cloth and their spats seem rather tame compared to today’s political environment.

Clifton Daniel agreed. “I don’t think my grandfather would be surprised at where we are now. But I think he would be disheartened.”

For ticket and other information about the Jan. 29 event, go to www.avila.edu/truman.