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Notice Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview. RESTRICTIONS Opened February, 1985
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Oral History Interview with
April 10, 1984 by Niel M. Johnson JOHNSON: I want to begin by asking Mr. Swyden when and where you were born. SWYDEN: I was born here in Kansas City, at 701 Indiana, in 1916 . JOHNSON: So this is your hometown, Kansas City? SWYDEN: Yes. JOHNSON: What is your present address? SWYDEN: Three East Bridlespur Drive; that's out about 108th and Wornall, Kansas City, Missouri; the zip code is 64114. JOHNSON: And where were you educated? SWYDEN: I was educated in Kansas City at the Henry C. Kumpf School at 44th and Wabash; Paseo High School on 47th and Paseo; and the University of Missouri in Columbia. JOHNSON: You got a bachelor's at Missouri? SWYDEN: I have a bachelor of arts degree and a bachelor of science in public administration degree. JOHNSON: Are you married? SWYDEN: Yes, I am married. to Vivian Swyden and I have one son, Victor, and daughters Patty and Janice. JOHNSON: Your main vocation over the years has been what? SWYDEN: A merchant here in Kansas City, and our family business is one of the oldest tenants on the Plaza. JOHNSON: What kind of a business? SWYDEN: Home furnishings. JOHNSON: This gets us rather quickly up to your political career. What is your background in politics in Kansas City? SWYDEN: I started in politics by accident. A group of the Citizen's Association called on my father to recruit me and he volunteered my services. That was in 1963, and I represented the 6th District at the time. At that time they had just annexed the area to the city, and I was their first Councilman. I stayed on the Council for twenty years, until April 1983. JOHNSON: Do you want to mention any high points, or highlights, of those twenty years? SWYDEN: They were all highlights. I saw a changed town. I recall right before the '63 Council there was a mild change in the ordinances. A lot of emotions ran loose. There was Mayor [H. Roe] Bartle; then came Ike [Ilus] Davis as Mayor, and a new Council. A renaissance took place. JOHNSON: Who was City Manager? SWYDEN: When I first started, Milton Morales was, from Independence. Then Carleton Sharp, and after him, John Taylor. Taylor was followed by Robert Kipp. JOHNSON: Mr. Owen, I guess I should ask you a similar question. Where and when were you born? OWEN: I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, at 610 E. 5th Street. That's in the north end of the city. I was born April 10, 1914. Today is my birthday. JOHNSON: Happy birthday. OWEN: I attended St. John's Elementary School and Rockhurst High School; then I went to Rockhurst College one year and to UMKC [University of Missouri-Kansas City] and then to Central Missouri State University. I have a bachelor's degree in police science, and a master's degree in police administration. JOHNSON: So your main vocation is OWEN: I've been a police officer practically all of my adult life. I served thirty years here in Kansas City, Missouri and when I retired I was assistant to Chief [Clarence] Kelley. Then I left retirement and took the job out there in Independence as Chief of Police. JOHNSON: What year was that? OWEN: 1967. JOHNSON: Are you now retired? OWEN: Yes. I retired in 1972. JOHNSON: Mr. Swyden, when did you first meet Mr. Truman? SWYDEN: Well, the first time I met him was quite some time ago. I met him while he was a Senator. JOHNSON: What was the occasion? SWYDEN: It was a gathering here at the Muehlebach Hotel. It was before I was on the Council, and I was in a meeting in which he was a speaker. I shook hands with him and met him then. JOHNSON: Was this during a campaign? SWYDEN: No, it was when he was in office. JOHNSON: Do you remember anything about that first speech that he made, any impression? SWYDEN: No, I don't. But while he was a Senator and just before I went into the service, my fraternity offered him an honorary membership. It didn't materialize until after I was in the service. He became President, and then he became an honorary member of our fraternity, the Lamda Chi Alpha, in Columbia, Missouri. There are only two who have ever received that honor; they were President Truman and Senator [John] Danforth. JOHNSON: Is that a social fraternity? SWYDEN: Yes. It's on the campus of the University of Missouri. JOHNSON: So he accepted honorary membership. SWYDEN: Yes. I'll never forget. We had read in a news bulletin, that I got when I was overseas, that there was a matter of hours in which Mr. Truman disappeared; nobody knew where he was. He was up at the Power and Light Building being initiated into the fraternity. They told me -- I dont know -- they used my diamond pin so he could be initiated. JOHNSON: Your diamond pin. SWYDEN: Yes, so he wore my pin once. JOHNSON: When would that have been? SWYDEN: Id like to give you the exact date, but it would have to be 44, because I remember I was in the Pacific at that time, and I got a letter from home telling me about it. JOHNSON: What outfit were you in? SWYDEN: I was in the 7th Bomber Command, the 7th Air Force. I was the A-1 of the General Staff. JOHNSON: Did you have anything to do with the bombing of Japan? SWYDEN: My photo reconnaissance squad was the one who took the first picture of a B-29 raid; it was by General. LeMay. JOHNSON: You were out there when the atomic bomb was dropped? SWYDEN: Oh yes, I was out there, on Okinawa. JOHNSON: What were the reactions, do you recall? SWYDEN: When we first saw the pictures we couldn't believe what we saw. We knew of the news before it was published, our photo recon planes came back and developed the pictures. We saw the photos, we couldn't believe what we were seeing. JOHNSON: Were these pictures taken sometime after the raid? SWYDEN: Oh no, they were the pictures of the immediate results of the raid. These were brought back to general headquarters. We didn't know what we were really evaluating at the time. We knew it was a bomb, but we didn't know what kind it was. JOHNSON: You saw the results, but you just weren't sure what the cause was? SWYDEN: The city was as flat as this table top, JOHNSON: So about what year would that have been when you first met him as Senator? SWYDEN: I would say it has to be between '38 and '4l. In '41, I went into the service. JOHNSON: But you were not involved in local Democrat politics at that time? SWYDEN: Oh, no. I wasn't in politics at that time. JOHNSON: What would be the second occasion that you met Mr. Truman, or at least saw him? SWYDEN: There were a number of times that I met him here at the Muehlebach on some of these trips. We would shake hands, and say hello, and visit. But these were not what I would call formal occasions. When I was on the Council and I was involved in receptions and things like that, then I would shake hands with him again. I met him informally a number of times after he retired, but it was nothing official. JOHNSON: Okay, this then brings us to the visit by President Nixon in March of 1969. What I'll try to do is get all of the details that I can, that you can recall that might not have been published in the paper. I'll let you start by telling us what your role was and maybe some of the things that went on behind the scenes for that visit, and then what occurred during the visit. SWYDEN: Well, at the time President Nixon was coming to Kansas City to visit President Truman, and present a White House piano to him. And Chief Kelley said, "Come on and ride with me; we're going down to see the President." I said, "I would be delighted to." He and I went to the airport and I said, "I have to be careful; I don't have identification for the clearance." He said, "'That's all right; you're coming up as an official welcomer for the President." I was intercepted by the FBI. Kelley saw to it that I went up there, and we received President Nixon. We got into the motorcade and went to Truman's home. And there, again, I didn't have the identification button. Chief Kelley had gone a little ahead of me, and Chief Owen was on the porch. Again I was intercepted, and I said, "I'd just as soon step back and stay out of the picture, because I'm getting embarrassed about this." So Kelley said, "Well, why don't you and Chief Owen go up to the Library and have some coffee and we'll see you up there." So, Chief Owen escorted me to the Library. While we were having coffee, we heard President Nixon and President Truman coming into the Library. We decided to go up and visit with them. JOHNSON: As I understand it, as soon as the Nixons came into the North entrance there, they went to Truman's office for a little chit-chat. Then they came back to the north lobby where the piano was, for the formal presentation. What do you recall of that? SWYDEN: Well, President Nixon sat down and played some bars of the Missouri Waltz." JOHNSON: You know there's a kind of a myth that he liked the "Missouri Waltz," that that was one of his favorites, but apparently it wasn't. SWYDEN: I think Truman didn't want the "Missouri Waltz," but Nixon was playing it. OWEN: Mr. Truman looked at me and I looked at him, and he just stared. JOHNSON: Is that right? OWEN: I knew he didn't like it; you know that he didn't care too much for the "Missouri Waltz." JOHNSON: He didn't necessarily wink at you, but you could tell? OWEN: He just kind of gave me a funny look; he knew that I knew that. JOHNSON: You were there through the presentation of the piano. What happened after that? SWYDEN: I don't know. We left, because I had to go back to a Council meeting. JOHNSON: Mr. Owen, what was your role in protecting the Trumans? OWEN: Well, I was sort of in charge of security around the Truman home. I was working with the Secret Service agents that were assigned there. Of course, they had that house across the street from that place where they monitored the home all the time, 24 hours a day. They kept that up until Mrs. Truman passed away. I attended almost every one of the officials from Washington and different countries that came to visit and wanted to take a tour of the Library. I was always there. But my association with the president was more or less on a personal basis, on a friendly basis. I had known him for years. JOHNSON: When did you first meet him, and what was the occasion? OWEN: Well, I met him when I was riding a District car down there in Kansas City. JOHNSON: You're talking about a squad car? OWEN: Yes, a squad car. He used to park his car down there about a block and a half away from the Kansas City Club. He'd go down here on occasion to have lunch. I'd see him several times. When I did meet him, I'd stop and talk to him, you know, and ask him if he wanted us to drive him down to his car. Well, he got in once in a while. He liked to listen to the police radio, to the police calls. One time he mentioned, "How come you fellows don't get a call?" I said, ''Well, we got our share of them." He said, "Well, I've been riding with you a couple of times and you've never got any calls at all. JOHNSON: He wanted a little excitement? OWEN: Yes, he wanted a little action there, but we couldn't oblige him. Then, I became Chief of Police in Independence. I thought I had better go over and pay my respects to him, which I did, and he took me into the house JOHNSON: This would be in 19... OWEN: 1967. I made several visits there to their home. He used to stop almost every Friday. He'd take Bess to the beauty shop. We had a lieutenant there assigned to him all the time. JOHNSON: Mr. Westwood? OWEN: Mike Westwood. Then he would take them where they wanted to go, and he would drop her off at the beauty shop. Then hed come back and pick me up and then wed ride around for about an hour and a half until she was ready. They'd drop me off at the station, and hed go out and pick her up and take her home. One visit I enjoyed especially. My son is a graduate from Annapolis, and he just had come home on leave. After he had come home, he bought three copes of the two-book volumes of Mr. Truman's Memoirs. He bought three different sets; one for himself, one for us, and one for his commander in the Navy. He wanted to know if I could get the president to autograph those books, six of them. I said, "Well, I don't know, I won't make any promises, but I'll see if I can." So, when Mike [Westwood] came up to see me -- he'd report almost every day in the office to see if I needed anything or wanted him to do anything before hed go over to the president -- I told him, "Ask the President if hed autograph those books that my son bought." JOHNSON: Whats your son's name? OWEN: Mike. So he asked him, and Mr. Truman called me and told me he'd be there at 10 o'clock on Saturday morning -- I think this was on Thursday -- and to bring my son with me. So I brought my wife and my son, and we went over there Saturday morning at 10 o'clock. At that time he had just got out of the hospital and the doctors didnt want him to visit too long, twenty minutes at the most. I knew that, and when I came in Bess told me, "Chief, if you don't mind me putting a time limit on here, but he loses track of time, when he gets involved in something, you know." I said, "I'll take care of it." He wanted my son to talk to him about what the hell was going on over in Vietnam, and everything. They sat there in the library next to the dining room and they were discussing everything. He knew what the hell was going on all over the world. He was up on everything, and they had quite a conversation there, which took a little longer than expected, and he had not autographed the books yet. So, finally, I said, "Mr. President, I don't want to interrupt, but we've been here quite awhile now, and I certainly would appreciate it if you would autograph those books for us." He said, "Qh, yes, yes, we had better do that." So he sat at that dining room table there, that old Duncan Phyfe table that would seat about forty people. He sat at the end of it, and Mike Westwood had the books, and he'd hand each one to him and tell him who it was for. He autographed every one of them. I still have my copy at home, and my son still has his, and he took the other two back with him for his commander. But we got ready to leave and he said, "Where are you going?" I said, "Mr. President, we've been here quite a while. I've got to see some other people right away and I've got to take them home." He said, "Well, I guess you're going to go visit with some s.o.b. that I don't give a damn about.". He said, "The people I love, they don't want to stay around and talk to me." I said, "Mr. President, it isn't that at all." I said, "I've had these commitments to make." Then Bess jumped on him, you know. She said, "Now, that's no way to talk to the Chief; you know he's got other commitments, Harry." He said, "Yeah, I guess so." But he was all disgusted because we were leaving, and we'd been there damned near an hour already. We were supposed to visit only twenty minutes, and I told her I was going to take care of that. Hell, I couldn't do anything about it, couldn't bust in on him and break into their conversation. He was interested in what Mike had to say to him. JOHNSON: What year are we talking about? OWEN: I think that was '68 or '69. I got a big kick out of what he said when we got ready to leave. JOHNSON: Your son was a Navy officer? OWEN: He was a lieutenant commander, and he was stationed out there at Moffit Field at the time. He was teaching flying in the Navy. Later, he called me one night and said, "Dad, do you think I could come home and go to UMKC and get a law degree?" I talked to Dean Kelley, and then Mike had his transcript sent to UMKC. He was accepted, and so he came home, entered law school, and graduated with a law degree. JOHNSON: What did you feel comfortable in talking to Mr. Truman about? OWEN: Well, there were politics, and the way the President was performing his duties in Washington, in comparison to what he did, and local politics and things of that type. That's what we mostly talked about. Every once in a while he would bring up a subject. JOHNSON: He was a friend of President Johnson. OWEN: Oh yes. JOHNSON: Now how about president Nixon; did you ever talk about him? OWEN: I dont think there was any love there. Right on the spur of the moment he would just say something that quick, and you would wonder why he said that, but he must have been thinking about it. JOHNSON: But his wife Bess was kind of rationing his time and making decisions about how... OWEN: Yes, she was getting awfully fidgety, and I could see her standing in the door there into the kitchen. She was looking at me and I was looking at her, and I said, "What can I do? I can't do anything." I was sitting there, and my wife was sitting there, and they're together; theyre talking. JOHNSON: Did you visit the home, several times? OWEN: Yes. JOHNSON: Was that the last time that you visited there? OWEN: No. I went there again, not too long after that. Well, the Rockwood Country Club had been wanting him to become an honorary member of that club, and he had turned them down several, times. They had a manager there that I had known for some time, and then I used to go over there and eat lunch occasionally, with businessmen. So the manager came over and started talking to me. He asked me, Do you think the President would accept an honorary membership in this club?" I said, "It's my understanding, Vic, that he doesn't want to belong to the club." But these were new people that purchased the club. I think they were from New York. And he said, "Well, he's never turned these people down." I said, "Well, he doesn't know these people, and I don't either." So he said, "Well, they're going to be in here in about a week. Would you mind coming down and meeting them?" And I said, "No." He said, "All right I met them; they were very nice gentlemen. We had lunch together, and they asked me if I would be kind enough to go talk to the president about it. I've got a picture there. So I asked him. I said, "Would you consider becoming an honorary member of the Rockwood Country Club?" That's the only one we had there outside of Crackerneck. "Well., let me think about it," he said. He didn't say no and he didn't say yes. So the next day Mike came over, and said, "The President said he would go ahead and become an honorary member." Mike said, "I asked him, how come you will do that. You never did do that before. Mr. Truman said, 'Well, the right people didn't ask me.'" JOHNSON: So that meant they could put his name on the letterhead? OWEN: Well, they did make a brochure, you know, about the club and everything. the Examiner photographer got a picture of that. I was in uniform and we stood there by the fireplace -- the President, the manager, myself, and Mrs. Truman. They took our picture, and that was in the newspaper. They had that on their brochure, right on the front page. JOHNSON: When did this happen? OWEN: Around 1970, I guess. JOHNSON: Was that the last time you visited? OWEN: Yes. I've got a picture of that. I think Ive got it in my files somewhere at hone. JOHNSON: What was the Police Chief's job in presidential security? OWEN: We would meet with the Kansas City police and the Secret Service. We'd, usually meet up there at the Library, and discuss the security. Once we got that arranged, after a couple of times, it didn't take very much time, maybe a half an hour to plan, and that's about all, depending upon who's coming in. Most of this stuff was just sent in to the Secret Service person and they would call me and I would meet with them. A couple of times I met with them in that house across the street from the Truman home. One time [Senator Stuart] Symington came here on the 4th of July [1969]. There was a hell of a crowd out there. I mean they jammed the streets. I had the State Highway Patrol, the Sheriff's office, the Raytown Police, and Sugar Creek -- any police officers I could get my hands on -- all my reserve police, all my traffic men, and they could hardly hold the crowd back when Symington was there at that time. After we got through with all the rigamarole out there at the Library, then he wanted to go pay a visit to the President. I was driving that big Cadillac convertible that he was in. He had this white hair, and it was just flying in the wind, blowing like a yellow shirt. We pulled up there, and we went into the Truman home; they were expecting us. They sat down and talked a while. I just stood out there and talked to Bess. After he was though, he started to come back and he couldn't keep his hair down. After he left, I went to the drugstore and I got one of those cans of "Pomade," and sent it to him in Washington. I told him that the next time he came to Independence he should be sure to use this stuff. He got a kick out of that. JOHNSON: You talked about driving him around. What car were you using? OWEN: Well, I was furnished a car. The city furnished me a car. JOHNSON: They didn't use his own private car when he was taken uptown? OWEN: Oh no. I assigned a car to Mike. JOHNSON: Mike Westwood. Okay, he was chauffer and so on, so he was usually driving. OWEN: He was doing the driving, yes. I sat in. the back seat and the President sat up in the front with Mike. They would come and pick me up. JOHNSON: Did you ever have any security problems, any incidents involving security that we haven't heard about? OWEN: There were a couple of occasions where they picked up a couple of guys. The Secret Service men did that. They called me about it. These men just circled around the house you know, kind of suspicious looking. They were picked up for questioning and brought over to the station by the Secret Service. JOHNSON: But no one was ever arrested or anything like that? OWEN: No, they didn't arrest them because they found out that they were just there looking, gazing around. It was getting dark around that time and they looked suspicious to them, and so they picked them up. See, they had several, of those closed-circuit TV's there, and each one of those TVs was connected to the one part of the house -- all around that house. They had a couple of men sitting there all the time watching. JOHNSON: But as far as you know, there was never any danger there? OWEN: Not to my knowledge, not in all the time that I was there. JOHNSON: Anything else that you recall? OWEN: Mrs. Truman and I used to exchange poems every once in a while. In fact, I kept a lot of letters from her and some from him too. JOHNSON: If it's all right with you, we could xerox these and return the originals. [See Appendices.] OWEN: There's one I treasure a whole lot right there. JOHNSON: Here she's talking about this message of Bennett's. Who is Bennett? OWEN: He was a poet. JOHNSON: She says she has read a lot of Arnold Bennett, but this one she had not seen before. Its title is "Old Wives Tales." OWEN: I found this poem and I thought it was one she would enjoy, so I sent it to her. When I went to Hawaii that time, I brought her back a lei, and I sent it to her. JOHNSON: She says it is one of her favorites. OWEN: Well., there are a lot of things that come to mind. I had spent a hell of a lot of time with him, and I enjoyed every minute of it. They can say what they want to, but that man has a recollection; he had a mind on him that was out of this world. He just remembered everything. JOHNSON: Did he reminisce about the very early days, not just the Presidency, but way back when he was Judge and farmer maybe? OWEN: Yes. We used to go by the Court, and I asked him one time as we went by there, "Mr. President, do you want to go and take a look at your old office that's in there?" He paid, "I had enough of that office when I was in there." JOHNSON: He did? OWEN: He said it brought back a lot of memories that he didn't want to remember. JOHNSON: So it wasn't all peaches and cream. OWEN: He was comical at times, you know, when he was in a jovial mood. JOHNSON: Did he ever talk about being a farmer? OWEN: Oh, he talked about being a farmer a lot of times. He loved farming. We talked about Mr. Pendergast too. JOHNSON: What did he have to say about Tom Pendergast? OWEN: Well, he really never had anything bad to say about him. I'll say one thing, if he's your friend, he's your friend. He didn't give a damn what anybody else thought about it. He said, "He's the one that got me started in politics and he was always true blue to me." You know he came down to his funeral. JOHNSON: He felt that he had done good for the city of Kansas City OWEN: Oh yes, he didn't see where he had done any harm. He said, "They've got politicians like that all over the country, but they don't do anything for the city." He built the City Hall, the Courthouse, the Municipal Auditorium, the Police Building... SWYDEN: The Jackson County Courthouse OWEN: In fact, I worked on that Jackson County Courthouse when I was a punk. SWYDEN: The greatest tribute to that entire era is that the city and the county have done so well in preserving and using those buildings as they are. They are monuments today. They are absolute monuments. They are historical -- the history behind them reflects the history of this city. JOHNSON: This was during the early years of the Depression too. SWYDEN: Yes, sir, in '33 and '34. OWEN: And do you know that every one of those streets, all of the main thoroughfares in the city of Kansas City were all concrete. They didn't have any asphalt on them. Where the streetcar tracks used to run, they covered them over with asphalt, because it was too expensive to pull those rails up. But when he concreted the streets, they lasted twenty-five or thirty years. With asphalt, every year you've got to do something to it, repair them or... JOHNSON: Tom Pendergast had a concrete supply business, and that's one reason why they had a lot of concrete I suppose. SWYDEN: Yes. But evidently he must have had one heck of a concrete, because those things are still standing, and they are standing in beautiful shape. One may stop and realize the entire civic center, if you want to call it that, was built under the WPA. I mean a lot of people ridiculed that program, but that's when a lot of the monuments of this country were built, during that WPA era. OWEN: I worked on the Auditorium. I dug pier holes down in there; some of those pier holes run around forty to sixty feet deep. I worked concrete, man. I was rolling those Georgia buggies around there. Finally, I worked myself up so that when they got these walls ready to pour the concrete in them, I had the job where a lead vibrator would be shoved down into the concrete to shake it and level it up. I got to that, and then they promoted me to the one that pushed the button, and so I had it made. SWYDEN: The day that building [Municipal Auditorium] was built, it was the number one of its type in the United States. It has a 10,000-seat arena which was unbelievable in cities of this size. It's a beautiful monument. In fact, when a committee of Rotary International recently came here, do you know what they said? When that committee came to Kansas City to visit us, to look over this city, they said they had had conventions all over the world, and the least of the Kansas City buildings -- and they pointed to that auditorium -- was better than 90 percent of what they used throughout the world. The least of it. That's quite a tribute. Also, I sat in City Hall for 20 years and I was extremely proud of that building. OWEN: Well, I worked in that Police Building; it was built in 1938. I went onto the Department in 1937, and we moved there in '38, and at that time that was the best Police Department facility in the country. SWYDEN: That's right. You look at it today, and it's as contemporary as anyone could ask for. JOHNSON: Yes, I think it is amazing how much building was done in the early thirties when building came to a halt in many other places in other parts of the country. They got those bond issues sold. SWYDEN: That era was a construction era. JOHNSON: I thank you both for your contribution. [Top of the Page | Notices and Restrictions | Interview Transcript | List of Subjects Discussed]
Atomic bomb, Hiroshima, 8-9 Bartle, H. Roe, 3 Central Missouri State University, 4 Danforth, John, 6 Henry Kumpf School, 2 Independence Examiner, 23 Japan, atomic bombing of, 8-9 Kansas City Club, 14 Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, 6-7 "Missouri Waltz," 12 Okinawa, World War II, 8 Paseo High School, 2 Rockhurst College, 4 St. John's Elementary School, Kansas City, Missouri, 4 Taylor, John, 4
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