Overview

A FASCINATING ACCOUNT OF ONE GENERATION OF REMARKABLE AMERICANS WHO EMERGED FROM THEIR PIONEER ROOTS TO HELP SHAPE SOME OF THE KEY EVENTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Charlie Ross and Harry Truman were boyhood friends and classmates in Independence, Missouri. Charlie Ross went on to help found the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri and later became the Washington correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where he was awarded a Pulitzer prize. He was named Press Secretary by President Truman in 1945 and was a close friend and advisor to Truman during some of the twentieth century's most pivotal events. The author, John B. Ross, is the grandson of Charlie Ross. Using his unique access to family members, letters, photos, and unpublished memoirs, John Ross describes the life and times of Charlie Ross in vivid detail. He widens his lens to weave in the stories of Charlie's six younger sisters and their remarkable lives as independent and accomplished women in mid-twentieth-century America.

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John Ross heroically excavated family letters, interviews, old memoirs, school transcripts and more to present a wholly original record of a fascinating Missouri family from its austere pioneer roots to achievements that affected not only the history of the state and the development of modern journalism but also national and international events. Charlie Ross and his sisters did not shrink from challenges but rather helped shape twentieth-century America. - BROOKE C. STODDARD, author of Steel: From Mine to Mill, the Metal that Made America (2015) I never met Charlie Ross, but he is a near-mythic figure in my family's history, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who set aside a lucrative career to become my grandfather's press secretary. In that role, he was invaluable to my grandfather and trusted and respected by the press corps, the latter being no mean feat. He was honest, hard-working, empathetic, understanding, and a stickler for the truth. His passing was one of only a few times Harry Truman was ever at a loss for words. - CLIFTON TRUMAN DANIEL, Harry and Bess Truman's oldest grandson, author, lecturer, and honorary chairman of the Truman Library Institute The friend of my youth, who became a tower of strength when the responsibilities of high office so unexpectedly fell to me, is gone... His exacting duties did not end with his work as press secretary. More and more, all of us came to depend on his counsel on questions of high public policy, which he could give out of his wealth of learning, his wisdom, and his far-flung experience... He saw life steady, and he saw it whole. - HARRY S. TRUMAN, 33rd President of the United States. Excerpt from his statement to the press on the sudden passing of Charlie Ross

Author Information

Throughout his life, John Ross was an avid reader of biographies of lesser-known people who made a significant contribution to history. Over the years, he became intrigued by the story of his own famous grandfather, Charlie Ross. This book is the result. John was an attorney in NorthCarolina and Maryland. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1970 and after college was an officer in the U.S. Navy and served in the Vietnam War. He later earned a master's in economics from Georgia State University and a Juris Doctorate from Wake Forest University. While writing this book, John and his wife, Patti, lived in Baltimore and Hedgesville, West Virginia. Soon after finishing the manuscript in the fall of 2022, John was diagnosed with gastric cancer. He passed away in May of 2023 and his book is published posthumously.

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