Truman wasn’t financially secure until five years after he left the White House, when he sold family farmland whose fields he had worked as a boy. It made him sad: He liked thinking of himself as a farmer. But if he hadn’t sold, he said, “I would practically be on relief.”

He died the day after Christmas 1972, age 88, and his death was not only marked but mourned. A friend had described to the New York Times magazine how he had achieved happiness: “Harry feels that he’s square with the world, that he gave it his best, and got its best in return.”

God bless him, he did.