Biloxi, Mississippi: Vacation Home of the Truman Family
Posted by Paige Gutierrez on Apr 14th 2023
This article originally written by Paige Gutierrez with the title "Truman Family Enjoyed ‘Easy Climate’ of Biloxi". Paige is a local Biloxi writer for BNews Monthly, the monthly newsletter of the City of Biloxi. Photographs courtesy of the LHG Image Collection / Local History & Genealogy Department / Harrison County Library System unless otherwise specified.
Thelma and Willis Luxich had a homestead with two rental cottages on Highway 90 in what is now West Biloxi when they became vacation landlords and friends to Harry S. Truman, his wife Bess, and their daughter Margaret. Nine-year-old Margaret was recovering from a bad case of pneumonia, and the doctor had recommended the “easy climate” of the Mississippi coast as therapy.
Mrs. Luxich describes their first meeting with the Trumans:
“The year was 1933, first week in April, a Saturday afternoon, when a Desoto car, bearing a Missouri license tag, drove in our drive-way. Out of it came a very friendly looking couple, their little girl and her nurse. They asked to see the house, having seen our “FOR-RENT-Furnished” sign on the front lawn, saying they had been advised by a doctor to come to the Mississippi Gulf Coast for the improvement of their daughter Margaret’s health and planned to spend a spring vacation. When they decided to rent our 'Sunshine Cottage,' located on Highway 90, West Beach, Biloxi, Mississippi, Mr. Truman handed us his card, which said “Harry S. Truman, Presiding Judge, County Court, Jackson County, Missouri. It was our pleasure to show these folks places of interest. We went crabbing often. Margaret liked this most of all. A couple of times we took her out at night to spear flounders, carrying a torch light to 'spot' the fish. We also enjoyed many a long ride along the Gulf Coast. We were sorry to see them leave at the end of May. Mrs. Truman wrote that the stay in Biloxi had helped to improve Margaret’s health.”
The Luxiches and the Trumans kept in touch over the years with letters and occasional visits, including a second Truman family vacation in Biloxi in 1934, a visit with the First Family at the White House in Washington in 1948, and a visit by former President Truman to the Luxich home in 1955. The Biloxi couple received an invitation to Margaret’s wedding in 1956. The friends’ last visit was in 1969 in Independence, Missouri.
Harry Truman, now a senator, returns to coast in 1941
On June 25, 1941, Senator Harry S. Truman was on the Mississippi coast for the funeral of his friend and colleague, Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi. On that day he sent a handwritten letter to his wife, Bess, which reads as follows:
Dear Bess:
Well here we are in Gulfport. Went out for a drive this morning after marching in a parade from the depot to the church with Pat’s coffin. The
funeral is this afternoon at 2:30. They lined up some cars and took us for a
drive up and down the road from Biloxi to Pass Christian. They have made
a fine four lane highway for a short distance out of both Gulfport and Biloxi
out of No. 90.
There is a new soldiers home over on Biloxi Bay about due north of where we lived last. It is northwest of the main part of town and is very beautiful. They put in a new beach at Gulfport right south of the Markham Hotel and a block or so east. It is a fine place.
Just west of Mrs. Luxich’s place there is a grand new night club with fine brick cottages and a very modernistic dining room and dance pavilion with all the appurtenances of Monte Carlo. The Monte Carlo part was closed our driver told us because the Grand Jury happens to be meeting this week.
I stopped in and saw Mrs. Luxich and she seemed to be highly pleased that I stopped. Her house is rented and all painted up and looks fine. She said the old man had so much to do he could hardly turn around. Wanted [to] know about you and Margaret and when you were coming down. Everything is rented and they are building cottages all over. The place where the well was out of which we got water has a lot of tourist cottages on it now and the Edgewater Hotel is running full blast. The beach at Biloxi has had its face lifted and looks fine.
Wish you & Margie were here. We’d just stay & I wouldn’t go to Hot Springs. Drive to New Orleans with a Louisiana congressman & catch a train for Hot Springs tonight.
Love to you & Margie, Harry
Broadwater Beach, with brick tourist cottage showing to the left. Truman does not use the name Broadwater in his letter, but this is likely the “grand new night club” he was referring to, located a short distance west of the Luxich property, recently built in the then modern and fashionable Art Deco style. Did the Broadwater in 1941 have “all the appurtenances of Monte Carlo” mentioned by Truman? On the same day Truman wrote his letter, The Daily Herald reported that Broadwater proprietor Pete Martin had been fined in Biloxi Justice Court for possession of an array of gambling devices including a dice table, roulette wheel, slot machines and other items.
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