As with most (if not all) of the communities he visited on this trip, Harry had been to Indianapolis several times before. Indianapolis, in fact, was the site of one of the more peculiar episodes of his famous whistle-stop campaign in 1948.

It occurred on October 15, 1948, just a little more than two weeks before Election Day. After giving his usual stump speech in Kokomo, about 60 miles north of Indianapolis, Truman was on the rear platform of the Ferdinand Magellan, shaking hands with the crowd, when he recognized a young sailor who worked on the presidential yacht, the Williamsburg. Truman summoned the sailor and asked him what he was doing in Kokomo. The sailor said he and his father were on their way to Indianapolis, where the sailor was to be inducted into the Masons that night. This greatly pleased Truman, himself a devoted Mason, and he invited the sailor and his father to ride with him on the presidential train car, which happened to be going to Indianapolis as well.

On the train, the father told Truman it would be “awfully nice” if the president could attend his son’s induction ceremony that night. Truman said he wished he could, but he was on a tight schedule, and every minute of his time in Indianapolis that night was already accounted for. But, after the next stop in Tipton, Indiana, Truman reconsidered. He called his assistants together and told them he wanted to attend the induction ceremony after all. Furthermore, he wanted to do it in secret. “We apprised the president that this would be impossible,” said William J. Bray, one of the assistants. But Truman would have none of it. “He said he was not interested in the details but to work it out and bring it about.”

That night, after delivering a speech at the Indiana War Memorial in downtown Indianapolis (pictured above), the presidential motorcade made its way back to the train as scheduled. But Truman was not in the motorcade. He and several Secret Service agents had snuck away from the memorial in an unmarked car and were headed to the induction ceremony.

When the motorcade reached the train, reporters traveling with the president were told, “That will be all for this evening,” and that the train would be leaving in 90 minutes.

About an hour later Truman finally returned to the train, telling his assistants he was much pleased that “maybe” he had made some people happy by attending the ceremony.

(Photo courtesy of the Indiana State Department of Natural Resources, Division of Historic Preservation)