Biden honors Truman, remembers seeing him in Scranton

Jul. 28—President Joe Biden often drops Scranton references into speeches when he can and his latest opportunity presented itself this week.

Biden spoke Thursday at the National Archives to commemorate July 26, 1948, the day President Harry S. Truman issued executive orders ending racial segregation in the nation's military.

The president remembered seeing Truman in person in Scranton on St. Patrick's Day in 1956.

Truman visited Scranton that day to address the annual dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackawanna County, an organization co-founded by Biden's maternal great-grandfather, Edward F. Blewitt.

No longer president by then, Truman arrived by train from Hoboken, New Jersey, and jumped into a convertible for a city tour. Accompanying him were Scranton Mayor James Hanlon and Joseph Lawler, the state secretary of highways and brother of longtime Lackawanna County Commissioner Michael Lawler. The Lawlers, Democratic powers statewide who grew up in Jessup, were close friends of Truman's.

By St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1956, Biden and his family lived in Delaware, but they returned regularly to visit his grandparents, Ambrose and Geraldine Finnegan, who lived at 2446 N. Washington Ave. in the city's Green Ridge neighborhood.

Biden told the archives audience the family "still called Scranton home" and visited St. Patrick's Day in 1956, according to a speech transcript on the White House website. Their visit was on a Saturday. Biden said he was standing on a Green Ridge corner "with my buddies" as Truman's car "was coming around the corner, coming off Dimmick Avenue." Dimmick is near the former Finnegan home.

"And the — sort of the David Broder of the Scranton Times — it was a guy named Tommy Phillips, who was an elderly man — younger than me, but elderly man — who was the chief political reporter," Biden said. "And they got a picture ... of me at 14 years old standing on the corner."

Biden said it was "a warm day for February," but it was March 17. St. Patrick's Day 1956 saw a high temperature of 25 degrees, National Weather Service records show, and the photo shows Lawler, Hanlon and Truman bundled up. The late David Broder was a legendary Washington Post politics reporter; Phillips worked for The Scranton Tribune, The Times' competitor then.

"And purely by accident — I assume it was an accident — the photographer from the newspaper got a picture of me making eye contact with Harry Truman," Biden said. "I'm sure a lot of people made eye contact with him — but I was looking and you can see in the, the photograph we're looking at one another eye to eye. And that's when this Tommy Phillips, the David Broder of the day in Scranton, wrote, 'That's when Joe Biden knew he was going to be president.'"

The president then disputed that.

"I knew I was going to be president when Jim Clyburn went ahead and endorsed me," Biden said, referring to the veteran congressman from South Carolina whose 2020 endorsement helped revived his presidential campaign.

Biden slipped up on other facts. Besides calling Phillips a Scranton Times reporter, the president was 13 when Truman visited. Phillips died in 1985 and no story with his byline about a Biden-Truman connection could be found. In 1987, as Biden announced his first campaign for president, The Tribune published a photo showing Biden near the convertible carrying Truman. They do not make eye contact in the photo, whose caption says Biden later told friends "the glimpse of a former president later sparked his own presidential ambitions."

In his 2007 autobiography, "Promises to Keep," Biden wrote about his family's fondness for Truman without mentioning the St. Patrick's Day visit.

Phillips held a special place in the Bidens' hearts. With Biden's father, Joseph R. Biden Sr., out of town, Phillips drove Biden's mother, Jean Finnegan Biden, to St. Mary's Hospital in South Scranton when she gave birth to the future president. A December 1981 Tribune photo shows Biden and his sons, Beau and Hunter, visiting Phillips at the newspaper. The president's father considered Phillips "a very close friend," according to a June 1987 Tribune story.

Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9147; @BorysBlogTT on Twitter.