Dec. 6, 1950

Mr. Hume:

I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.”

It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.

Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!

Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.

H.S.T.

That was the letter that President Harry Truman wrote to music critic Paul Hume of the Washington Post after Hume gave Truman’s daughter an unfavorable review for her singing performance at Constitution Hall on December 6, 1950.

Our tenth grade American history teacher, Mr. Donald Kugle, referred to that letter several times (though he only mentioned that Truman threatened to punch Hume in the nose) as the reason that he could never respect Harry Truman because he felt that Truman had gone down into the gutter and had behaved in an unpresidential manner.

Mr. Kugle, you see, had rather high standards for how a President of the United States ought to comport himself.

I was reminded of that when I received the sad news that Mr. Kugle died on June 13, 2022, though word of his passing only made its way to me yesterday. 

As it happened, I had sent Mr. Kugle a short letter about two years previously to give him a very belated thank you for that year that I spent in his history class.

He was one of a handful of teachers from Eastern Lebanon County High School (Elco) that I have particularly fond memories of. I always looked forward to his history class, not only for the topic at hand, but also because we generally discussed current political events, and there was a lot going on during that year, 1964-65, from the presidential election (Goldwater vs. LBJ), through the release of the Warren Commission Report, to the book by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (A Thousand Days) about his time in the White House with JFK.

Mr. Kugle was pretty even-handed in the way he tackled current politics. He claimed that there were some students who lambasted him for being a Republican and others who were just as convinced that he was a Democrat, so he felt that he was doing a pretty good job of covering both sides. I, being a die-hard Goldwater Republican in those days, was absolutely convinced he was a really a Democrat, despite his attempts to be fair. I might have felt differently if I had been an LBJ supporter.

While our subject matter was American history, I recall occasionally asking Mr. Kugle questions about topics that veered more toward world history, and he always had answers. Good, detailed answers.

He was also one of the chaperones for the annual Hi-Y/Tri-Hi-Y New York City trips which we looked forward to each year.

As I look at his obituary and the folks who signed his guestbook, I see there are a bunch of people who regarded him highly as a teacher. I’m just glad that I managed to let him know that while he was still with us.