Presidential Biographies | Truman Administrations - Education

Education

Truman attended Independence High School and graduated in 1901. Among his classmates was Bess Wallace, his future wife. He hoped to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York for army officer training or the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, but he was barred because of his poor eyesight. Although his family could not afford to send him to college Truman continued his extensive independent reading and concentrated on history, including Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the novels of Mark Twain.