The news hit me particularly hard because I have greatly admired McCullough’s ability to make history come alive. He did it in a way that made readers of his books understand and appreciate the ebb and flow of American history.

Additionally, I had met McCullough, at the College of William & Mary, and we had a memorable encounter. He was the keynote speaker at the 1997 Charter Day ceremonies.

He introduced his speech by saying, “If one believes, as I do, that our institutions of higher education are as important as any in our national life: if one believes as I do, that a venerable institution like the College of William & Mary is not only an emblem to the nation, because of its continuing contribution to our way of life, but because it stands as an affirmation of the importance of continuity in civilization, and if you love Virginia, as I do, than an occasion like this is an honor beyond compare.”

No wonder, after such a tribute to William & Mary, I was eager to secure for the Virginia Gazette, an interview with McCullough. I approached him at the Charter Day dinner and asked him to meet me later.

Responding in his sonorous voice, honed through decades of narration on television series such as PBS’s “American Experience,” McCullough indicated his willingness to meet me later.

Before parting, I told him how much I enjoyed his biography of President Truman. However, I wondered why the biography never mentioned the name of Roger Tubby, Truman’s press secretary. After all, Tubby, was instrumental in persuading the president to fire Gen. Douglas MacArthur as supreme commander during the Korean War.

McCullough listened silently, turned stone cold, and walked away.

I never had the interview with him.

Tubby was Truman’s press secretary during the Korean War. Later, he served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations International Organizations in Geneva, Switzerland.

To Tubby, the Truman years were no mere history. He had a particular insight into policy making at the White House. He kept volumes of diaries over four decades. They were deposited at Yale University, his alma mater, with the stipulation not to be available for research until the year 2000.

Tubby, whose public service career spanned the administrations from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, was a man who was close to the centers of power most of his life.

“President Truman was a very easy man to relate to and work for, “Tubby said in an interview with me, conducted in the 1980s. “He was very direct, honest, a straight person. It was easy to understand what he wanted, what his position was. But on his desk at the White House, next to the famous sign, ‘The buck stops here, was another saying, ‘Do your dimmest!’ He really meant it and expected that whatever you were doing you would do your very best.”

One of those occasions was when Tubby noticed an article coming down on the Associated Press ticker tape, quoting MacArthur’s message to Joel Martin, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. It urged him once again that Chiang Kai Shek’s troops be released and that the U.S. should go north beyond the Yalu River.

MacArthur acted in direct defiance to the previous order by the president to stay out of politics.

Tubby took the Associated Press article to the Oval Office, and showed it to Truman, who was sitting behind his desk. The president took only a cursory glance at it. Tubby then sad, “Mr. President, this man is not only insubordinate, but he is insolent, and I think he ought to be fired.”

The president then picked up the press release again, read it carefully and said, “By God, Roger, you are right. Get me Gen. Marshall,” Tubby recalled.

Two days later, MacArthur lost his post as supreme commander in Korea.

What made Truman act so decisively in the MacArthur episode was most of all his clear vision of American national interest, Tubby said.

“He refused to let the U.S. be dragged into an unending land war in Asia with communist China. He perceived, correctly, that it was the main Soviet design.”

A professor of history at the College of William & Mary who knew McCullough well told me my questioning of his competence to do a thorough research may have offended him.

In fact, Tubby’s papers deposited at Yale University, were embargoed, until the year 2000.

So, my apologies to David McCullough. The biography that earned him a Pulitzer Prize was published in 1992.

(Frank Shatz is a former resident of Lake Placid and a current resident of Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” a compilation of his columns. This column is used with permission by the Virginia Gazette.)