Larry James Kapp

Nov 1, 1950: Two gunmen tried to fight their way into Blair House to kill President Harry Truman. It lasted about 40 seconds, and a White House police officer named Leslie Coffelt gave his life to stop it. The White House was falling apart. In 1948 one leg of Margaret Truman's piano had pushed through the floor, and engineers found the building was in danger of collapse. The inside was gutted and completely rebuilt. While that went on, the Trumans lived across Pennsylvania Avenue at Blair House, the government's guest residence. It sat right on the sidewalk, guarded by police officers in two small booths at either end and agents inside. Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola were Puerto Rican nationalists living in New York. Collazo was 36, a metal polisher with a family. Torresola was 25, from the mountain town of Jayuya. On Oct 30, their party launched armed uprisings across Puerto Rico. In Jayuya, National Guard planes bombed and strafed the town. The two men decided to make the world pay attention by killing the president of the United States. They took a train to Washington and checked into a hotel. On the afternoon of Nov 1, Truman had finished lunch and gone upstairs to take a nap before a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Around 2:20, the two men walked up Pennsylvania Avenue from opposite directions. Collazo came from the east. He walked up behind Officer Donald Birdzell, who was standing on the front steps, pulled out a pistol, and pulled the trigger. It didn't fire. He hadn't loaded a round properly. He fixed it and fired, hitting Birdzell in the leg. Birdzell stumbled into the street to draw fire away from the door. Officers and Secret Service agents at the east end opened fire on Collazo. He went down on the steps, shot in the chest. At the same moment Torresola came from the west. He walked straight up to the guard booth where Officer Leslie Coffelt was sitting and shot him three times at close range with a Luger. Then he shot Officer Joseph Downs, who was heading to the basement door, and fired at Birdzell, hitting him in his other leg. He stopped beside a hedge near the steps to reload. Above him, Truman was woken by the noise and went to the open window to look down. Someone on the street yelled at him to get back. Coffelt was dying. He pulled himself out of the booth, leaned against it, raised his revolver, and fired at Torresola from about 30 feet away. The bullet hit Torresola in the head and killed him instantly. It was over. Around 30 shots had been fired in less than a minute. Collazo was alive and taken into custody. Birdzell and Downs survived their wounds. Coffelt was rushed to the hospital and died about four hours later. He was 40 years old, a World War II veteran, and had a wife and a stepdaughter. That afternoon, Truman went to Arlington and gave his speech as planned. He told people a president has to expect things like that. Collazo was convicted and sentenced to death. Truman commuted his sentence to life in prison. In 1979 President Jimmy Carter released him, and he returned to Puerto Rico. He died there in 1994. Coffelt was buried at Arlington. He is the only member of the Secret Service ever killed defending a president from an assassin. A plaque at Blair House marks the spot where he stood his ground. If he hadn't fired that last shot, Torresola, reloaded and standing a few feet from the front door, would have had a clear path into the house. Remember the name Leslie Coffelt.