George M. Elsey | FDR and Truman aide, 97

George M. Elsey, 97, one of the last living links to the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pushed the president's wheelchair around the White House's top-secret Map Room during World War II and later served as a top adviser, speechwriter, and political strategist to President Harry S. Truman, died Dec. 30 at an assisted-living center in Tustin, Calif. The cause was prostate cancer, said his daughter, Anne Elsey Kranz.

Mr. Elsey, who also served as president of the American Red Cross from 1970 to 1983, was a young naval officer assigned to the top-secret White House intelligence office during World War II. He observed military strategy sessions and attended international conferences with Roosevelt and Truman, and may have been the last person to have been acquainted with the two presidents, British statesman Winston S. Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Mr. Elsey was at Omaha Beach as a naval officer and historian on June 6, 1944, D-Day. He was with Truman in 1945, when the president approved the use of atomic weapons in the waning days of World War II. He later decoded the official message announcing that an atomic bomb had been dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and hand-delivered it Truman.

After World War II, Mr. Elsey he was a top assistant to presidential adviser Clark Clifford. In 1948, he helped draft a notable civil rights address that Truman delivered to Congress and later worked on executive orders that banned segregation in the military and in federal civil service jobs. - Washington Post