Oral History Transcript - Wren Giesen - January 14, 2008
Interview with Wren Giesen
Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux
Date of Interview: January 14, 2008
Location: not stated
_____________________
Interviewee: Wren Giesen, a longtime San Marcos resident, is a 1937 accounting and English graduate of Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College and former employee of the college, recalls Lyndon Johnson’s days here as a student.
Transcription note: This transcript has been edited for nonessential words and conversation for the sake of clarity. Additional edits have been made at Mrs. Geisen’s request.
BARBARA THIBODEAUX: This recording is part of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University. Today is Monday, January 14, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I am interviewing Wren Giesen in San Marcos, Texas.
Mrs. Giesen, even though you have agreed to the terms and conditions of the release pertaining to this interview in writing, will you also verbally acknowledge your acceptance with a yes or a no?
WREN GIESEN: Yes.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you very much.
I believe you had a story about Lyndon Baines Johnson when he was a student at—was it Southwest Teachers College then?
GIESEN: It was a number of things. They changed their name quite frequently. First, it was a normal school. That was a little bit ahead of my going—for starting up there in 1934. Then it was Southwest Texas State Teachers College and then—oh, I’ve forgotten exactly the sequence of the different names that it took. But it was hard to keep up with they did it so frequently. What was your next question?
THIBODEAUX: Oh, I just was asking about the story that you had mentioned about LBJ as a student.
GIESEN: Oh, about Lyndon being in school. Well, to back up, my father died when I was ten. That was way back there. I was born in ’17, so that was ’27. And my mother was raised to be a lady and knew absolutely nothing about anything you would’ve thought except she was well-read and she had gone to summer normal two different times and thought she would teach. She taught one year, and then asked her father if she could [come] home and he said, “Yes, it would save me the cost of postage.” (laughs) Anyway, so she wasn’t even paying for her stamps.
So we had a friend, an unmarried lady, Miss Jenny Northcraft, who had been writing the society and personals for the San Marcos Record, the newspaper in San Marcos. And she had an opportunity to get married and go to Dallas, and so she came to mother and asked her if she’d be interested in taking that job. My mother said, “Oh, I have always to read the society and the personals in the Waco newspaper, and just sort of dreamed about writing about all the weddings and that sort of thing.” So she was hired to do that work and did it for twenty-six years or so.
In the meantime she got a job as local correspondent for the San Antonio Express. And of course, they wanted information on sporting events, and she knew nothing about sports. So she would get President [Cecil Eugene] Evans to assign a student, who was familiar with that sort of thing, to write these articles and then deliver them to our house on Belvin Street. The house is gone now. It burned down, not while we were in it however. It had real high front steps, and at one particular time President Evans assigned this job to Lyndon, and he with his long legs would come running up these steps and knock on the door and get my mother to take the articles that he had written. Then as he was leaving, he would always say, “Now, Mrs. Ansell, if you can mention Lyndon Johnson from Johnson City, I would appreciate it,” and my mother’s response—as she was telling us this story—was always, “That young man is going to be a politician.” Of course, at that point I don’t know that I really knew what a politician was, but it certainly came to be. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: Did Dr. Evans or Lyndon Johnson write those articles or the information?
GIESEN: Oh—and I’m not sure Lyndon wrote them, but he was sort of a messenger for Evans. He always had a student help. When I was in school, Frances Ellen Hons, was the secretary for the president, and we were paid from a federal or state fund—skipping around a bit—I knew that I could not afford to go to college. My family’d said they would send me one year but if I got a job, even the first year, that they would see me through the rest of it.
So there was this federal or state program. It was some sort of an educational program that paid students who could not afford to go to college. We earned twenty-five cents an hour. Most of the jobs went to boys because they were athletes, and this was one of Lyndon’s dissatisfactions with the university when he came here because fellows who were interested in debate and other activities as he was, were not given the jobs like the athletes were.
So that’s when politics really got hot when they started the Black Stars and White Stars, which really made going to school fun. Politics was really fun. There were signs that went up everywhere, and different reports about where the Black Stars were meeting and where the White Stars were meeting. Of course, they were usually not true (laughs) because they had secret meeting places, but the other side would put confusing signs up for them. Anyway, it made life interesting.
THIBODEAUX: Sounds like it. I think the program you may have been thinking of is the National Youth Administration.
GIESEN: Yes, I think that’s it.
THIBODEAUX: That’s interesting that you were part of that.
GIESEN: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: That’s very interesting.
Let’s see. What was your mother’s name?
GIESEN: Her name was R-e-n-i-c-k, and then Frazier was her maiden name—and it’s my middle name—F-r-a-z-i-e-r, and then Ansell.
THIBODEAUX: And did you know Dr. Evans to make any other comments about LBJ?
GIESEN: Well, I think Dr. Evans had a real love of and respect for him. I think if Lyndon did something that he didn’t approve of, he would be very quick to tell him.
Dr. Evans was a very interesting man, and he kept this university here. It was a college in those days, of course. Times were hard and of course the teachers really didn’t get pay. You know, they were given scrip, which said, We know we owe you some money but we can’t tell you when we’re going to pay you, and that sort of thing. Well, of course, then the local merchants all would treat them the same way. Well, we know you’ve got script, so we’ll let you buy what you want to buy, but things were just pretty much done on trust and paper.
THIBODEAUX: So this was, like, at the end of the Great Depression?
GIESEN: Yeah. Yeah. And money was really limited. I mean, you could buy a lot for a nickel or a dime that you can’t now. But Dr. Evans—now, he had a car, but I don’t think he drove—for he would ride the bus to Austin every day that the legislature was in session talking to those people saying, “Now, we have a college that puts out the best teachers in the state. UT puts out a variety of occupational professions, and they do a great job of it. But we put out the best teachers,” and he kept this university here when—they wanted to close it every time they got in session because they needed the money. It was really like pulling eye teeth those days to support this—what’s up on top of that hill.
And it wasn’t much then. It was just from LBJ up to where Old Main is, and then down the hill—we had a gymnasium and a power plant building. And of course, we have Riverside, but that was really what it covered. It’s sort of hard to even think about what it was like. Across the street was a little place called the Bobcat that served hamburgers and hotdogs and that sort of thing. And then there was a room in the back where the fellows shot pool and I think maybe shot craps, as they called it in those days. I think that was dice. I never did know.
But anyway, the campus—nobody had cars. Even the faculty members did not have cars. Everybody walked. And they always said that that was the way you could tell the upperclassmen from the freshmen that kept the girls by the muscles in their legs. (Both laugh) That hill does develop muscles. Anyway, the faculty didn’t own cars, so in between classes everybody was out on that quadrangle and they had a bunch of benches that the boys would frequently tilt back against the walls, you know. And everybody congregated just on the perimeter or under those trees—and I’m sure the trees are still there—but there was a little spot around there. And the faculty would be out there with us. I mean, it was really a real interesting time to be up there.
THIBODEAUX: So students and faculty all knew each other then?
GIESEN: Yes. Yes. And they all lived here and, as I say, didn’t own cars. A lot of them lived—of course, you can’t tell now because they’ve changed the names of the streets and built buildings on top of them, but they lived up there close and so they’d just walk to school.
THIBODEAUX: I heard that LBJ had a nickname of Bull when he was at Southwest, B-u-l-l.
GIESEN: Well, that probably could be. See, I was not in college when he was. He had a real direct effect on politics. I mean, I was there to see the effects of his influence.
THIBODEAUX: So he started early.
GIESEN: Yeah, he did. But he was a little bit older. You know, he’d gone off and tried working, and I think he realized that the top jobs took a little bit more education than he had, and he came back and told his mother he’d decided to go to school. But I’ll tell you, he did a lot for this university.
THIBODEAUX: Were you ever on campus when he returned?
GIESEN: Yeah, yeah. Lots of times because when I first came back here, I was working for Air Force ROTC and their office was in Old Main, and that was really later in his career. He would always speak up there on that part of the campus because that was where everything had happened when he was in school, you know, and so he’d come out from the door of Old Main and stand there on that raised up part of the sidewalk and speak.
He was extremely generous with letting you bring people up and introducing them to him. I knew the commander of Air Force ROTC had a little girl, and I asked her father, “Would you like for me to take her out and let her be introduced to the president?” And he said, “Oh, that’d be great.” He was big, he
was tall, he wore that Stetson hat. And he would lean down to this little girl and talk to her and just like he was the next-door neighbor or something. Just real easy in the presence of all of us.
THIBODEAUX: So how did you—did you know Lyndon outside of just those times that he came to your mother’s house?
GIESEN: No. No. I was just a kid, just playing in the yard when he’d come by there.
THIBODEAUX: But he remembered you from his visits to your mother’s house?
GIESEN: Oh, no. No. I just went up and introduced the little girl to him. He really felt at home on that campus.
THIBODEAUX: So he was very approachable then?
GIESEN: Oh yeah.
THIBODEAUX: Do you have any other experiences or any—
GIESEN: Well, now, one thing was that when I wanted this job with the federal government, and in those days you had to have a political clearance, mind you, to be accepted for a job. I mean, you went and were interviewed and then you were notified that you have a job. But then you were also notified that you must have a letter from your politician saying that it is okay for us to hire you, which also meant in the future you were going to vote for him (laughs) because he had gotten you a job. This was called a “political clearance.” In those days jobs were scarce as hen’s teeth. You just cannot imagine how limited the jobs were.
I graduated in August and I went down there in January and I had been applying for jobs, during that interim period, and I was working for the county agent’s office and for an attorney and a doctor when their secretaries would be gone but no real long-term kind of work. So you had to have a letter from Lyndon, and I think I’ve got a copy of one of those somewhere. If I do I’ll give it to you.
THIBODEAUX: I would appreciate that. The university would definitely.
GIESEN: Yeah. But right now I can’t think where it will be, but I will check to see. But that was essential, you had to have a political clearance.
THIBODEAUX: Well, that’s interesting. There’s always discussion about Lyndon Johnson doing favors, helping for favors back, that type of thing, but that’s just the way it was. It was required.
GIESEN: As you can see he remembered the people in Texas. He certainly helped me and he was helpful and thoughtful of other former students at SWTSU.
THIBODEAUX: So he was very loyal?
GIESEN: Well, which is not a bad thing, I mean, it makes sense.
THIBODEAUX: That’s true. And I believe that President Johnson was noted for being loyal to his friends, and I don’t mean in a bad way either, just a loyal person.
I do have a list of White Stars to interview on a short list. Can you think of anyone else that might have some information, any stories about LBJ? Even how they were involved in any of his federal programs, even if they did not know him personally?
GIESEN: I’m trying to think. Most of the people—all my friends are gone. The three girls that I grew up with are all gone. I’m not sure that they were—now, Lucille Johnson’s brother was a good friend of Lyndon’s brother, Sam—Sam Houston Johnson. We all knew Sam just by sight, and he had a son that was in college here when I came back here. The first job I had when I came back from retirement was in accounting office, and he was registered for school.
THIBODEAUX: Do you know if LBJ’s sisters—or at least one of them, maybe Rebekah went to Southwest Texas State Teachers College?
GIESEN: The only one that was in high school here—I really didn’t know her. She was a little bit older than I was. Her name was Josephus.
THIBODEAUX: Is there anything else that I didn’t think of that you would like to share about LBJ or San Marcos, the college?
GIESEN: Well, I tell you, it was a great place to go to school, and they had good teachers. It gave everybody around here an opportunity to go to college when they would never have been able to go to college because it is hard to realize how limited money was in those days.
That first job that I got from the federal government paid me $75 a month. Now, everything else was comparable. I mean, I had a room in a very nice home and two meals, breakfast and an evening meal, for $25 a month. And then a ride to and from—out to A&M was—this Triple A Building and yes it was on the A&M campus—was $5 a month, and then you could buy your lunch at a little boarding house for twenty-five cents. So everything was relative, but nobody had any money.
THIBODEAUX: Were there many jobs around town for students?
GIESEN: Here in San Marcos?
THIBODEAUX: Um hmm, at that time.
GIESEN: No. Some of the boys got the right to sell city newspapers. In those days there was the San Antonio Express, San Antonio Light, which was a Hearst paper, and then the Austin American. So there were three jobs that boys would get where they would have the concession to deliver those papers, and that sort of thing. Now, my brother had one of those.
But other than that, they got jobs delivering milk to your front porches. There were a lot of little farms that had dairy cows. It wasn’t as professionally done as it is these days, but your milk was delivered in bottles and put out on your front porch. So some of them had jobs like that, and some of them lived on farms too.
THIBODEAUX: I know Wimberley did not get electricity until the later ‘30s. So did you know people in the outlying areas without electricity?
GIESEN: Oh, Lyndon lit up that. Really. You know, I really don’t think people realize how much he did for—well, now, I don’t know that he had so much effect on Wimberley getting electricity, but he electrified that whole area: Marble Falls and Fredericksburg and that whole area out there. It was dark. (Thibodeaux laughs) It really was dark. But I tell you who gives him that credit, and I think he’s says—you know, that fellow that’s written so many books about him?
THIBODEAUX: [Robert] Caro?
GIESEN: Yeah, Caro said, “When I went out there and spent some time and at night realized that there had been no light in that whole area of Texas,” he said, “that’s when I began to realize what a mover and a shaker he was.” (laughs) He did it here and he could do it wherever he went.
THIBODEAUX: That’s a good description.
GIESEN: Yeah. He just shook up the whole—imagine being out in the country without any lights.
THIBODEAUX: I know now even with electricity but with it being so sparse, it is just pitch-black.
GIESEN: Oh yes. It’s just eerie.
THIBODEAUX: Yeah. He did bring electricity to Wimberley too, so it was that whole Central Texas area. Everyone does remember that. .
Well, is there anything else you would like to add? I think that was a good addition that you just made.
GIESEN: I don’t know that I’ve given you anything really.
THIBODEAUX: Oh, you’ve given us some interesting information and a nice picture of that time period in San Marcos.
GIESEN: He made a difference, and I really don’t know of anybody else in this part of the country that left as lasting—well, that university, for one thing. I was working up there when he was made president. (laughs) And working in Old Main, I want you to know that that telephone started ringing in the registrar’s office and it didn’t quit, people wanting to get their children in this university so that they could be president. The school came alive. I wish we could see the statistics on the year after he was made president and the two or three years succeeding then. They were coming. Those parents were on that phone, and that’s when it started growing.
THIBODEAUX: That’s very interesting. So he brought a lot of national attention to the university.
GIESEN: And I almost think it still has an effect on it—I mean, a residual effect. People who came here and promoted it from that time on, but it was a little school. When he got a hold of it, it got bigger.
THIBODEAUX: (laughs) You could see it in concrete—
GIESEN: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: —how much he helped it grow.
Well, thank you very much. I have certainly enjoyed that information.
GIESEN: I hope it’s helpful, and I hope it doesn’t sound gossipy or anything.
(End of interview)