Oral History Transcript - Ed and Susan Komandosky - June 19, 2008
Interview with Ed and Susan Komandosky
Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux
Date of Interview: June 19, 2008
Location: LBJ Museum, San Marcos, TX
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Interviewees: Ed Komandosky is a 1966 journalism graduate from Southwest Texas State College (Texas State University), editor of the College Star 1964-65 school year and co-editor 1965-66. He returned to Southwest Texas as an advisor to student publications from 1972 to 1974 while earning a master’s in journalism. Mr. Komandosky currently serves on the College of Fine Arts and Communication Advisory Council and was inducted into the Fred Adams Hall of Honor (Texas State University) in 2004.
Susan Komandosky is a 1968 journalism graduate from Southwest Texas State College and former editor of the Pedagog. Mrs. Komandosky is a retired journalism instructor.
Topics: President Johnson’s inauguration parade 1965, President Johnson’s signing of the Higher Education Act of 1965 on Southwest Texas campus, Lyndon Johnson’s campus visit in 1966, newspaper coverage of visit by Lyndon Johnson to Taylor, Texas, Star and News Service coverage of Lyndon Johnson’s death.
BARBARA THIBODEAUX: This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University. Today is June 19, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I am interviewing Ed and Susan Komandosky at the LBJ Museum in San Marcos, Texas.
Did I pronounce that …
SUSAN KOMANDOSKY: Um hmm.
ED KOMANDOSKY: Correctly? Yes you did.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you.
Mr. and Mrs. Komandosky, 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 no.
SUSAN K: Yes.
ED K: Yes.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you. Let’s start with Mr. Komandosky since you attended Southwest Texas earlier or first. When did you attend Southwest Texas?
ED K: I was a freshman here beginning in the fall of ’62, 1962 and graduated in August of ’66.
THIBODEAUX: How did you become involved in the Star? And was it the College Star at that time?
ED K: It was the College Star. I had been editor or co-editor of my high school newspaper, but when I came down here to start school as a freshman, I was a history major and had full intentions of being a history teacher. But I took the freshman reporting course in journalism and kind of got interested in it. We were in Old Main at the time and there were only two faculty members in the whole journalism department. It was sort of a small group and [I] just got more and more interested in it. Like I said I signed up for the editing course I suppose when I was a sophomore which would have been in the fall of ’63 then. The guy who had been selected to be the managing editor got a better job offer to be the sports editor down at the San Marcos Record. Well I needed the money. I mean it, that managing editor paid like $25.00 a month or some small stipend. So I needed the money and beside that I was already working over there in the history department as a student assistant to a couple of the history professors. With that money and being a dorm resident which helped with some small, you know. I took the job because I needed more than I needed the prestige or anything that might have been associated with the position. I needed the money. So that’s how I got really involved in the student leadership position with the newspaper.
THIBODEAUX: Mrs. Komandosky, do you mind if I call you Susan?
SUSAN K: That’s fine.
THIBODEAUX: May I call you Ed?
ED K: Oh, absolutely.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you very much. Susan, you also worked for the Star?
SUSAN K: Yes I came here in the fall of ’64 and I needed a job because I was pretty well putting myself through school. I was offered a job in the journalism department typing hometown releases – so and so from such and such, you know. I had been on my student newspaper staff in high school, but came as an English major and a speech minor to Southwest Texas. After that semester of starting out as a typist then gradually doing news releases and things, I decided I was going to switch to a journalism major and started with classes that fall and actually ended up being a photographer part of the time because I worked for Ken Casstevens who was one of the two department teachers. He told me he could pay me more if I was a photographer because I could get in more hours. (laughing) So I took photography down in the industrial arts department back then. So I worked then, I was on the newspaper, and I was a photographer, and eventually I was editor of the Pedagog by the time it was all said and done. I graduated from here in May of ’68.
THIBODEAUX: Ed, you were editor of the Star before – what period of time?
ED K: I was editor from during the summer I guess, let’s see, be the summer of ’64 through the spring of ’65 and then again in the spring of ’66.
THIBODEAUX: Considering those time periods, you were in a position to cover President Johnson on several occasions. When was your first coverage, and I’m thinking of even going back to after President Kennedy’s assassination and Johnson became president. Was there coverage of that event in the Star?
ED K: Yes, I’m sure there was. My recollection of that is not as great as probably I would like but then of course I don’t remember very much from 40 years ago either. But when I was, let’s see, I was a student, a sophomore and I’m not sure if I was already managing editor when President Kennedy was assassinated, and Johnson became president. I remember that day as we have talked about earlier, what happened and that sort of thing. But since that weekend was right prior to the Thanksgiving break, my recollection is the Star really had about a week and a half in there of student time which to put together the next issue of the paper where we recognized our alumni as the president. I don’t have a real clear recollection of that because I haven’t gone back and looked at copies of the paper that might be there from that time. But my recollection is we did do something recognizing him as the alumni who became president.
My first real recollection was then in ’64 of course he ran for president and won and then was inaugurated in January of ’65 and I was editor then. The Strutters [Texas State University drill team] and the band and other groups went up for the inauguration and of course I got to go along with the photographer and cover the inauguration which was a great thrill. My first time to Washington. Maybe even my first time on an airplane. I’m not absolutely clear about that, but it might have been the first time I ever flew on an airplane. I was a country kid. I didn’t know these sort of things back in those days. I was kind of countrified yet.
THIBODEAUX: Do you recall details from the inauguration?
ED K: Oh yeah. That was one I do remember. I saw out here in the museum [LBJ Museum-San Marcos] there was sort of a schedule of events. I do remember we left from San Antonio by chartered airplanes, propeller-driven as I recall, but to me that was still exciting because it was an airplane trip. It lasted about four or five hours I suppose. I don’t remember exactly where we landed, but buses were in Washington to meet us and they took us to, I recall, the old Navy barracks or Navy yard there in Washington which is where lots of people were staying. They had converted it to sleeping quarters, there were lots of bunks, tents, cots to sleep on. I do remember when we got there it was cold because it was January and it had snowed a bunch.
But I remember the food. For some reason I remember the food and the navy always had a reputation of having good cooks. And of course they had these humongous places to eat, mess halls we would call them I guess. I remember the food was just exceptional I thought, trying to feed these thousands of people that were there to participate in the inauguration. But just in the back of my mind, I keep thinking about, boy this is good food. Then of course, we went into the inauguration day itself and I don’t think I owned but one suit and of course I had it, and I had an overcoat of some sort but I don’t remember. I know I didn’t have a hat on. I remember my head got cold.
But like I said earlier, we found a place along Pennsylvania Avenue where the inaugural parade was and we didn’t have, we didn’t think ahead enough to know what to expect. And of course the crowds were three or four deep along the inaugural route and we found a place we thought would be good to take a picture because of the sun. It was a bright, clear day, but very cold and the people in charge of arrangements had cleared off the streets, but there were big snow banks on either sides of the street. Like I said there were three or four deep spectators.
The photographer with me, I’m pretty sure it was Mark Riley said, “We need to get a picture at least of the band.” I mean, that’s why we came, to get a picture of the band and Strutters as they came down with their banners. So he found somebody who had a little three or four step stepladder that was brought so they could see. And he asked permission from that person if he could do it while our band went by and they said, “Yes.” So we got our picture and then we stood there for awhile, but most of what we could see were the back of other people’s heads. So after awhile we said, hey, it’s cold, we’re not comfortable, we can’t see anything anyway. So we found someplace to go into and got something to drink and watched the parade rest of the parade on TV.
THIBODEAUX: Do you remember which band led the parade? Was it the UT band or San Marcos?
ED K: I want to say it was the San Marcos band, but then I’m not sure. I don’t recall the controversy of it. But I think it was our band. But again, if I was asked to testify in court, I wouldn’t do that.
THIBODEAUX: Did you interview any Strutters or band members about their experience?
ED K: Oh yeah. Yeah, we did. We talked to several people. I don’t remember who they were and I would have to go back and look at those editions of the paper and see if they were quoted or if their pictures were there. But we did talk to some of them. We talked to them while we were in the billeting area where we were staying at the old Navy yard and places like that, and then of course on the plane too. But it was not as easy on the plane because they were pretty strict. They made you stay in your seat and as I recall it was bumpy, the flight was bumpy for some reason. I remember going up, I don’t remember so much coming back. I think we were all just so dead tired we slept. Most people did.
THIBODEAUX: So you were there two days?
ED K: Two days.
THIBODEAUX: That was a fast trip.
ED K: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But we were young and it was exciting. You know, yeah, it was exciting.
THIBODEAUX: So when was the next time that you were exposed to President Johnson?
ED K: I suppose the next time would be the Higher Education bill that he signed here. Down in, I still say Strahan, I don’t know what people really call it, but in the gym, of course everything big like that happened in the gym because it was really the only place on campus big enough to hold a large crowd. Let the bleachers down and people could sit there and they put chairs on the floor. At the Higher Education Act, I am sure I was there. I ended up with a pen. You know the President had a whole box of those things and he would take them out and he would make just a little mark as he was doing that. He would use a couple of dozen pens to actually sign his name and then would hand them out to various people. And somehow, I don’t recall whether I got it, I don’t think I got it directly from the President, President Johnson, but I think I ended up getting it from one of the, either the president of the college, Dr. McCrocklin, or one other person, some other older adult that was there. I was editor of the Star, but I wasn’t directly involved in student government and those people were more involved at the time as being part of that ceremony. But somehow I ended up with one of those pens and I don’t know whether I was handed it by somebody or picked up from somebody who had laid theirs down. I don’t have a recollection of how I got it. But I still have it. Still have it.
THIBODEAUX: Susan, you were commenting on the activity of the Secret Service that went on at the campus.
SUSAN K: Oh, yeah. I lived in Burleson Hall, which was the co-op dorm up on the cliff above the gym, and we were the only dorm that looked down upon the gymnasium. We had Secret Service in our dorm early that morning rousting all the girls out of their rooms so that all our rooms could be searched and everybody who had a room on the side of the dorm that looked down the cliff towards the gym had to leave their doors open all day long, which you could imagine that was a major inconvenience for girls trying to get ready for classes and things. We had two Secret Service men in our dorms all day long, and crazy things happened as it will with a room full of a batch of girls. Down in the kitchen, one of the girls dropped a drawer and the Secret Service came tearing down to the kitchen ready to get their guns out. And about the time they get all of that settled, the poor ice cream delivery man walks in the back door and they grab him and want to know how he got on campus. And he’s just stunned because all he is doing is making a delivery. He doesn’t have a clue why they’re after him. So it was just kind of a crazy day for us. But a little more exciting because we were the ones who had Secret Service in the dorm. So that was kind of a fun experience for us.
THIBODEAUX: Pat Murdock mentioned something about snipers on top of the science building. Was that true? Do you remember seeing that?
SUSAN K: I don’t remember it specifically. Probably was true, they were everywhere. I mean, Secret Service, it just seemed like the whole campus was covered with them at that point.
ED K: Well, I…
SUSAN K: I think because of the heightened alert after the Kennedy assassination just the year before.
ED K: Well, yes. That was part of it. Of course this was a publicized event that was going to take place and you can always count on the fact that the general public knew, in other words, everybody knew, it was not a secret. Everybody knew that he was going to be there. So I would assume that security would be at its height now. Not anything like we have now after 9/11 or whatever, but still nonetheless pretty strong.
SUSAN K: Well especially after the Kennedy assassination had been so recent.
ED K: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t personally recall seeing any of them up there, but I have no doubt they were around.
THIBODEAUX: So your next interaction with President Johnson was in 1966?
ED K: Sixty-six, yes. That was an interesting day. I had gone to class, as I said earlier I had resumed editorship of the Star for that spring semester, and I was also an associate justice on the student court. I had visions at that point about maybe being a lawyer or something and I thought that would be an interesting thing. Kelly Frels was the president of the student body and he and I were pretty good friends. I don’t recall the vice-president’s name, I think it was Alan Black, but I’m not sure about that. But anyway sometime near the noon hour, I had gone back to the dorm and I think Bruce Roche had called and said Dr. McCrocklin’s office had asked that I be at his office 1:30 or some time frame, that I needed to be in coat and tie. Well, I really could not imagine what was happening. I didn’t know for sure, but I thought, oh-oh, this must be an important type of thing. I went ahead and went to eat lunch and then went back and changed into, again, the only suit that I owned, and put on my suit and tie and what all. Of course it being April it was hot. You know, it was not as hot as it is today for example, but it was hot. People were wondering why you were all dressed up. I said I have to go to Dr. McCrocklin’s office, but I’m not really sure why. I think I had a hint maybe, but I wasn’t sure.
Pat [Murdock] reminded me the other day or last night that perhaps the President’s visit to campus was kind of an impromptu thing. He was on his way back from some other function in San Antonio or whatever and this was kind of an afterthought. I think he was trying to get an idea, the Vietnam War was already underway and the build-up was beginning and there were already demonstrations on various college campuses and what all. So we assembled in Dr. McCrocklin’s office there in Old Main and I guess the first thing was I remember their were only three of us students there and all of these other big wheels on the campus, you know, all the deans and the vice-presidents. I remember Dr. Derrick and Jack Cates and Joe Wilson. And I thought this is some sort of – either heads were going to roll or this is something pretty spectacular going to happen, I thought maybe some sort of announcement. And then of course they told us once we were in the office that the President, President Johnson, was going to arrive and that it was just an informal visit and he didn’t want anything special necessarily – he just wanted to visit. That was the term I recall that they emphasized. He did arrive then. I’m not sure if it was two o’clock, but somewhere close to that. My recollection was most of us were standing because there weren’t that many chairs in the president’s office. So most of us were standing and of course when he came in, everybody stood up and Dr. McCrocklin greeted him and what all. As I recall, the President had a couple of people with him – aides and some Secret Service people were standing at the door, and the three students, the three of us were standing near the back of the room.
The first thing President Johnson asked was where is your restroom, he needed to go to the bathroom I suppose. So we all just stood there in silence as he went to the bathroom, and then he came out and Dr. McCrocklin then introduced who we were, everybody in the room he introduced. The President said then , well sit down and let’s just visit for a little while. This is no formal deal, let’s just visit. He asked how things were on campus and how the school was – this and that. Then he started asking a couple of questions of us students who were there about what did we think about the war, were there any demonstrations on campus about the war one way or the other. And there really hadn’t been up to that point. The build-up started in ’65 in Vietnam, but there wasn’t a lot of, not here anyway, not in the South and not in the Southwest. Some more of course in the northeast part of the country and that sort of thing, but there wasn’t much happening here yet and there wasn’t a lot of organized opposition. All the students were interested in, at least the male students were interested in, of course, in the lottery, in the draft lottery and that sort of thing.
But things rocked along. They served coffee to everybody and I remember I was impressed with the president’s coffee set. It was white china with gold trim and all this sort of stuff, and I mean the president of the university’s coffee set, not President Johnson’s. We all had a little sip of coffee and this and that. And then within 30 or 40 minutes or something like that President Johnson stands up and he starts to kind of go and he said well I enjoyed it, and that’s a kind of little formality thing about well I’ve enjoyed being here and nice to see all of y’all again and so on. So he starts out to the hallway there in Old Main and I ask the guy that I assumed was one of his aides or maybe one of the press guys, press aides with the President. I said, “Do you think the President would like to see where the Star is now,” because he had mentioned in his, just informally, “I remember my days when I was here working on the College Star.”
And I said to the guy, “Do you think he would like to see it now. They’re working up there now.” As I recall that date was probably…
SUSAN K: It was deadline.
ED K: … was a Wednesday. Either a Wednesday or a Thursday.
SUSAN K: It was deadline day, I know that.
ED K: Must have been a Wednesday, must have been a Wednesday because we would print on Thursday and distribute Friday mornings. So the guy said, “Well why don’t you ask him?” I thought, ask the president of the United States, so I did.
I said, “Mr. President, would you like to see where the Star is being put together today?”
And he said, “Well how far is it?” And by this time we were kind of to the front door of Old Main.
I said, “It’s right over there in Lueders Hall on the second floor.”
He said, “Well, let’s go.” Well, the media was all around. The media that was there, they heard “let’s go,” and so they took off that way. And here I am kind of leading him toward that and the Secret Service probably had gone bananas by then, but I don’t know. I didn’t pay much attention to them. We climbed up those steps there at Lueders Hall. I think Dr. Bruce Roche intercepted him in the hallway, as I recall, I’m not real clear in my mind, I just remember going down the hallway because it wasn’t a wide hall there on the second floor to go into the newsroom. Now Susan was in the newsroom and she ought to pick up the story there.
SUSAN K: Yeah, I was in the newsroom. We were all working ourselves silly. The editor is off parading around with the President is the way we’re thinking about it. And we’re all up there working on stories and this man walks in and said, “Everybody stand up.” And we’re like – okay - (laughing) we don’t know because he had this very commanding presence, so we all jumped up. And about that time the President comes walking in the door.
ED K: He had his hat on, as I recall, perhaps he’d take…
SUSAN K: And, we’re just …
ED K: … no, he still had his hat on.
SUSAN K: … amazed, needless to say. And of course, Ed is with him and Bruce Roche is with him, he was a professor we had at that point, and somebody went and got a Pedagog.
ED K: Dr. Roche or Bruce Roche brought the old Pedagog in where it had a copy or picture of President Johnson when he was either editor or in the debate society or whatever it was, and laid it down on one of the desks. We had these little, they had little individual desks that had typewriters on them. We were still using typewriters in ’65. You know and I’m sure Pat [Murdock] was in there, probably at the big desk where we the editors, copy-editors sat around and did their job, as reporters sat at the little desks doing theirs. Somebody put this old Pedagog down on one of the desks and was showing it. The picture I have of myself with the President is he is looking down at this old Pedagog and I’m standing beside him and Charlotte Doolittle …
SUSAN K: Yep, we’re all standing around.
ED K: … is standing there and she is, the three of us are basically in that one picture that I have.
SUSAN K: The rest of us are just background.
ED K: Yeah. Kind of background people.
SUSAN K: Um hmm.
ED K: And the President is looking down at that old picture of him in the Pedagog, and then I can’t remember exactly…
SUSAN K: He didn’t stay but a few minutes and then he left.
ED K: No, he just stayed a few minutes and then left. By that time I figured I had worn out my welcome and besides that I had made a big problem for the whole staff because that meant (laughing)…
SUSAN K: the whole front page had to be redone. The President had come.
ED K: Everything we had done for that edition of the paper had to be scrapped out and started all over basically because how can you ignore a visit by the president of the United States to your newsroom – for that was big news in itself. So I remember I went, after he left campus then, I didn’t follow him out. Somebody else probably did. But he left campus, I went back to the dorm and changed back into my regular clothes and went back, and then we worked until, good God, early morning hours the next day redoing the paper to accommodate that visit. My most vivid memory later on was I thought, you know I want some pictures of myself with him. I mean I was vain enough to want that, I mean anybody would, I would think. But I don’t think I got really any pictures from the university itself.
SUSAN K: Well, none of the photographers were prepared for him to walk in the newsroom.
ED K: Yeah, our own photographers weren’t prepared, they weren’t there, but the Statesman, the Austin American Statesman photographer and an AP photographer took some. Mr. Roche then approached Charles Green, who was the publisher of the Austin American Statesman, and got them to send copies of their pictures either to him or to me. I can’t remember whether I got them at school or at home, but I got copies of them and I still have those in my archives at home.
SUSAN K: Well, when we say the photographers weren’t prepared, the darkroom was in the basement in the art building which was across the quad and down three flights of stairs. So for the photographers to get there on instant notice was not possible.
ED K: Yeah, but the media that was accompanying the President himself…
SUSAN K: … did get the pictures.
ED K: … took a lot of pictures and I ended up with some of those which were great.
THIBODEAUX: I was wondering about the national media. They were just part of his …
SUSAN K: … entourage.
ED K: Umhmm.
THIBODEAUX: Were there any other interactions with Johnson or visits?
ED K: Not that I recall directly except of course when he passed away. As I said I was teaching at the university then or was the faculty advisor to the Star. I don’t remember what day of the week it was. It was like maybe a , was it like a Monday or a Tuesday, something like that. But anyway, I was done for the day and I had gone back to where we were living here in San Marcos. Susan was teaching at Austin and wasn’t home yet. But my ritual back in those days as it is almost today is to watch the national news at 5:30. At that time I was watching Walter Cronkite because he was, probably still is, one of the best newsmen that ever lived. But I always watch CBS News and he was on. They had done some reporting of some story and about midway through the news they had gone to a commercial break. When they came back from the commercial break, Walter Cronkite was literally on the phone and I thought, well there’s a screw-up. The floor director didn’t tell him they were coming back out of a break to be ready to start the news again and Johnson [Cronkite] just kept talking. Within a minute or two he hung up and then he said I want to explain to you why I was on the phone. I’ve been talking to Tom Johnson who is the personal assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, and Tom just told me that the President died within the hour. That’s paraphrasing what he actually said, I don’t remember the exact words. But anyway I said oh my gosh. So I picked up the phone and called Pat Murdock.
SUSAN K: At home.
ED K: At home because, well I called the office first and nobody answered, so I called her at home. So she said, “I’m going back to the office.” And I said I’ll meet you there.” I can’t remember whether you came in before I left the house or not, Susan. But anyway, I might have left you a note or something, but I went back up to the News Service Office in Old Main and Pat, I think you wee already there and we stayed up there. Pat stayed for the next day or two. I stayed there long enough to answer some phones until nine or ten o’clock at night and then I went back home.
SUSAN K: I was teaching journalism at Austin High and I got press credentials for some of my students to go to the capitol and to the funeral with the national press on the bus.
ED K: I was the faculty advisor to the Star here at the time and I know we sent some people to the memorial service or the funeral service in Austin and then out to the ranch, but I didn’t personally go. And in my own mind, I still say because it was in January I think we had a little bit of a snow storm, not a storm but snow or sleet or something because I remember it being cold and kind of miserable type weather. But I didn’t personally go out to the grave site because I stayed here. I think we were on deadline again with the newspaper and I always stuck around. It’s not that I didn’t trust the student editors, but it was my job to make sure they were doing what I thought was right and to do them the job I was hired to do, which was to advise them on the best journalistic principles of the day. So we were printing down at the San Marcos Record then and I’m pretty sure it was like on deadline like again on a Thursday and we were holding up as much as we could until they got some pictures back to us. I still think we ran pictures that day, but I don’t recall it without having looked back at the papers.
THIBODEAUX: Was that like a special edition or something that followed?
ED K: Well, yes this one [looking at a copy of the Star edition in LBJ Museum collection] was dated January 26th [1973] and his last time on campus was January 16th. So within ten days he had died from the last visit to campus he made. I don’t have a calendar from back in those days, but I guess we made a mention of it somehow but I don’t know that we put out other than this paper dated January 26th. This was the one where we …
SUSAN K: … commemorated
ED K: … commemorated his death. Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: So was that a special edition?
ED K: No, I don’t think it was special.
THIBODEAUX: Regular.
ED K: Regular edition.
THIBODEAUX: What kind of questions were you fielding? Was it national media calling to ask about –
ED K: Yeah. Most of it was background stuff. A lot of them knew he had been in school here. But sometimes they wouldn’t know the dates, the years he went to school here, what kind of degree he had, what he had done while he was on campus. Mainly background material. But it was also in the early, early hours of the announcement of his death so thee was no, there were some calls but nothing specific and no specifics yet about his death as such. There wasn’t, no one was speculating, there was speculation on the cause or the reason for his death, whatever it was, heart issues or things like that, but there was no, not a lot that was being said at that time – just reporting the fact that he had gone to school here and the years and that sort of thing.
THIBODEAUX: So did the News Service have a prefab bio that they gave out on President Johnson?
ED K: Oh yeah. They had a pretty good, I started to say dossier, but that’s probably not a good term to use. (laughing) They had a good record of his time that he had been on campus and his background here and all of that sort of thing. So it was not hard to have the facts, it was conveying those facts to the media and in some cases to certain members of the media who may not have been real familiar with it, so you’d have to sometimes do or say the same thing over and over again.
THIBODEAUX: Do you remember an activity on campus, a memorial event that followed his death?
ED K: I’m sure there was. Backing up for just a second, there were also requests for pictures, of course of him having been on campus and various pictures of him accepting his honorary degree and speaking at commencements, events, things like that. I’m sure there was a memorial of some sort. I’m pretty vague on that. But there was some memorial service, and I don’t know whether it was in the student center, I just don’t remember. I’m not sure the new student center was, not the one now but the one even prior to this was built yet, that was named for him. I don’t think it was being built yet. I remember, I think the old student center was still over there on the corner of [what] became LBJ and I don’t remember that street. It went right through the middle of campus, right south of what was the mall. Did we call it the mall?
SUSAN K: No, the quad.
ED K: The quad. Yeah. Yeah. But it went all the way down from Old Main to the Huntington Stallions area. That was kind of the quad area. And just south of that was the student center that was built or inaugurated I think when I came as a freshman. So that was from ’62 and then after his death they built a new student center that was named for him. Of course now they are on their third rendition of a student center. The university has certainly grown since that time and I don’t think anyone can discount the fact that the President was an alumnus and the fact that he had a lot of influence here. I think a lot of young people from Texas came here because of that and certainly has helped the university grow to the school it is today.
THIBODEAUX: Well you anticipated my next question. I was going to ask about – looking back at McCrocklin and Johnson’s relationship as such close friends – if that really put the university in the national spotlight.
SUSAN K: Well I think having a former president as an alumnus definitely gave prestige to the university because I think probably to some extent, prior to that it was looked upon as a little regional school. When you got a president of the United States who graduated from your school, it does have prestige and if it gives it national prominence that it probably would have never had.
ED K: I’m paraphrasing again, but I recall, I guess in the election of ’64. Time magazine, and I want to paraphrase this because I can’t quote it directly, but I think they referred to Southwest Texas as a small, back-water, Baptist college. And of course it wasn’t a Baptist college and of course it wasn’t Baptist, but there was a great deal of Baptist influence in the community because of the Baptist Academy, the Baptist church was the largest church in town and San Marcos was dry. It gave that aura of being sort of a Baptist thing, back-water in the sense that…
SUSAN K: … a small town.
ED K: Yeah, a small town.
SUSAN K: We weren’t UT or A & M.
ED K: Yeah. Exactly. But I recall and I think…
SUSAN K: But that is changed.
ED K: Yes. That has certainly changed and I think Texas State now is probably one of the half dozen premier schools in the state, not counting the systems, just schools itself and LBJ had no small influence in making that happen in my opinion.
THIBODEAUX: Well is there any other information or stories that you have to share?
ED K: Well the only, and it did not directly involve LBJ, but I think it was an off-shoot of it. I was very fortunate in my senior year to be, I had six hours to graduate and I needed to finish six hours. I already had a job lined up. Dr. Roche or Mr. Roche was our faculty advisor and he had lined up a job for me when I was going to graduate and all that sort of stuff. But I went to school at summer and was going to take six hours and I had signed up for something. About three days into summer school, he called me. I even had a job over at the academy. To make a little extra money, I’d agreed to work over at the academy [San Marcos Baptist Academy] as a dorm monitor or something, which I wasn’t looking forward to, but I probably needed the money and that sort of thing. So he called me one afternoon and said, “Come see me. I got something important to tell you.” And I thought, well, my job fell through, whatever, who knew what was happening. I got there and he said, “I just had a call from Congressman Pickle’s office.” And of course Pickle was a protégé of Lyndon Johnson. And he said, “They have a congressional intern job that they want to fill and they asked me to recommend somebody and I recommended you. Would you do it if you got officially asked?”
I said, “In Washington?” He said yes. I said, “Yes, I’ll be there tomorrow.” And it turned out it was almost tomorrow. This was like on a Thursday afternoon . On Friday they officially asked me and that afternoon I withdrew from the university here, the two classes I had signed up for, quit my job at the academy, packed up my dorm room, went home, told my parents what I was doing, caught a plane to Washington on Sunday afternoon on Braniff Airlines. I recall Braniff Airlines and showed up in Washington D.C. on that Monday not having the vaguest idea at what I was suppose to do, where I was suppose to go or anything. All I knew was where I was going to stay and it was on Foxhall Road in northwest Washington and it was called Mount Vernon College. It was a two year school for girls and it was financed by Marjorie Meriweather Post as of the Post cereal money. The main hall was Post Hall and all this sort of stuff. As it turned out what they did was make arrangements to have people come in and we would sign up for a variety of classes to continue our education and we would take classes in the morning and then in the afternoon they would haul us down to the congressional offices and we would work in the office for whatever congressman or senator had appointed us. I signed up for a class on civil rights which was a big deal back then. Civil rights in 1966 was a big deal and the professor was from Penn State or somewhere and he was Jewish and he was very pro civil rights. I was kind of new to that. We hadn’t had that much problem here in Texas with integration or any of that sort of thing. But it was an interesting class. And the other class I signed up for had to do with foreign relations or something and the instructor of that class was a guy who was the staff director for one of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or something like that. They were both very interesting classes. I got a lot out of it, but of course the most education you get is when you go down and work in the congressman’s office in the evening, the afternoon. And you know how you get these weird assignments and if your from the country like I was, one of my first assignments was [to] go over to the Library of Congress and find out if – I didn’t know, I thought you could check books out of the Library of Congress. I went over and wanted to check the book out and they said, “Boy, we don’t check books out here.” I didn’t know that. I mean if you don’t know, you just bump along. But I got the research material I needed and all. But then I had, my boss there in the Congressman’s office was Tony Proffitt. I knew Tony later on in life when he was working for Bob Bullock and other people, but Tony came in one day and said, “Okay, draft up a letter for Congressman Pickle here answering this letter.” Well the letter was from the president of the Texas State Teachers Association and it had to do with implementing certain parts of the Higher Education bill that President Johnson had signed. So I said, “What do you want me to say?”
“Oh just say we got the letter and we’ll study it.” So that was my first foray into writing letters to people I didn’t know for people I barely knew. I don’t know if he ever, Pickle ever signed it or not, but I drafter up something and gave it back to Tony. He might have thrown it in the trash for all I knew. But that was my first foray into that.
What was more interesting was of course not only that little interaction that you have in congressional offices, and you really understand how busy they are, but it was in the things you could do as an off-shoot of that, like congressional offices got invitations to everything and there’ll be receptions and things you can go to. Sometimes the staff people didn’t want to go so they would pawn it off on us underlings, our interns. Well as an intern we thought that was great. I mean we went to a reception at the Chinese Embassy. I didn’t even know what the Chinese Embassy was. But here you go to a reception there and you’re eating food you didn’t know and rubbing elbows with who you didn’t know. But they would also bring in from time to time at the school special speakers. I remember one of them was the secretary of the Army and he was a black man and I think he was one of the highest ranking people in the Johnson administration. I think it was Lamar Alexander, was his name, I’m not sure. But anyway, they brought him in on the civil rights class that I was in, for example. Very interesting and then they would bring in other people. They brought in a guy that was a member of the American Nazi Party, for example. Now that was an interesting class to - Jewish professor and a member of the American Nazi Party and the tensions were pretty high. And of course the war was going on by then. The war had heated up some more and there were demonstrations in Washington. But overall it was one of the best experiences I ever had. I just wish more people at my age level could have experienced that or still could for that matter. I’m sure they still have some of those programs, but you don’t hear much about it anymore. To me it was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life.
THIBODEAUX: How long were you an intern?
ED K: Just for the summer. We went up in early June and I came back and I had a job. I think we ended it around the end of July, somewhere around there. The job started on August 1st, so I had to be back by then to start my job at the Temple Daily Telegram and then graduation was set here in San Marcos for August 20th, it was a Saturday.
SUSAN K: You might remember August 1st was the day Charles Whitman did the shooting off the UT Tower.
ED K: Yes, so that was my first day on the job at a newspaper. And the guy I was with was dispatched by the newspaper [to go] down to Austin. My first day on the job I probably worked, I reported in about 9:00 and I got home oh well after midnight. I thought, you know, I’m not sure I want to do this anymore if I have to work hours like this all the time. Well the next day, in fact before I left, I asked the guy who was my little boss, first level boss there at the newspaper, I said, “Do you want me to come in again, what time do you want me to come tomorrow?”
And he said, “What time did you come today?”
I said, “Well 9:00.
He said, “Oh no. you don’t need to come until 3:00 in the afternoon. You work from three in the afternoon until midnight.” Well you know the first day I didn’t know that of course, but it worked out from there okay. And of course that was the big news in Texas then for weeks, the Whitman shooting business.
Then I came down of course on August 20th for graduation here in Strahan or “Strahn” [spelled Strahan, sounds like Strahn] whatever gym and it was hotter than blue blazes – 100 or something degrees outside. We got these black robes on and all this stuff. It turned out one of my younger brothers was getting married that same day.
SUSAN K: It was a bit of a hectic day.
ED K: So my mother and several other people came down to my graduation. Then we went back for my brother’s wedding. So it was hectic and that’s the first time you met my mother, I guess.
SUSAN K: The one and only time I met your mother.
ED K: Yes. Yes.
SUSAN K: We were not together back then.
ED K: No we didn’t.
SUSAN K: I was married to somebody else back then.
ED K: We just barely knew each other. But they met. She met my mother in the ladies room I guess there at Strahan, I don’t know.
SUSAN K: Yeah.
ED K: Somewhere.
SUSAN K: That’s the one and only time I met her. She died then before we started dating.
ED K: My mother then died in ’67, the next year.
SUSAN K: Which has nothing to do with this.
ED K: No. (laughing) Just as a timeline.
THIBODEAUX: That is good to have. So were you able to cover President Johnson on anything else?
SUSAN K: You did when he came to a funeral in Taylor.
ED K: Oh yeah. I almost forgot about that. He had retired and I was the managing editor of the Taylor Daily Press, my hometown. I had actually served in Vietnam for 18 months back in the late 60s, gotten out of the Army, said I would never put a uniform back on again, which turned out to be a big lie because within 6 to 8 months I was back in the National Guard as an officer and stayed another almost 30 years and retired as a colonel, but that’s another story.
Anyway, I was working at the Taylor Daily Press. I had come home from the war and had said to my dad and friends, I said, “I’m not going to do anything for 6 months. I went out and bought a new car and I wasn’t going to do anything. I had money in the bank, my loans were all paid off and I thought this is just great. Well within two weeks I was bored to death. Didn’t have anything to do, so I went down to the local newspaper in Taylor and said I’m interested in going to work. The little man that was the editor and publisher looked at me and we talked for a few minutes, and he said, “When can you start?”
I said, “Oh anytime.”
He said, “How about now?” Well unbeknownst to me he was very short on staff. I didn’t realize that. So he was going to hire me just because I was a warm body if nothing else. But he hired me and that very night, that very afternoon, I went and covered my first city council meeting in Taylor. But that’s another whole story. But as I moved up from reporter, I became the news editor, and then the managing editor within months.
A guy named Jim or James Dellinger who owned a big road construction company here in Texas and was originally living in Corpus and was a friend of the Johnsons way back. They were family friends and the Dellingers were a big name in Taylor. James Dellinger’s father, or Mr. Jim had been one of Taylor’s first police chiefs and he had a lot of family there in Taylor yet. So when Mr. Dellinger Jr., the one that owned the road company died, his funeral was there at the funeral home, we only had one white funeral home at that time in Taylor and the funeral was there. It was a big funeral and the word got out that Mr. Johnson was coming to the funeral and he came by himself. The police kind of cordoned off the street in front of the funeral home, but I had gotten word, the newspaper office was only two blocks from there. So I took my camera and went up there. I knew the layout of the funeral home and so I went into the side room, or the side office where the insurance office and all of that were, and there were a row of hedges out front before you got to the main entrance of the funeral home. Whoever was driving Mr. Johnson, President Johnson, I assumed it was a Secret Service guy, they drove up in this big, white Lincoln that he was known for and the Secret Service guy let him out. He walked up by himself to the main entrance to the funeral home. I’m behind the hedges and I actually got a good picture of him. This picture here [Star, January 26, 1973, part of the LBJ Museum-San Marcos collection] reminds me of him because he had the long hair already.
Of course we published that on the front page of the Taylor paper of course that day. I think the funeral was at 10, well we had like a noon deadline so I had to hustle back to the paper and get that picture printed. But that was probably my last encounter with him before he passed away. I’m trying to, I went to work for the paper in the spring of ’70 and came down here in the fall of ’72 and so it was sometime in that period of time that happened, probably either in late ’70 or ’71. I’m guessing right now. I don’t recall the exact date.
SUSAN K: It was after we were married so it had to have been after July of ’71.
ED K: Okay, So after July of ’71. That’s a good time frame too.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you.
SUSAN K: Umhmm.
THIBODEAUX: Well thank you. That was very informative. Is this a good place to end or is there anything else to share?
ED K: I don’t have anything, but you know I guess that was it. I really think that the university has done a good job, and I hate to use this word, but nonetheless I think it’s an appropriate word – they have capitalized on the President’s, maybe popularity is not the right word. Notoriety certainly isn’t the right word.
SUSAN K: Well his, well his…
ED K: … presence
SUSAN K: Yeah.
ED K: … to do some things and rightly so. Just like this place, this museum.
SUSAN K: Oh it’s wonderful.
ED K: Wonderful.
SUSAN K: Wonderful idea.
ED K: And wonderful opportunities to expand even more as other memorabilia becomes available.
THIBODEAUX: Especially with the continuing presence of the Johnson family – they stay interested.
ED K: Yeah.
SUSAN K: And that’s wonderful.
ED K: There is one little anecdote I’ll just add. It certainly has nothing to do with my personal relationship with or knowledge of the President. My cousin, I have a first cousin in Austin who was Lady Bird’s hairdresser for years and years and years.
SUSAN K: He fixed all the women’s hair for the weddings and all of that.
ED K: Weddings and had wonderful stories and anecdotes about Lady Bird herself and of course, when she died last year, was it? We were in New Mexico on a little vacation of our own and my cousin Larry was interviewed on TV and was invited by the family to the memorial service and that sot of thing.
SUSAN K: So we’re kind of having sideways connections on that end all these years, but Larry has great stories about Lady Bird (laughing) and all of the family.
ED K: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: That is interesting. The kind of weaving in and out.
ED K: Yeah.
SUSAN K: Umhmm.
ED K: It really is. Yeah, and of course my own relationship with Jake Pickle went on for a long time until he passed away which I always thought he was one of the best congressmen that this area in Central Texas ever had.
SUSAN K: Well you know at our, our very first wedding present arrived from Jake Pickle and it was a silver pickle fork, (laughing) which I thought was just hilarious.
ED K: Which we still have.
SUSAN K: Oh yeah.
ED K: That’s a wedding gift from Jake Pickle.
THIBODEAUX: Well Susan and Ed, thank you very much.
ED K: Well, you’re welcome. I hope it’s been helpful.
THIBODEAUX: It certainly has.
(End of interview)