Oral History Transcript - Dan Love - April 9, 2008
Interview with Dan Love
Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux
Date of Interview: April 9, 2008
Location: Austin, Texas
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Interviewee: Marvin D. “Dan” Love – A lecturer in the university’s Department of Communication Studies, Mr. Love worked at the Johnson owned television station, KTBC-TV in Austin, Texas for 13 years. A resident of Elgin, Texas, he received his master’s degree in speech communication in 1996.
Topics: Association with Lyndon Johnson through KTBC-TV; visits to the LBJ Ranch, hunting trip with LBJ after the President’s retirement.
BARBARA THIBODEAUX: This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University. Today is April 9, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I’m interviewing Dan Love at Austin, Texas.
Mr. Love, 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?
DAN LOVE: Yes, I do.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you very much, Mr. Love.
It’s my understanding that you knew the Johnsons through the TV station that they owned. Can you just tell me when you started working there?
LOVE: Yes. Actually, it began with their radio station which preceded the TV station. I joined the organization in the spring of 1951 when I was a junior at the University of Texas-Austin as a part-time radio announcer and then became a full-time employee when they opened the TV station after I had graduated in the fall of 1952. So that’s how it all began in broadcasting back then.
In terms of the Johnsons themselves in their early days, we saw more of Mrs. Johnson than we did in the latter days. As he climbed the hierarchical ladder, she was less and less seen around the organization. Mr. Johnson, who at that time was senator—he was the majority leader, as I recall—was a rather frequent visitor to the property, but he was very, very cautious about getting involved in the day-to-day operations. He just didn’t do that. He left that up to J. C. Kellam, who was the general manager, long-time friend, but nonetheless, he was present and his presence was always known because the word was out that the senator is in town, that he’s here. And so we did see him frequently in and around the station. One of his favorite haunts was the barbershop just off of Sixth Street between Sixth and Seventh Street, which was housed in what was then—and now—is the Driskill Hotel. And from time to time I would walk up the sidewalk from the radio TV station and see the senator inside being groomed, coiffed, shoes shined, manicured, maybe as many as four or five attendants surrounding him, you know, and he was always holding court. And he was the sort of fellow who was so dominating not only because of his size but also because of that personality trait that it was very difficult to get a word in with the senator. He would ask a question and before you could properly answer it, he had another question for you, which was the strategy that worked very effectively for him, you know, wherever he went. But he really played that role even to the extent that a young guy like I—I was twenty-one or twenty-two years old, very wet behind the ears—and impressed and awed by the presence of the senator from Texas, and he parlayed that. He used that influence to his best advantage.
I was never, never fearful of him though. He never generated a fear in me as he was known to do with some of his political associates. There were times in which the Walter Jenkins and the Woody Woodwards, the J. C. Kellams, and various other people who were higher placed in the organization felt—experienced some of the anger and the wrath of Mr. Johnson, but of course, he always converted that into a you-knock-them-down-and-pick-them-up because he had that faculty of restoring their happiness and their dignity after he had skinned them alive, if I can use that expression. So that was a typical trait of Lyndon Johnson.
One day I walked—early on in the TV days in 1952 I was walking down San Jacinto toward the TV station, and I passed that barbershop I mentioned, and I glanced inside and there he sat and he called out to me, “Dan, come in here.” I was first of all shocked that he even knew who I was and then secondly, that he would have anything to share with me at this point in time in life, but of course, I dutifully went in to hear the bad news. I figured that that’s all it could be. (laughs) And he ceased his discussion with the people around him and when I drew abreast he looked at me and grabbed me by the arm and squeezed it and said, “You’re doing a pretty good job. Now, get on to the station.” Well, I was so relieved, you know, even with that backhanded compliment that that nourished me for quite some time in the—but that too was very, very typical of him. I saw that over decades, that sort of behavior by Mr. Johnson until the very end.
One of my most memorable moments with him occurred about sometime in the mid ‘60s when my wife and I and our children visited the LBJ Ranch. We were frequently as employees in the organization offered weekends to stay at the guesthouse up at their main house, if it weren’t occupied by other dignitaries. They were very generous in making that place available to employees of the broadcast operation, and so we went up that weekend and took along my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and their children, which numbered a lot of kids between the two families. And it was on a Saturday afternoon, as I recall. We were all around the swimming pool. Mr. Johnson wasn’t there. She was—Mrs. Johnson was—and she was seated outside to in a sense keep us company and to small talk with us. My wife was in the pool, in the water holding our baby, who at that time was about, I’d say, four or five months old, immersed in the water.
And at that time a small jet plane circled overhead, and it was one of those executive aircraft that the vice president of the United States used, and so Mr. Johnson was flying home. You couldn’t land one of the big aircraft, you know, Air Force Two. He was not president at the time. You could not land it out at Johnson City or at his ranch. And so he had one of those small jets, and he landed and we watched and observed as the plane landed and he deplaned and got into his Lincoln Continental convertible, the white one. The foreman of the ranch had driven out to meet him, and Mr. Johnson was always inclined to get into that car as the driver, put on his big Stetson and then just take off across the field. He paid no attention to roads whatsoever. He just drove wherever he wanted to go and, you know, it was really kind of gruesome to see what was happening to that beautiful big Lincoln, but he pulled up at the house, got out, had his suit coat over his shoulder, and walked over to where we all were. And no one is talking now because the vice president has arrived, and he had nothing to say until he walked over—and he put his coat on a chair at the pool—to where my wife was standing in the three or four feet of water. The vice president reached down—didn’t say a word—reached down and took the baby and put the baby on his shoulder—his dress shirt shoulder—patted that baby, had a big smile on his face, and handed the baby back to my wife and said—the only thing he’d said was, “It’s a beautiful child.” And then he walked on into the ranch house. To say that that caught us unaware and shocked us would be an understatement. You could never say an unkind word about him to my wife thereafter. It was an impressive, impressive thing for him to do.
But momentarily when he went into that ranch house, left the door open, we could hear him get on the phone and call Senator Everett Dirksen, who was the minority leader of the Republican Party at that time. Could hear him loudly and clearly, and here’s the same man who picked up and patted the baby and made a sweet comment about him. And now he is cursing in his own Texan way to the minority leader of the United States Senate and was telling him, he said, blank blank, “Everett, I told you the way it’s going to be,” and I guess that’s the way it was, you know. I’m sure it was one of those typical personifications of Mr. Johnson, who blew like the wind sometime.
Another time I was riding around the ranch in the backseat with one of my broadcast associates. Mr. Johnson was driving, and Mr. Kellam was in the front seat. It was near Christmastime, and we drove—and the foreman was standing over doing some hay baling at the time, and we drove over to him, and Mr. Johnson—his name is Dale—golly, if I can remember his last name—at any rate, Mr. Johnson said, “Dale, are we taken care of for Christmas?” and Dale said, “Yes, sir. We got everything taken care of.” And he said, “Now, I want to make sure every child at that gathering has more than one present,” and Dale said, “I’ve got that taken care of, Mr. Vice President—Mr. Senator,” and Mr. Johnson said, “Now, Dale, I don’t want any breakdowns on this,” and he got louder and had that finger pointing. He said, “All these kids are going to have a good Christmas. “ He was talking about the children of the employees of the ranch and the surrounding area. They was going to have a big Christmas party, and it was very, very important to him that those little ones have a good Christmas. And I think that was, you know, just a reflection of his childhood, that boyhood up in Johnson City when they didn’t have much Christmas, really wasn’t much going on, so it was one of those run from one extreme to the other. His emotional charges—you never knew what they were going to be. And as a consequence, you were naturally kept somewhat off-balance.
And then I would say that the most remarkable thing that I can recall occurred—which really describes the Johnson mystique—occurred when years later I was managing Austin’s second TV station. I had left the Johnson folks and joined a group of Austin businessmen who were republicans, and they asked me to come back from Houston, where I’d gone to work to manage the new station. So I accepted that offer, and now I’m competing with the president of the United States—competing my old employer. And there was never any relationship thereafter between me and Mr. Johnson. What little there was was between me and Jess Kellam, the manager who was still manager of the Johnson station.
But in 1973, as I recall, I was serving on the Austin City Council. I was serving as mayor pro tem at that time. I had been elected in 1971 and I ran for reelection in 1973 and was reelected at that time. And it was during a council meeting—and I think it was ’73—that Mr. Johnson, who the retired president of the United States now—he has not run for re-election—walked into the chambers with Mr. Kellam and sat on the back row. And his hair was almost shoulder-length at this time. He’d allowed it to really grow out. He had his big Stetson on, was dressed rancher casual and sat back there. And the mayor, who was seated next to me at a dais, leaned over to me and whispered, “What is the man doing here?” And of course, that’s what—how everybody referred to him, as the man. And I said, “I don’t have a clue what the man’s doing here.” Well, I found out. When the meeting was over, Mr. Kellam approached me and one of my council associates, Dr. Bud Dryden, who sat to my left, called us aside and asked would we—no, the president would like for you to go deer hunting with him.
Now, I’m still managing that station and serving the city council. I’m still competing against the Johnson interests, and it had not been an easy thing for us to overcome the disadvantage of being the second station in the market and we were a UHF station too, one of the first in the nation. And so there were some rather unkind words expressed about that, and I was involved in some of those unkind words because I was so frustrated over the inability of our station to overcome that immense burden—barricade.
At any rate, I accepted the invitation to go hunting as did Dr. Dryden, and arrangements were made to drive with Mr. Kellam about halfway between Austin and Johnson City and to meet the president. And he came hurling—we were there a little bit early and the president came hurling down the highway in his white Lincoln and pulled up, and Mr. Kellam got in the front seat and Bud Dryden and I got in the backseat. And so I had no idea why we had been invited to do this, you know. I just couldn’t read it at all. There were other people—the mayor could’ve been invited, and he was an old, old friend of the Johnsons.
But I found out. I found out what was happening. On the way up there, the president asked me, said, “Dan, how long have you been doing that program on Sunday night?” It was one in which I answered questions from viewers about the internal workings of a broadcast operation and it was fairly popular. And I said, “Well, sir, I’ve been doing it almost since we went on the air, so that would be five or six years now, I guess.” He said, “It’s a good program,” and I thought that was a nice comment to make. It was unnecessary. And then we drove on up, got to the ranch, drove down a little lane, came to a fenced area, which contained a large number of deer just standing there. It was like a zoo. And the president said, “Okay, boys, get your deer.” It was like shooting a pet, and I looked at Bud Dryden, my associate, and he looked at me, and Bud said, “Well, when the president tells you to do something, I guess you just do it.” Bam! And so we both shot a deer, and I’ve never, never forgiven myself for that. (laughs)
After it was done and driving we did a lot of small talk, nothing at all serious, and that was the only reference to the TV competition that the president brought up about that program. But on the way back down we were all sipping Cokes and so forth, and Mr. Johnson said, “Fellows, your deer will be dressed—treated and dressed and on your doorstep first thing in the morning,” and it was. It was. You know, it dawned on me later that day what that whole exercise was about. Lyndon Johnson was exercising in his way—this was Johnson’s way—of telling me that it was okay. And when he was telling me—he was telling me it was okay that we’d had that pretty fierce competition, and although I had said some things in national publication that were pretty acerbic, I know that Mr. Johnson was telling me that’s okay because those were the circumstances of the moment. His way of saying, I forgive you, and those are my words not his because I don’t know that he ever asked anybody for forgiveness. But I think it was his way for expressing to me that he still had to look at me as one of his boys from the old, old days when we that put that station on the air. And I worked for him for thirteen years and was considered one of his pioneering boys. But that made an impression upon me that obviously I haven’t forgotten until this day.
I didn’t go into some of the dramatics and the dialogue that occurred during those competitive TV days, but what it amounted to was that we were unable as a UHF station to gain a network affiliation. The Johnson station had access—first call from all three networks, and so we were forced under those circumstances to take second choice programming, and it’s very difficult to compete when you have that sort of thing going on. And it wasn’t until 1968—we’d been on the air for about four or five years, and we’d lost a million dollars, literally a million dollars—it wasn’t until 1968 that through our efforts to try to convince the Johnson people to relinquish at least one of those networks that we were able to make that happen. And NBC contacted me and asked me to come to New York and made us a network offer, which was good on January 1, and our station became solvent almost immediately. We wiped out the million dollar losses and went on from there, and the Johnson station never, never felt the impact of our presence financially because there was so much advertising business coming into this market and there were only two stations. There was not room for more, and they had all they could handle. So those are the circumstances.
It started—by the time when I last saw the president I was still in—when he died I was still on the city council and we went up to the funeral—the entire council did. And his influence, the web of influence—and I don’t use that word demeaning—in the greater Austin area was so profound because you were able to track that influence in virtually every type of significant profession or business. In banking, great influence. In public relations, advertising, great influence. In education, great influence, and it went on and on and on. And the Johnson name I needn’t tell anyone has always—has historically been so powerful since Hector was a pup around here that even today, you know, in 2008 the influence is still very obvious in nearly every direction you go. At first I think there was some anxiety, maybe some fear and intimidation of the president. And you can probably say that about Eisenhower and Nixon and Kennedy and all the others who’ve ever been the most powerful man on the face of the earth. There’s something intimidating about that. But I’m simply saying that because of his connections and because of the influence that goes back to his early congressional years, that there were key players, key supporters of Mr. Johnson in every walk of life, in every type profession, and you saw it wherever you went. And if you didn’t see it, you felt it. You knew it was omnipresent, just as ubiquitous as it could be. And so—
We’re having a reunion, as a matter of fact, on Friday of this week of those early broadcasters. It’s the sort of thing that it would be terrific if he were still living or if she were and could attend this because the people who put his TV station on the air—and even some of us who preceded that—will be in attendance. There are about fifty of us, not all of those nearly as old or as involved as we were but at some time over those years worked for the Johnson family. And so those folks with their spouses will gather at the home of Cactus Pryor, who was one of the original group. We’re honoring Cactus at that time, and it would be a wonderful thing if Mrs. Johnson—she just didn’t quite make it, didn’t quite make it to attend this.
Mrs. Johnson, on the other hand, was a very shrewd businesswoman. We felt her—there was a shadow of Mrs. Johnson. The station was run so efficiently by Mr. Kellam. I know that the influence and the mental acuity of Mrs. Johnson behind J. C. Kellam made the station what it was. It was an admirable place. It was like a family working for those folks. We didn’t have turnover. We didn’t have people coming and going as broadcast operation—well, I guess as businesses do today. People worked there for as long as it seemed they wanted to, and many of them did twenty-five, thirty years and so forth. I just happened to leave because of a better professional opportunity in Houston, but I cherish—I really do—I cherish those early days and the opportunity I was given. It was a springboard to what happened later in my life and led me ultimately to the teaching that I do today. So, you know, I’m very, very grateful to the Johnsons, and I’m even more grateful that those intervening difficult days as we competed have come and gone, and there is—the balm of healing has occurred.
I last saw Mrs. Johnson at an anniversary in 2002 at her penthouse apartment when the original folks got together fifty years after the station went on the air. By that time she was in a wheelchair and unable to speak because of the stroke. I got down on my knees so that I could speak to her face-to-face, and she recognized me and smiled and gave me a hug. She knew who I was, and it was very peaceful knowing that everything was okay. And that typically has been—that’s the story I would tell people about my relationship over the years with the Johnson family.
THIBODEAUX: That is very interesting. What were—the name of the station or the call letters?
LOVE: K-T-B-C, KTBC, Texas Broadcasting Company. It was radio 590, that’s the AM station, and Channel 7 was the TV station. Later the radio station converted to KLBJ AM and FM, but the TV station remains today as KTBC although it was sold quite some time ago.
THIBODEAUX: Just one thing about your trips to the ranch. It’s kind of interesting about they would just let people come stay at the guesthouse. Was there any presence of Secret Service?
LOVE: Yes. Yes. But as I recall, I remember one of them very well, his face. I think usually there were two, at least we thought there were two. There may have been more and we just didn’t realize it. But the comings and goings seemed to be so open. Again, it never occurred to any of us who were members of that broadcast family that someone might try to breach the place and create some—any kind of protest or damage. It was so serene and so peaceful, and we went up there frequently. We took turns in the sense of rotated opportunity, but it was—I mean, it’s open and when we went, we could fish, ride horseback, play at—swim in the pool, whatever. Of course, the Johnsons did a lot of entertaining of worldwide figures at the same place, and when they were in town, probably there were more Secret Service at that time, but we weren’t present during those moments.
I remember the girls, the Johnson girls, from their young—five and six years old. I remember them coming into the station. Mr. Kellam’s daughters all grown and with their own grandchildren now. Lucy, of course, is so evident in our community now as a leader of Austin Civic Chorus, as it were. She shows up. And that’s what the Johnsons do, they show up. They always showed up, and there’s a lot of Lady Bird Johnson in that showing up. They did the right thing. Yeah, did the right thing.
THIBODEAUX: I always heard that she had the same capacity as her husband to remember people and names and faces.
LOVE: She did. She had a great capacity. Yes, she did. And was always so warm and so—now, he wasn’t always warm. Please understand. You know, in his fashion, I guess you could say that’s warm, but it was just so overwhelming. She, on the other hand, was so gracious and so deep Old South in that gracious approach to life.
I can tell you of one other experience I had with Mr. Johnson when he was a senator, and I was about twenty-two years old. I hadn’t graduated from UT yet, and I received a call from this same Cactus Pryor—I was at work—and he asked if I would record Senator Johnson at our recording studio up the street. I said, “Cactus, do I have to?” He said, “Well, it’s your turn, let’s put it that way. It’s your turn.” (laughs) And we put it that way because none of us liked to do that not because of the work but because Mr. Johnson always, always would ask whichever was working with him, “How can I improve upon my delivery?” And that’s a tough question to ask, you know, when you’re a Hill Country guy with that Hill Country twang and with the voice quality that’s not the very best in the first place. Nonetheless, I went up that day and he was recording a fifteen minute address to citizens of Texas. It was a routine political address, and so I sat there and got him cued up and he read the speech and I thought we were done. He said, “Don’t run off, Dan,” and I wasn’t going anywhere. I put the tape aside, and he said, “Now then, let’s talk about my speech. How can I get better at doing this sort of thing?” And I can’t emulate him because no one could, and so he—and those other associates of mine, who had to do this sort of thing, we laughed about it so many times about, What did you tell the man when he asked for advice? We all did pretty much the same. We assured him that he was doing a pretty good job and there seemed to be improvement. But we didn’t want to be dishonest about it either, and you’d make a couple of rather vanilla observations and suggestions, and he’d sound the same the next time. I’m not sure that he ever made any effort whatsoever to change the Johnson style.
When he was inaugurated president of the United States—I’ll never forget that memorable day and he made that inaugural address—it wasn’t inaugural—when he was sworn into office after the Kennedy assassination. I have a video tape of this, and Mr. Johnson was standing there and as you remember, he was playing off of John F. Kennedy’s theme, you know. And Mr. Johnson said, “Let us continue.” That was his theme, Let Us Continue. And I thought about him as he made those remarks to the congress and to the citizens of the world and he sounded just like Senator Johnson of 1951, when I recorded him down on San Jacinto Street between Sixth and Seventh Street. There was no change whatsoever in the voice and really in the speaking ability of the man. But genius, yeah. Dynamic person, oh yes. He had those charismatic qualities that a lot of people have to read about. They didn’t have the opportunity to witness it.
THIBODEAUX: That’s interesting about how he wanted to improve his speech patterns and his speech. I think that’s one comment I kept hearing from his speechwriters that they wanted him to be the natural Johnson—
LOVE: Right.
THIBODEAUX: —and he could never come across that way on television. That seems to be something that plagued him his whole career.
LOVE: I think so. And he—the medium is so intimate. It doesn’t lie. You cannot lie on television, and if for no other reason for nonverbal reasons. Mr. Johnson had a tendency when he was presenting or performing—had a tendency to stiffen up, to become more formal. And the more formal he became, the less real. The genuineness of Lyndon Johnson in a conversation never made it, never made it on television. I’m sure it’s been captured on telephone messages and so forth, but he was never able—television was not made for him, or he was not adaptable to that medium. I don’t know that there’s been a president in my lifetime who struggled as much with the speech issue as he did. I’m not certain that there ever was one, and I’ve met most of them over the years and heard all of them many, many times on television. But he had that unique Hill Country sound, and he wanted desperately to effectively communicate. I know he wanted to, but it just simply wasn’t in the cards. And surely he had all sorts of professionals working with him, surely over those years outside of the broadcast station, high-powered agency people and public relations people, maybe even some speech and diction folks, I don’t know. But it was something that didn’t change. He didn’t ever—just didn’t adapt to it.
THIBODEAUX: Well, I think you’ve actually answered all my questions. I didn’t even get to ask them.
LOVE: Well, great!
THIBODEAUX: You’re the best interviewee.
LOVE: Oh, well, great. Great. I’m pleased. I’m pleased.
(End of interview)