Oral History Transcript - Pat Murdock - April 23, 2008
Interview with Pat Murdock
Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux
Date of Interview: April 23, 2008
Location: San Marcos, Texas
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Interviewee: Patricia G. “Pat” Murdock – Central Texas native Pat Murdock came to SWT in the summer of 1959 as a junior college transfer student. She received her bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism in 1962 and a master’s in English and Counseling-Guidance in 1969. First hired in News Service by Bruce Roche in 1963, she retired from fulltime work at Texas State August 31, 2007. She spent more than 20 years as director of the News Service. She is Vice President of the Board of Directors of the LBJ Museum of San Marcos.
BARBARA THIBODEAUX: This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University. Today is April 23, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I am interviewing Patricia Murdock in San Marcos, Texas.
Mrs. Murdock, even though you have agreed to the terms and conditions of the release pertaining to this interview in writing, will you verbally acknowledge your acceptance with a yes or a no?
PAT MURDOCK: Yes.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you very much. I’m going to call you Pat throughout this if you don’t mind.
MURDOCK: Please. Everyone does.
THIBODEAUX: Okay, good.
You said that you grew up in Central Texas. When did you first become aware of Lyndon Johnson or the Johnson family?
MURDOCK: I did grow up in very rural Lee County, Texas, and I guess I grew up hearing the Johnson name because we didn’t have electricity until I was in second grade. That would’ve been about 1947, and my parents, who were staunch democrats, they credited bringing electricity to Knobbs Springs Community to LBJ.
THIBODEAUX: Were you—or did your family—I’m sorry, I’m just trying to throw in a question.
MURDOCK: I grew up in a farm family, and I had started to school and was in second grade. And it made such a difference not to have to use kerosene lights to do my reading and stuff because I loved to read. I don’t know. My daddy I remembered later used to be the one that conducted the election at the Old Knobbs Schoolhouse at election time. So I heard a lot about LBJ.
That was really the first and then the affiliation continued after I had gone to college—came to Southwest Texas State College and transferred after completing Wharton County Junior College. I came to Southwest Texas in the summer of 1959, married a local yokel a little over a year later and then got my bachelor’s degree in May of 1962, which happened to be the same ceremony in which LBJ received his honorary doctoral degree. It was the first doctoral degree that the college had ever awarded. The second would go to Lady Bird back in 1981, when it was presented at Hardesty’s inauguration.
An interesting story about the graduation ceremony, for some reason—and to have to think like college students, I guess, maybe to appreciate it because I look back on it now and it’s kind of foolish. But we were really not happy that LBJ was going to get this honorary degree in the ceremony that was supposed to be our focus. We were the graduates. We had worked so hard. But I remember we worried that we were going to wind up having two speakers. I don’t even remember who the main speaker was. But he was very humble and appreciative of getting the degree, did not talk very much, and it turned out to be a delightful thing and a delightful thing to remember. I have a program still.
THIBODEAUX: So he realized that you were the main focus of that event. While you were a student did you see LBJ campaigning for the 1960 election on campus?
MURDOCK: I don’t remember. Keep in mind, in September of 1960 I got married and then by the following September had a baby, so I was a little distracted. I’d had some medical problems when my oldest daughter was born and did not go to school that fall semester. Finished in the spring of ’62. They wouldn’t let me student teach while I was pregnant during the good old days, which is one of the reasons that I had the time-out and took a little bit longer to get through school.
My next association I think with LBJ was really when he signed the Higher Education Act of 1965. He had been here in 1964 for McCrocklin’s inauguration, but I’d had another baby (laughs) and was on maternity leave. But the Higher Education Act—not only was it very, very significant legislation that has had impact on generations of college students, but it was a particularly interesting memory as far as I was concerned.
They had worked to—the ceremony was originally to have been held on the quad outside in front of Old Main. And the university’s—college it was then—physical plant staff had worked literally all weekend readying this area. There were wire machines in front of what’s now Lampasas Hall, was then the art building, and the patio was open with the curved arches and wire machines were set up there. There were chairs set up on the quad, the podium was out, but it was looking very, very much like rain.
And I was working in news service at the time teaching editing and reporting labs and working in the news service. That was a very picturesque place that was very special to President Johnson since Old Main was the building that he’d had classes in and had worked on the Star in—as did I—when he was in school. But the rain clouds were getting worse, and the word buzzing around—I think Bruce Roche and probably some of the other staff kept saying, “But it has never rained on the President for an outdoor event.” Well, sure enough—the ceremony was to be around one o’clock, if my memory is correct, and by ten o’clock there were already special guests seated in the chairs that were arranged on the quad. Sure enough, it started raining.
And I remember the sea—and there is actually an archival photo that the university has in its LBJ Collection of all the sea of black umbrellas on the quad. And they made the very wise decision to relocate the ceremony to what was then Strahan Gymnasium. It’s since where the current music building is, and there was a plaque that was placed on the building a few years ago in recognition of that historic event that happened there.
I remember it took about two hours maybe—maybe less—to refocus that event down to that gym and what they had worked on all weekend. The wire machines didn’t go, but the people went. I remember sliding down the hill helping carry things down to the gym from the quad, and in those days there was not the nice new sidewalks or the nice even stairs going down these hills. It was—in some instances, it was dirt and rock. I remember Mr. Addison Buckner, who was one of the publishers of the San Marcos Daily Record, I remember going down the hill with him and us having a real time keeping our footing going down there.
And then I remember that day and all of the follow-up to it, all the national media exposure. Without a doubt, Lyndon Johnson’s—the very fact that he was a graduate of Southwest Texas brought a prominence to the school that—there would’ve been no way to—all the marketing money in the world in today’s terms couldn’t have brought the same amount of focus that having him graduate from here did. And I think it’s still interesting that today he is still—Texas State, which was Southwest Texas State Teachers College when he graduated in 1930, remains the only college in Texas to graduate a U.S. president, and that was pretty phenomenal.
It was very interesting as he moved up into the vice presidency. That’s when we really felt the impact, I think, and then certainly the sad day in Dallas that brought him to the presidency. It was phenomenal.
Not everything was positive. There was the national media that referred to our school as, “a backwater Baptist college,” and of course, it had no Baptist affiliation, and I don’t know if that was a spin-over from San Marcos Baptist Academy, which was located so close to campus. And of course, now, the university later would buy the academy campus, but it was right next to—I don’t know if that’s why or why those words were—why that terminology was used.
I think I calculated from the signing of the Higher Education Act I was around during every campus visit that he made including his last—maybe except one. There may have been—no, I guess I did because I actually came back here to work in the summer of ’68 and came back a little early because he spoke at the graduation.
One of the visits that I remember very well was his last in 1973 when he brought his former economic advisor, Walter Heller, to speak to a class of students. And he made the commitment as he talked with the students in that class that he would bring back—he would use his influence and his connections to bring other great speakers to campus. And of course, he didn’t live long enough to do that, but when Robert L. Hardesty became president in 1981, very early in his administration he launched the LBJ Distinguished Lecture series and did his part to bring about what the President had promised.
It was interesting that McCrocklin—McCrocklin, who became president in 1964, did have an LBJ connection, and that—he served as under-secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during the Johnson administration. So actually, Hardesty was the second president of Southwest Texas who had that LBJ connection. Turned out Hardesty actually—his first visit to campus was for the signing of the Higher Education Act, and he had no idea when he did that in 1965 that he would come back in 1981 as president of the President’s alma mater. Those were good years to renew the focus on LBJ. Hardesty had been his speechwriter and had worked in the administration.
There are other visits. There are visits that are kind of hazy to me. There was a visit in 1966 when he visited with McCrocklin in Old Main and then visited the Star newsroom in Lueders Hall, which during when Johnson was a student would’ve been the old liberal arts building. That building is now gone. It was structurally unsound and was demolished in the early ‘80s. But at that visit, I think that’s the one that I wound up getting nabbed by—for some reason nabbed by Secret Service to identify everybody who had a reason to be in Old Main. Old Main at that particular time housed the university switchboard—this was pre-computerized telephones. It also housed the university post office, so the switchboard had operators that were on duty, like, twenty-four hours a day, and when the shift changed—they were on a different kind of shift maybe than the rest of us who were working. So I gave a nod to the Secret Service as to who belonged in the building.
That was also, I think, the visit where no one—there had been very little advance—next to no advance warning that President Johnson was coming to campus. We usually did have warning. I remember several trips to campus in a helicopter. The helicopter landed on what was Aquarena Land then, but now is an intramural field at Aquarena, complete with—there were always Secret Service, and you could always identify who was Secret Service and who wasn’t. But on this particular visit, there was—had some media inquiries, but we couldn’t acknowledge that Johnson was there. I think that’s why I got a letter written from Tom Johnson, who was his press secretary, applauding the story that I had written. If it was not the ’66 visit, it was one of the later ones, but I did get one of those letters.
I remember very well after he left the presidency when the LBJ State Park was new and its auditorium was new, and the president invited a group of black theater students called the Ebony Players to the LBJ State Park to present a theater production. Well, it became a pretty major production of Raisin in the Sun. It was a very enjoyable evening. We were very proud, again, to be associated with LBJ.
I remember there was some almost shock value when we saw the President, hadn’t seen him in a little while. And I guess he was so relaxed after leaving the presidency and Vietnam and all that hype that he had grown his hair out. Looked very good, but he had a totally new hairstyle. And it was quite, quite long. That was an interesting evening. It was an evening that meant a great deal to these theater students and to the theater faculty, I’m sure.
Lots of—I think had he lived longer than he did after the presidency—whereas he died at a very early age. I think the Vietnam War had really taken a toll on him—I think that he would’ve returned to campus again and again, and I do think he would’ve brought significant speakers to campus.
THIBODEAUX: Going back to James McCrocklin, they did have a special relationship. Can you remember things that—well, I know that Mr. McCrocklin was credited for renewing that relationship with President Johnson. Can you remember anything that Johnson did during that period, what he brought to the university in addition to his visits?
MURDOCK: Well, in addition to his visits, there were three major things, I guess, that he did around the McCrocklin era. Of course, he was the keynote speaker at McCrocklin’s inauguration, and it was at that ceremony that he announced that the Department of the Interior was going to give—trade land with the university for the federal fish hatchery, which the university needed that land to grow. It’s where—in front of the J. C. Kellam Building and around where the speech—theater building, I think it’s called now, are located. All of that was part of the oldest federal fish hatchery west of the Mississippi, and that was significant because the university was right up against that federal fish hatchery on one side. It was against San Marcos Baptist Academy property on the backside, and it would not be until the ‘70s—I guess ‘70s era in there—that the agreement to purchase the academy property would be made. So that fish hatchery transfer was really significant.
The other thing on that visit or in conjunction with the Higher Education—he was on campus for two significant visits two years in a row. One was 1964 and one was 1965, the first for McCrocklin’s inauguration and the second to sign the Higher Education Act. It was on one of those visits that he announced the Job Corps program and the Gary Job Corps would be created. The old Gary Air Force Base had a colorful history in terms of name changes and uses, activation and deactivation. When he created the Job Corps program, he made that—that was really one of the flagship places in the Job Corps program. And after it opened, on some of his later visits it was not uncommon for him to go by and visit Gary before he came to campus. I think it may have been that on those visits he may have flown into Gary because that’s where the San Marcos Airport is too.
THIBODEAUX: I saw a mention from James McCrocklin that said that President Johnson was responsible for bringing computers for the student use at the university. Had you heard that before?
MURDOCK: No. I really had not heard that before. We were a little slow getting into the computers. That’s certainly worth exploring and maybe someone in the computer science department might know the history of the department that could know how there was a relationship. But nothing that I ever heard before about computers.
THIBODEAUX: Do you know anything about the Peace Corps Training Center on campus?
MURDOCK: We did have Peace Corps training. I think several of these special programs that the President started, including Upward Bound and Peace Corps, had trained students on campus. The Upward Bound is still part of—the Trio Program is still actually in place on campus, not as high a profile now as it did during those early years. But the Peace Corps—my memory is hazy about that, but I know there was a foreign language faculty member named Meredith that coordinated that program. It was Dawn Meredith. I don’t remember any details, but I know that there was some news angle all the time on things that were going on as far as LBJ was concerned.
It’s really interesting. I graduated in ’62 and did one year of public school teaching in South Texas, like LBJ, but in a very different situation in Refugio, Texas. When I came back, I taught editing and reporting labs, worked in news service, and enrolled in graduate school. My first time away was in Refugio, Texas.
Then after three years, I got a job offer at Hill Junior College in Hillsboro, and Bruce Roche, who was my mentor and boss, actually had been Star advisor when I was Star staff. He convinced me I should take this job at Hill Junior College, so I did although I hadn’t quite finished my thesis when I went away.
Well, I went to Hillsboro, and it was really a shock to be closer to the North Texas area. I was so enamored with LBJ and the LBJ connection and was so proud of that connection. I found that the people in North Texas weren’t nearly as enamored with LBJ as we were here in San Marcos or the Texas Hill Country. I stayed there two years and then got invited to come back to Southwest Texas, but it was a real shock. I finally learned maybe it wasn’t a good idea to just tell everybody you met that you graduated from LBJ’s alma mater and used to work there.
When I came back, I actually came back—was not supposed to start back to work until September 1, 1968 but I actually came in August to answer the phones in news service while LBJ spoke at graduation. His speeches were really remarkable I think. Clearly, he had some very, very talented speechwriters, like Bob Hardesty and I think [Jack] Valenti, a lot of talented speechwriters. But his delivery was really second to none. When you go back and listen at those tapes that were recorded on reel-to-reel—but they’ve been preserved down through the ages—it was really a point of pride, I think, to have graduated from the same university where the president of the United States graduated.
So much lore, so much history, so many stories about his time as a student, the close relationship that he developed with Dr. C. E. Evans, who was president when he was in school, and he actually worked in Evans’ office, and about his role in forming the White Stars organization, which became a very significant student organization even though it was quite secretive, I think, at the time perhaps, not as secret as the Black Stars. But this was a student movement to help those students that were active in, like, the student newspaper, debate, those who excelled and competed in literary type competitions as students, to let them get better student employment positions, which had been, according to the old White Stars, had been going largely to the student athletes, which had their own organization called Black Stars, which was much more secret than the White Stars.
The late Roy Willbern wrote the history of the White Stars. I was fortunate enough to know him and to help him round-up pictures and do a little—maybe even get a printer for that book, so that was an interesting sojourn. That’s why I feel like I learned more about the White Stars because of that. And of course, I was an associate editor and business manager of the College Star, and Johnson many years before that had been editor of the Star, so that was another bond. I think it’s interesting to see how Johnson is treated in the media.
I had another personal experience that’s kind of a little hazy, but I could tell it was not going to be a positive result. I was designated to show Robert Caro around campus when he was writing on the Johnson biography. I took him to Old Main, all the spots that were important when LBJ was a student, and he was—of course, that was not the most flattering book in the world. I actually had an autograph—he sent me an autographed copy of the section from here, but it got out of my hands and I never got it back.
THIBODEAUX: Did he ask you any questions or have any comments?
MURDOCK: He asked questions and I provided the official lists of visits and all that sort of information. That was the kind of information he asked me—very matter-of-fact that had been asked every day.
THIBODEAUX: When you came back in 1966—
MURDOCK: ‘Sixty-eight.
THIBODEAUX: —’68, excuse me, had that endearment changed any toward LBJ?
MURDOCK: I don’t think the endearment toward LBJ had changed. The Vietnam War had—what had changed when I came back in ’68 was the McCrocklin—
THIBODEAUX: Do you think that McCrocklin’s association with Johnson created more drama or trouble in that situation than there already was?
MURDOCK: For him?
THIBODEAUX: Um hmm.
MURDOCK: You know, I had never thought about that before. It was possible it did. It was an academic thing and was pretty much relegated to academics although there were some demonstrations. President McCrocklin had been very good for the college. I will just say that, but he did resign.
And then we did have during—shortly—the next couple of years we had our Vietnam antiwar demonstrations, the San Marcos Ten, all of that. But I don’t remember the—and maybe I just chose not to acknowledge or remember—I don’t remember the hatred spewed so much toward LBJ as just toward the world.
THIBODEAUX: Was there a different focus off-campus in San Marcos? Was there more anti-Vietnam War protest or anything?
MURDOCK: I think that some of them were off-campus, but it was so intermingled. Campus and off-campus were so intertwined. Campus Christian Community center, the religious student organizations, that was always melded off-campus and on. I think that had a role. And we were getting more sophisticated students, let’s face it.
There still remained—I think there were at least three different types of students—well, actually, I guess there were four. There were those that were just the observers, liked to go watch. There were the ROTC, who were very much—appeared to at least verbally support the war. There were cowboys, a group who supported the war, and then there were the hippies. There were peaceniks or whatever you want to call them. That was what they were called during the era. Those were the main groups, and we had some peace marches and sit-ins, and then the San Marcos Ten was a peace—oriented toward peace, they were students who were told to leave the area around the stallions and a few did. But there were ten remained and they were subsequently expelled from school. I know it was an obedience thing and a failure to obey orders they were given. Being part of that background with news service at that time, there was a little too much joy on the part of some of the administrators in expelling those students, unfortunately. I’ve never looked on that as one of their high, high moments. And there were some very good students. A few years ago that had a reunion of the San Marcos Ten on campus, brought them back to speak and all that. And of course, today I think the whole collegiate atmosphere is more open than it was even then.
THIBODEAUX: In 1971 there was an LBJ exhibit at the alumni house. Do you remember the dedication of that?
MURDOCK: I remember working on that exhibit being put together. Actually, that’s where I met and got to know Harry Middleton and other folks that were LBJ connected because they helped put the exhibit together. It was an LBJ—“The Education President” was sort of the focus of it, and I do remember the dedication of it.
I remember the Alumni House dedication. It’s very funny when there’s some, I guess, baby boomer-age people that were in school in the high school and in the elementary schools in the ‘60s that—or early ‘70s—that were bused from the public schools to around the Alumni House for that dedication. That house that was moved to where it is now on the corner of University Drive and LBJ Drive was moved slightly to its present location but it was a boarding house when LBJ was a student. It was obtained by the alumni association and was restored and became the alumni center and the house the alumni offices. And it has housed that exhibit. Unfortunately, the exhibit that was in there when in the 1970s—and it was about ’77 maybe—when the next to last LBJ Student Center was built. There was an LBJ room in there that was kind of the room designated to have LBJ related exhibits, and it was moved there, most of the components, and it was added to a little bit in there.
Then that building got crowded and I think eventually the Associated Student Government moved in there, and I think all the remnants there are from that exhibit would’ve been—are somewhere in the current LBJ Student Center that opened in this decade.
THIBODEAUX: So was the exhibit on loan from the LBJ Library or was it given to them?
MURDOCK: No. No. It included a lot of stuff. It was mostly photographic and typographical. We had some of our photos there. There is always a warm exchange of materials between the university and the LBJ Library and Museum. That’s why when we had—you know, we’ve celebrated the signing of that Higher Education Act twice. We had the twentieth anniversary observance when Hardesty was president. We even had the hearings—part of the hearings were on campus. And then we had the fortieth in ’05, 2005. And with that one, we did an exhibit in the LBJ Student Center, the current one, on the signing of the Higher Education Act.
THIBODEAUX: I was interested in one visit, and I really don’t have a question with it, but I thought it was interesting that he came for the rededication of Old Main. That was on November 4, 1972, which was just a few days before the general election. I was surprised he wasn’t out campaigning or involved in some way.
MURDOCK: For someone.
THIBODEAUX: Yes.
MURDOCK: You know, I think maybe that he had stepped back a little bit and was not as active in campaigning then. As a former Star editor, we were very, very fortunate to have him come back for that and were quite proud. That, I guess, was really the—his hair was a little longer there too. It only got more so. He seemed in very good spirits at that building dedication. It was during homecoming too. I think that was—it’s just really—it’s difficult to speculate what would’ve happened if he had not died—passed away when he did.
THIBODEAUX: I know he always said he felt better after visiting San Marcos and Southwest Texas, so that may have been an emotional booster at that time.
MURDOCK: Yeah. I remember how much he liked to shake people’s hands and meet people. He really thrived on that interaction with people. I think that’s probably what made him such a good politician.
THIBODEAUX: We talked with Teresa about coverage of his death. Is there anything else you want to add to that? Because you have a story about that, I believe.
MURDOCK: Well, my only story about that was all these hours during the funeral that we stayed on the air at KCNY and did interviews—any number of interviews—and the names escape me who we interviewed. But the station manager erased the tape. Teresa and I thought—were talking a day or two later that we really should get a copy of that because that really was historically important. And by the time we got to the radio station to request our copy of it, it had already been recorded over and was history.
I’ll tell you an interesting—maybe not interesting but it was interesting to me. It’s amazing to look back how news service was contacted any time there was anything LBJ-ish because they knew we maintained careful files. I attribute that to Bruce Roche getting that off to a good start during those early years while he was here. He was here, I think, from ’58 until he left in ’67 to work on his PhD, and then ultimately retired a few years ago from the University of Alabama.
He saw the significance—and he had a wonderful news judgment, and I learned a lot about the news service operation from him. So anytime anybody needed something on LBJ, they knew that we would be a resource and we were contacted all the time. San Antonio, Austin, local around the area. It’s kind of hard to believe these days how much we were.
Well, I remember very well when LBJ—how I got the word that LBJ had died and what happened with that, and this is certainly not historically important but it’s an interesting tidbit in history as far as I was concerned personally. I had gone to the new Nelson Agriculture Mechanics Building on campus to do a story on the ag mechanics and to interview Lon Schell, who was the agriculture faculty member—he’s since retired—who was in charge of that program. And on the way down that hill from Old Main down to the ag mech building on those bad sidewalks, (laughs) I had twisted my ankle or my foot—I don’t remember exactly, but it was a foot injury—and I went on and did the interview and took pictures. By the time I got through with the interview, my foot had swollen so bad that I couldn’t walk back up the hill. So I asked Lon and he gave me ride up the hill.
As soon as I got to the office, I called my husband and I said, “I don’t know if I broke my foot but it’s really swollen and I need to go to the doctor.” So I went to the doctor, had it x-rayed. The doctor told me, “No, it’s not broken, but you need to go home and put an ice pack on it and elevate your foot.” I got home, put on my nightgown—I remember that—and had an ice bag in my hand and had it filled up and was headed for the couch when the phone rang that LBJ had died.
It was an alum, Ed Komandosky, who I guess was working at the Taylor Daily Press then, [he was actually working back at Texas State] called to tell me that LBJ had—it had just been on the wire that LBJ had died. I went and put the ice bag in the icebox, went and got dressed, wrapped my foot with an elastic bandage—my ankle, my leg—went to the office and didn’t go home for forty-eight hours.
THIBODEAUX: Oh my goodness. So what happened with your foot?
MURDOCK: I tell you what, I wouldn’t recommend—it’s not recommended medical procedure, but it did—got okay.
THIBODEAUX: We talked a little bit about Bob Hardesty, and I think we—did we talk about the Distinguished Lecture series?
MURDOCK: The LBJ Distinguished Lecture series that he inaugurated to kind of fulfill President Johnson’s promise, and the first speaker in that lecture series was Tom Johnson.
THIBODEAUX: Were there any other ways that Bob Hardesty found to bring President Johnson back into the university?
MURDOCK: He also inaugurated—the president’s birthday being on August 27, he inaugurated the LBJ picnic, which was a back-to-school picnic for the faculty and staff and for invited guests including many of the old LBJ connected people. He introduced that and it still goes on today.
THIBODEAUX: In your unique perspective, because you’ve had a continuing presence on the university’s campus for—I think I read forty-five years. Is it more than that now?
MURDOCK: Well, from—I came in the summer of ’59 basically to 2008. Is that nearly fifty years?
THIBODEAUX: Yes.
MURDOCK: That’s an association for nearly fifty years, okay. (Both laugh)
THIBODEAUX: So with that unique perspective of such a long association, how would you summarize or just describe the relationship or the influence between the Johnson family and the university?
MURDOCK: The Johnson family has been very important to the university. I think through different administrations and different eras, the closeness has—there’s been a great deal of variance. I think for many years there was—I don’t mean fear—but there’s always been a great deal of interest in not doing anything to alienate the Johnson family. It’s almost like it’s a beloved connection that certainly is being focused on and proud of today during this celebration of what would’ve been LBJ’s one hundredth birthday coming up.
THIBODEAUX: And you’re also on the board of directors for the LBJ Museum in San Marcos. Can you explain how the idea for the Museum came about?
MURDOCK: Actually, I’m told that the idea came from a city appointed committee that involved a mix of both some university representatives and city representatives. There were a few people that worked long and hard. It actually opened, the Museum did, on December 6, 2006 after more than nine years of raising funds. It’s a cooperative venture because the building that houses the Museum, which is very, very strategically located, I think, on the square in downtown San Marcos, it is owned by the county of Hays and was leased to the Museum for, like, a dollar a year for, I think, it’s a fifty-year arrangement. This was all contingent upon the Museum board at the time raising funds and getting the renovations done. And of course, after it opened there—we think it fills a role and we still have a need because there are two wonderful areas that we’re not able to use to the extent that we could if they were renovated. There’s the backroom and then the whole second floor. It’s becoming that—oh, a little over a year, it’s become a popular venue for special events.
I was not involved in those early years. The one person that’s still on—that’s been on the committee since—on the board—since the beginning is Ed Mihalkanin. I think he’s the only one that’s still on there. But a lot of people have worked really hard.
THIBODEAUX: How is the Museum able to distinguish itself from the LBJ Museum and Library and the park system?
MURDOCK: (laughs) Of course, we’re fledglings, and we’re very careful to use that LBJ Museum of San Marcos terminology. I think our special niche in the Johnson legacy is the focus on the time that’s spent in San Marcos at the college. And we have a little focus too on—we include his time in Cotulla when he taught at the Welhausen Mexican School in Cotulla, Texas because that was in 1928, which was while he was in school. He did that for a year to make money to finish his education. So it was kind of a part of his college experience, and it was one that was life-altering because he learned the—he knew the difference that an education could make and what it could do in terms of both financial stability and educational opportunities.
THIBODEAUX: For the future of the Museum, I think you mentioned opening up the rest of the building. Any other future plans or hopes for the future?
MURDOCK: The hopes are—we’ve got the space—if we can just get the funding. We would like to have more interactive—we’d like to have a classroom. And we do plan to do some more programming besides just exhibits. We’re excited about the oral history project. I think that’s major, and I think it’s a significant undertaking that the university initiated this project.
THIBODEAUX: I didn’t ask you about all the visits that he made. Were there any others that stood out in mind, any we skipped over?
MURDOCK: No. No. (laughs) I remember the Bobcat Club lunch when he announced the J. C. Kellam Award that recognized their old friend and financial advisor and manager of the broadcast interests in Austin and a distinguished alum. They named this award that’s still presented to the outstanding senior football player in honor of J. C. Kellam.
The little sidelights you tend to remember about these events. This was one where we were way short. It was a catered thing on the eleventh floor of the J. C. Kellam Building in what’s now the Reed Parr Room, I believe. But it was way underestimated on attendance and there was no food. And this was one of those that even, I think, the vice president at the time didn’t get to eat. (laughs) I forget what we did for food, but I think we went out afterward and got hamburgers or something.
THIBODEAUX: Any other events that we skipped?
MURDOCK: No.
THIBODEAUX: That’s good. My question that I ask everyone, what do you think is President Johnson’s—or Lyndon Johnson’s greatest legacy in this area?
MURDOCK: Well, I have to go back to the rural electrification. When you get down to the bottom line, I think that probably had a greater personal impact on more people in the Texas Hill Country and the Central Texas area than anything else. That being said, that’s a very basic thing that we—I mean, I remember the personal difference that turning on a light versus lighting a kerosene lamp meant.
That aside, I think the Higher Education Act has had—I think it’s hard to describe what impact that has had on now generations of college students by making the low-cost loans available, work-study program and the grants and aid for education.
I think too—that was a really special push that focused on the importance of education because Johnson really believed that if a person had an education, they would be able to feed their family. It was very important to him.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you, Pat, if nothing else to share this time.
MURDOCK: No.
THIBODEAUX: Well, thank you very much.
(End of interview)