Oral History Transcript - Bruce Roche - April 17, 2008

Interview with Dr. Bruce Roche

 

Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux

Date of Interview: April 17, 2008

Location: LBJ Museum, San Marcos, Texas

_____________________

 

 

Interviewee: Dr. Bruce Roche – Dr. Roche, who is credited with coining the “SWT” abbreviation for what is now Texas State University-San Marcos, came as an instructor in journalism in 1958.  He would become director of the News Service and chair of the Department of Journalism, roles he held until 1967.  After leaving SWT to work on his doctoral degree at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, he completed his academic teaching career as professor of advertising at the University of Alabama.

 

(This transcript has been edited for nonessential words and conversation for the sake of clarity.)

 

BARBARA THIBODEAUX:   This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University. Today is April 17, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I am interviewing Bruce Roche at the LBJ Museum in San Marcos, Texas.

 

Mr. Roche, even though you’ve 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?

 

BRUCE ROCHE:   Yes.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Thank you very much.

First of all, I’d like to get some background information about you. How did you come to Southwest Texas State College?

 

ROCHE:   In 1958 I’d just completed my master’s degree at the University of Texas and was looking to go back into the newspaper business, which my ambitions were that because my undergraduate and my graduate work was all in that area. A friend of mine in the General Land Office, where I was working, told me that a friend of his, Dr. Leland Derrick, who was, I think, the graduate dean at that time at what was then Southwest Texas State, had indicated to him that they were looking to replace someone or to fill a position in the journalism department. And my friend said, “Are you interested?” Well, I probably consulted with my wife and we talked about it and I said, “Yes,” and so we came down for an interview, met Dr. Derrick, others, Preston Clark, who was then chair of the journalism department, all of the students. I was completely impressed and decided with my wife that we would give this a try, probably for a year or two, and then we’d move on into the newspaper business. To carry the story a little bit further, I loved it so much, found the students so stimulating, I decided this was what I want to be the rest of my career as a college professor. And that’s what happened.

 

THIBODEAUX:   So when did you come to—I always want to say, Texas State. You’ll have to excuse me—Southwest Texas?

 

ROCHE:   Well, it was Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College. I think it still was when I came here, changed to just—eliminated the Teacher’s while I was here. That was in September of 1958 that we moved from Austin to San Marcos and I joined the faculty and began what was to be nine years on the faculty here.

 

THIBODEAUX:   In what capacity did you serve the university?

 

ROCHE:   Journalism was a small department, and that meant that the two of us, two faculty members, had to serve a variety of roles. I guess you’d say the principal assignment was as a journalism teacher. My rank at the time was instructor of journalism. But I had two other duties. One was as faculty advisor of the College Star, the student newspaper, and the other was to work as a staff member of the college News Service, where the duties were to write stories about activities and such at the college.

 

The other person, Preston Clark, and I divided the duties. He took all the sports publicity and I took all the general publicity at the school. And I found that to be stimulating as well. So those were my duties.

 

THIBODEAUX:   As your role as faculty advisor to the Star, what did you do? What does a faculty advisor do?

 

ROCHE:   A lot of that is dependent on the advisor. The advisor can just rarely show his or her person around the staff and in the process of producing the newspaper, to the far extreme where the faculty member almost meddles. Probably you’d say I was somewhere in between those two. I was definitely hands-on. My philosophy was that I should serve as a guide for the students who were most planning a career in journalism, newspaper, to encourage them to practice ethical, solid, good, sound, correct journalism, and use proper form that was the style at that time, and so to let students within that framework to run the newspaper, do the newspaper the way they think they ought to. And I tried to stay out of the opinion side other than to offer an occasional idea.

 

Some faculty at some other institutions would in fact almost—maybe not quite that extreme—but would almost dictate the opinion of the newspaper. And I backed away from that, didn’t like that at all.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Do you know who was the faculty advisor when President Johnson was the editor, or what kind of relationship they had?

 

ROCHE:   Yes. And I’m searching for a name right now. Tom Nichols, I believe, was. Professor Nichols, I don’t know at that time what his duties were, but later when I knew Professor Nichols, he was on the business administration faculty and likely was teaching something in that area even then. But apparently he’d had some journalism courses at the University of Texas, so that made him appropriate for that position.

 

THIBODEAUX:   How did Lyndon Johnson become editor of the Star?

 

ROCHE:   Some of this is my conclusion from reading a variety of sources, never discussing it with him directly. But Merle Miller did an oral interview, and my recollection—and the listener can get Miller’s book and check me out on this to make sure I’m correct—was that he alludes to this and Professor Nichols also does in a book that he wrote that I think was on the [Cecil Eugene] Evans administration. My thinking is that Johnson likely saw the Star as an opportunity for him to express his influence and opinions throughout the college campus. He came as a freshman and I guess on into his sophomore year as a person who had no influence on campus, came not from a well-to-do family, not a highly influential family, certainly locally although of course the family was known because his father had served in the Texas Legislature. So this likely served as a motivation for him.

 

But another and extremely important motivation was the money because the editor of the Star got a salary and a pretty decent salary for the time. I think—I recall that it was around thirty dollars a month. But he was editor, of course, for the summers of 1928 and 1929, if memory serves me correctly. I hope I have that square with—just having written that article, I should remember.

 

It was, however, a complicated process for him to achieve that, and it’s hard to say whether the influence or the monetary rewards were the primary motivation, very likely a blend of the two.

 

But as the history of the White Stars—we’ll get into the White Stars later I’m sure—points out—and other historians of the Johnson days at the college point out—that the so-called Black Stars, composed largely of athletes, composed of the influential members of social clubs which existed on the campus under a variety of names, which today, of course, are the fraternities and sororities, they were the ones who really controlled campus politics. And Johnson was one of a group of young men who established an organization that had its own name but came to be called the White Stars that managed to seize control of campus politics. Likely it was through that device that he was able to overcome the control that the others on campus, the Black Stars, had on campus politics, and thus the appointment of the editor of the College Star. Long story, but that’s in my estimation a sense of how he achieved what likely was an early ambition of his once he was on campus and realized the power of the editor of the Star. It’s interesting that he did not serve and likely by design as editor of the Star during the long year either of those years that he was here and only those two summers.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Yeah, that’s another question I had. Was that just because it was so customary for—summer school was so much more than it is today because you have teachers that were working during the year and then came in the summer?

 

ROCHE:   I believe that was pretty much the case and even today I notice that teachers often do come back. I continued on the faculty of the University of Alabama for many years, and although I was not in education, I was close to those faculty members and they talked about teachers coming back working on master’s degrees, working on advanced degrees, and doing the kind of things necessary to upgrade. And certainly that was true then, I’m sure.

 

But if I understand correctly—and I’m not sure about this—it was possible to teach even in high school without a college degree at that time. Certainly in the lower grades that was true. The high school diploma had to have been acquired in order to teach in high school is my understanding, and again, I’m not sure about that. But once one acquired the high school diploma and the college degree, then it became certain that being hired as a high school teacher was almost guaranteed if the work was in education. And that was the reason for what was then Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College, the focus was on producing teachers.

 

THIBODEAUX:   I think you’d mentioned one time in the article that you wrote in 1964 that Lyndon Johnson did not run for any office as a member of the White Stars. He didn’t take advantage of that, kind of stayed behind-the-scenes, but he did seem to focus all his energy on wanting to be the editor of the Star. Do you have any comment on that, about why he kind of stayed behind-the-scenes?

 

ROCHE:   I wonder if that—again, this is conjecture on my part—wasn’t pretty much the Johnson style that he remained behind-the-scenes, managed to produce many of the results but through others who he influenced. Again, pure conjecture on my part, but we saw a lot of that in his political career as he moved on through, that he exercised—certainly he was up-front but often exercised his influence through others. He was famous as senate majority leader for subjecting senators to the so-called Johnson treatment, and then of course he did that as president. He wanted to appoint Senator Russell, I think it was, of Georgia to the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination, and Senator Russell did not want to do it. And that is a public tape that’s been played many times, and how LBJ coerced the senator into accepting an appointment to that commission. That was the Johnson treatment, and my guess is he was developing that style even as early as his days on this campus.

 

THIBODEAUX:   What was LBJ like as an editor? Do you know?

 

ROCHE:   I found him rather preachy. They were well-written editorials. [David] Conrad and [Emmie] Craddock and [Bill] Pool commented in their book that they reflected a maturity beyond his age, and I concur with that. There were some very at times amateurish writing, but (laughs) he was only nineteen or so years old.

 

They had lofty ambitions. He advocated ethical standards, truthfulness, searching for truth, and working hard, reflecting, I think, the rather what I would call hardscrabble values of his rearing in the Hill Country. It was tough going when he was growing up out in the Hill Country. And his notion was that hard work and dedication, goal-setting is how one achieved, and he admonished his readers to prepare for the future.

 

He was highly patriotic in his editorials. He spoke often of Lincoln. He admired Lincoln obviously and other great leaders of the nation and called his readers to emulate the standards that those leaders established for this nation. I would say, obviously I’m not of that generation, so I can’t know how his readers would’ve reacted. I’m inclined to think if those editorials had been run some twenty years later when I was an undergraduate, that there would’ve been a lot of chuckling over the admonishment and, again, preaching that he did. As one reads the editorials—at least I was struck by how he sounded like a preacher on occasion.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Our common experience theme for this coming school year—one of the themes is civic responsibility. Do you know if Lyndon Johnson addressed this theme in any of the editorials?

 

ROCHE:   I don’t recall any editorial in which that was the major theme. My guess he probably did, but it was almost a sub-theme to everything he ever wrote. It tied in with these other notions that I’ve just talked about, his sense of dedication, giving, and so that theme I find just runs through so many of his—if not all—of his editorials in some way or other.

 

THIBODEAUX:   You had mentioned in the article you wrote in 1964 that some of his editorials were prophetic. I certainly concur with that, reading some of them. He talks about vision, which was very interesting, and that seemed to tie in with the civic responsibility also. I think one of the editorials you quoted was, “Sectionalism is vanishing. Our nation is becoming more truly American.”

 

ROCHE:   Um hmm. Isn’t that prophetic? Given what he did to assist the movement—the civil rights movement—to bring our nation together and accepting the value of every member of our society regardless of gender, race, other criteria. But of course, someone pointed out recently that Martin Luther King—and there has been some controversy over this of late, as you know—Martin Luther King, what was his role? And I think it was Senator Clinton who pointed out, quite correctly in my view, that Martin Luther King articulated the goal and provided a vision and the inspiration. But it took a politician of the power of Lyndon Johnson to actually bring that to fruition and to push it through the Congress, which he was well-prepared to do as a former member of the House and Senate and as senate majority leader. So you cite that one editorial, and decades later he fulfilled his own prophecy.

 

THIBODEAUX:   And you mentioned Abraham Lincoln. But he also wrote about Abraham Lincoln as a sincere person but even more it sounded like he was making a comparison with Abraham Lincoln or he could later on in his life about Abraham Lincoln was just himself, that he was just true to who he was and to his background and upbringing and never tried to be anything else. So I think there’s a question in there. (laughs) Do you know if Lincoln was someone he did hope to emulate? I think you had mentioned him.

 

ROCHE:   I can’t help but believe—again, conjecture on my part and probably he says this somewhere, and nothing comes immediately to my mind. I’m really not that great a—not really a Johnson scholar—that Lincoln was an inspiration to him and he certainly saw Lincoln as a person on a mountaintop that the nation should—and our people and our citizens should try to emulate that inspiration. I think that he subconsciously if not consciously modeled himself after Lincoln. Certainly as the young editor of the College Star he articulated that. And can’t help but believe that even though he changed over years, that much of that stayed with him as he moved on into his political career.

 

I find myself wondering since only—what was it—seven or so, eight years after he wrote those editorials he successfully ran for Congress. And I find myself thinking there’s a connection there not only about Lincoln but many of these other kinds of things that he talked about. He saw the college as fulfilling the opportunity for achieving in many ways, and I think this was one way that perhaps he could use the college experience and what he learned, and he was very good in his history and government classes, where he studied the great American leaders. Johnson could take these ideas and the examples set by these people and a few years later began a political career that led him to the presidency of the United States. I think there is a thread there, a theme, and can’t help but wonder once he had entered the White House but some of those ideas sort of leapt forth in his mind and came to the fore again, not that they’d ever disappeared, and that perhaps he considered himself a latter day Lincoln faced with perhaps some of the same but also different challenges.

 

THIBODEAUX:   An excellent assessment. So what do you think these editorials say about Lyndon Johnson as a young man?

 

ROCHE:   They served, in my view, as an opportunity to express some of his inner thoughts about a variety of issues, both some that were very relevant to college life and others that people then, and even now as we evaluate them, wonder what he was doing talking about some of the issues that seemed to have no direct connection to college life. But it was an outward expression of some of his inner thinking, I believe. Let’s pause just a moment for one or two additional thoughts.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Oh, I would like that. Thank you.

 

ROCHE:   So it provided a young Lyndon Johnson an opportunity to put down on paper and see published some ideas that were important to him and indeed to challenge his fellow students, which he did often in his editorials in a variety of different directions to achieve in certain ways. And he often spoke about, You got to earn the grades. You’ve got to go to class, in such what we might consider today sort of mundane kind of issues, but he returned to that theme often. It, in summation, serves somewhat of a pulling together of an expression of the developing ideas of a young man. And in them scholars can see, I’m sure, the roots to a more mature Johnson even on into his presidential years for a lot of reasons, but that alone is a good reason to understand Lyndon Johnson as a college student.

 

THIBODEAUX:   You’ve already answered, I think, part of this question. So this may be a little repetitious, you can tell me. Can you tell from these editorials what his vision of the world as the future held for him, or what he thought was happening in the world?

 

ROCHE:   Well, as suggested already, young Lyndon Johnson focused most of his editorial space on issues more directly related to functioning as—encouraging his readers to function as effective students and to conduct a moral life and those kind of things and also addressed, as we’ve noted already, some greater issues that affected the American nation. In my recollection—and I’ve not looked at those editorials in a while—that in a couple of places he does wander into the world stage, but I don’t recall that it was a major theme to his editorials except as one might apply some of the things he said to a world setting, but I just don’t feel that for the most part he addressed himself at that level.

 

THIBODEAUX:   It might be interesting to see a comparison prior to World War II and then post-World War II and see how his views had changed on the world.

 

ROCHE:   Um hmm.

 

THIBODEAUX:   You tell a good story about how he used his editorials as a way to get into the democratic national convention in 1928.

 

ROCHE:   The story as it came to me was rather dramatic, and I think it turned out as I got deeper into it that it wasn’t quite so dramatic. But the story as told to me initially—and frankly I don’t recall who told me. It might’ve been Professor Nichols, but I’m not sure of that—was that young Lyndon Johnson took his summer of 1928 editorials and copies of the College Star containing those editorials and reports of an upcoming democratic convention in 1928 in Houston to Houston and used those newspapers and, I guess, calling attention to the fact that he was reporting on the convention, as a means of getting press credentials into the convention and was successful. He attended, I judged, as a member of the press. Now, that’s the story as it was first told to me.

 

I think I got part of that story from Dean [Alfred] Nolle, who was the dean of the college at that time and who was supposed to give Lyndon Johnson permission to leave the campus and go to Houston, which apparently as later stories came out, he did not obtain from the dean. So rather than using editorials as an entrée to the convention, apparently he did take the newspapers, copies of the College Star with him to Houston to the convention, presented them to the convention officials, and did obtain access, I presume, as a member of the press but not because of the editorials. In fact, they were few. I don’t recall any for that matter, but I think in fact he did write probably one or two related to the convention. And the story early on was that he wrote a number of nice long big front page stories about the convention. (Recording stopped) I’m trying to pick up where I—I was in the middle of a thought there and now I’m trying to pick up where I left—okay, I was trying to provide a disclaimer there.

 

THIBODEAUX:   So we were talking about the democratic national convention in Houston, and you were saying about where you got the story from.

 

ROCHE:   Yes, and the fact that it was an early story that I’d acquired when I was on the faculty. But later information suggests that it was not quite that dramatic, that he did indeed publish some small stories about the upcoming convention, and I guess they were usually on the front page but not with big headlines or anything as some had earlier suggested. But he did use them to access the convention with, I presume, press credentials. So it was not near as dramatic an event as had at some time been presented. He just went over as an editor of a college newspaper, which I’m sure impressed the convention officials to some extent. Probably he was the only college newspaper editor there. Again, I have no evidence of that, but I suggest that he was probably the only college newspaper editor there except maybe for the local—maybe Rice University newspaper editor, don’t have any evidence on that. So that undoubtedly impressed them.

 

It does appear though that Johnson left the campus without Dean Nolle’s approval, and when he returned to campus he had to report to the dean, and so he had to work that out with the dean and so the story goes. I believe Doris Kearns includes this in her book [Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream], that he was able to convince the dean that he had served the college well in going to the convention and the dean accepted it and waived any possible penalty for leaving the campus without permission.

 

I knew Dean Nolle. He was still on the faculty, still dean my first year here. I’m sure he could be stern. In fact, he was not in those later years that I knew him, he was just a grand, absolutely wonderful person. But I wouldn’t be surprised but he might have scared students because he could be stern. I could see that in his personality, and so young Lyndon Johnson likely went into the dean’s office with some trepidation. (laughs)

 

If I can fast forward decades to the time that President Johnson came back to campus one day and had asked President [James] McCrocklin if he would bring together a few people for a discussion, just a conversation in the president’s office, and I was among those invited. There were about twenty-five of us, and the President came in. He’d been—I’m sure he was feeling low not only because of the Vietnam War but also he’d come from the funeral of the daughter of one of his Secret Service agents who’d been killed. So undoubtedly the president’s spirits were somewhat low, and I understand why he wanted to talk to some people that he knew were his friends and would listen to him. And it was an interesting discussion. Well, (laughs) it was more a monologue than anything, as you might expect. But to return to Dean Nolle, I noticed that throughout the president’s presence there that Dean Nolle stationed himself slightly to the back and to the side of the president, and the president was seated and Dean Nolle stood next to the president in clear appreciation for what this young man he no doubt recalled from many years earlier that grown to be, the president of the United States. (laughs) And I just wanted to bring that contrast in.

 

THIBODEAUX:   I know you recently wrote an article for Hillviews, which is the alumni magazine for the university, and in that article, which hasn’t been published yet but probably this summer, you mentioned something about a letter from Lyndon Johnson to Dr. Evans.

 

ROCHE:   Yes. That was included in some materials that the college sent me, and it was a letter written by Lyndon Johnson in 1937—I forget the exact month. Young Johnson was running for Congress, and the election was coming very close. He had been invited to come to the dedication of a building on campus by President Evans, and apparently he and President Evans became very, very, very close friends. Johnson had served in a very—rather menial capacity in the president’s office during his student years. But after graduation—but even upon his graduation, President Evans lauded young Johnson at the graduation ceremony and said, “We can expect great things from this young man.”

 

But now seven years later and the many contacts during that period of time, President Evans is inviting Johnson to come to the campus for the building dedication and in this letter that Johnson wrote back, he tells President Evans that, I’m sorry I cannot come, that I’m in the hospital. Indeed he was. I think he had an appendectomy, which they were rather consequential at that time in 1937.

 

But in that letter—I wish I had it in front of me so that I could read from it—he laid out a number of goals for a college, for an institution of higher learning. And he essentially, I think, laid out what the college had meant to him and what a student ought to be able to acquire from the college experience. In a real sense, it was a restatement of many of his editorials. I found some very close connections between main points in his letter to President Evans and some of his editorial statements. The letter was so—a rather short letter of, I think, a page and a half, but the first—or the middle section really laid out Johnson’s views on what a college should mean and be for a young student. And it was sort of a restatement, if you will, of what he’d obtained at this institution.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Very interesting. I haven’t seen that letter.

 

ROCHE:   Very likely they may publish it, I don’t know, in Hillviews. I don’t know. Anyway, let me add another thought there. The letter was such a perfect statement about his views about his college education that to me it provided me the framework for the story that I wrote for Hillviews and basically used as a framework for the development of the story, allowing me then to go ahead and show how he had fulfilled many of these—or most of these—objectives stated in the letter during his college years.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Oh, I have one more question for you before we can move on up in years—I kind of lost my place.

 

ROCHE:   Sure.

 

THIBODEAUX:   What was Lyndon Johnson’s connection to the beginning of journalism at Southwest Texas?

 

ROCHE:   He wanted a journalism program. No question about it. And I understand that he politicked personally for it, I guess, through Dean Nolle or to Dean Nolle. In fact, there is some evidence that he pushed person-to-person for a journalism course. But in the editorial columns he also several times that I’m aware of made statements like, What this college needs is a journalism department, rephrased in a number of different ways, but that’s the idea. He was successful finally in convincing Dean Nolle that a journalism course should be established, and Dean Nolle finally agreed as long as he could get a minimum number of students that would make it more than just a one-person class. There were a certain minimum number of students required to offer the course. And so according to Professor Nichols, who was to teach the course, in his conversation with young Lyndon Johnson in which Professor Nichols laid out the dean’s requirement that it had to have a minimum number of students, (laughs) in my recollection Professor Nichol’s statement about Johnson’s response was, “You teach the course. I’ll get the students,” something like that.

 

THIBODEAUX:   That’s a good story. And he did. (laughs)

 

ROCHE:   And he did. And he made an A in it, as I recall. His better grades in these areas in which he was interested, history, government and public speaking and this journalism class, he was an A student, and he was not a particularly good student in terms of a grade in courses that didn’t carry a lot of interest to him but he was at least a C student in everything. I think the word floated around that he’d failed some courses. I’ve looked at the transcript, and he failed no courses. I need to back up. No, I don’t—I think I’m correct in saying he failed no courses. He acquired at least a C in every course, a lot of Bs, and a lot of As.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Did Professor Nichols go on to continue teaching journalism classes?

 

ROCHE:   I don’t think so. After Lyndon Johnson left I’m not even sure that he taught the course again. I didn’t look into that so I can’t say. It had been probably twenty years later when a gentleman by the name of Walter Richter, I understand—and I’ve not explored this—who was a graduate of the college and had worked in journalism, came to the college, established it—now, whether as a full-time faculty member or not I do not know—but he’s generally credited with actually starting the journalism department. I never did discuss it with Mr. Richter, knew him, had contacts with him, but I really had gotten nothing firsthand from him.

THIBODEAUX:   Kind of moving up in time a little bit—

 

ROCHE:   Sure.

 

THIBODEAUX:   —you were the director of the college News Service. Can you explain the function of the college News Service?

 

ROCHE:   The objectives of the program were never precisely laid out to me. So my sense of it is that the college news service existed principally to promote activities of the college, so that surrounding newspapers would be able to tell their readers about it. And that’s what we were doing when I came.

 

I made one change to that. I felt we were ignoring the broadcast medium. Now, my background is newspaper. My undergraduate work was in newspaper, and I’d done some work—very menial work, but menial work at newspapers. But I felt that particularly at that time radio also had an audience for us, that we could tell a story. So I saw that we served area radio stations. The first three years I was not the director of the News Service. I guess my third year, maybe my fourth year here, I became director of the News Service.

 

We did a study about where our students came from and discovered that—what did we say—we ended up—80 percent or so of—and at that time and we’re talking about the early 1960s—80 percent or so of the students came within a radius of seventy-five miles. So we identified the newspapers and radio stations and a few television stations that were in that area and began focusing on trying to get material to all of them. We even had some of our journalism students hired at student wages to write what we called hometown releases to the Comfort newspaper, to Kerrville in that direction, and to Seguin and I guess Bastrop in that direction, stories about what students were doing. Someone had been elected secretary of such-and-such club, the newspaper got a story about that.

 

I had an experience—again, probably developing this maybe more than you wish—when we were sending stories about our football games, stories about our campus events, our fine arts festival and those kind of things, we were sending those stories out to all these newspapers and radio stations. I tried to visit some of those newspapers over the course of the year, tried to visit most of them. Well, I dropped in on the editor of a newspaper west of here—I don’t even remember what town—and identified myself, and the editor said, “Oh, I know you. I know you. I use your stuff all the time,” and he turned around and picked up off of his desk a stack of notepaper where he wrote notes on it. He flipped it over, and sure enough, he’d taken my news releases, cut them in half, and used the blank side as his notepaper. (laughs) Didn’t publish it at all. He told me, “Well, young man, don’t be disheartened. You just send me stories about what my hometown students are doing, and I guarantee you, I’ll use them.” Taught me a lesson.

 

So we began focusing in that way and making that a primary focus of our news service. But of course, for the San Marcos Record we did cover in detail and gave them detailed stories about just about everything of significance that went on on campus. The Austin paper got a lot of that. The two San Antonio newspapers, the Light and the Express News, got everything, and then we began feeding the television stations which were still in their infancy, you might say, there in Austin and San Antonio. So probably more than one would care to know, that’s what we were doing and trying to do in the news service.

 

THIBODEAUX:   So in that capacity is that how you came in contact with President Johnson or with Lyndon Johnson?

 

ROCHE:   I think that was why President McCrocklin asked me to come and sit down among the several who would be there when the president came after the death of his agent’s daughter so that we could be there. Anyway, I assume that’s why he asked me to come. He also asked the editor of the College Star, which leads into a story if you’d like to hear it.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Oh, certainly.

 

ROCHE:   After that meeting—it went on for an hour or so—this is a side notice. The president was sitting with his back to the windows there in the then president’s office in the main building, and a couple of coeds were walking by outside. I happened to glance around, and they were walking by and chatting and one of them happened to glance inside and turned to the other one and did a double take. I could tell she was talking excitedly to her companion, “That’s the president in there.” (laughs)

 

But anyway, after that—oh, it ran on for about an hour-long meeting and the visit—I was talking with somebody and I noticed that the president was with several students, and I was delighted to see that. I thought that was great. But I ambled over anyway and stood watching what he was telling them. He pulled some photographs out of his coat pocket and began showing them to students, and they were pictures that his son-in-law had sent him from Vietnam. His son-in-law was stationed in Vietnam and they were about Viet Cong who had been captured. So that issue was never far from his mind.

 

But after that session was over, the president walked out on the quad and the word had gotten around campus. I guess the two students spread the word that the president’s on campus. They’d already put up a rope about halfway down the quad from the main building, and the president was doing his thing. He was shaking hands up and down the line, and the editor of the College Star came up him—did ask me, “I’d like to invite the president up to the College Star office. You think I ought to do that?” and I encouraged him to do it. The editor’s name was Edmond Komandosky, Ed Komandosky, who lives in Taylor now.

 

So he went up to the president and invited him to come up to the Star office, probably said something like, “Well, you were editor of the Star when you were here, and I’m editor today. I’d like to show you the College Star newsroom. Would you like to see it?” And the president said something like, “Sure. Let’s go.”  So Ed and the president headed off to the Lueders Hall, which was an old building right next to the main building—it’s gone now—and took the president up and showed him the College Star office. And the president seemed pleased to be able to see all those awards that the Star had won.

 

He was walking out the newsroom door and another one of our students walked up to him, a young lady named Gayle Shipp. Gayle—I’m not sure of her married name but I think she maintained her maiden name as her professional name—went to Austin television and later became news director and anchor at one of those stations. But anyway, here she was a twenty-year-old college coed. And she was the news editor—news director or whatever the title was—of the programs we were doing for KCNY, the local radio station in San Marcos, and she and I put that together once a week about, I think, a thirty-minute program of college news.

 

Gayle saunters up to the president and said, “Mr. President, I’m Gayle Shipp. I’m news director of the college radio program, and I’m wondering if you would make a statement on tape for use in this week’s program,” words to that effect. I believe it impressed the president of the United States that a college student would walk up to the president and ask and he said, “Fine.” And so in we went into the booth that was set up in there. (laughs) And I trailed along behind. Tiny little booth, I think perhaps about six feet wide and about eight—maybe at most—ten feet long.

 

But the president sat down across the table where all the equipment was, and Gayle sat down on the other side. And I was backed up against the wall on the other side just almost leaning over them, it was so small a room. Well, one fellow on my right, I think, was the Secret Service agent. To my left was the guy carrying the football—which you know what the football was—with the code. It has to stay with the president at all times, I understand, in case they have to do some unforeseen kind of things and respond to any attack on the United States with certain information.

 

So there we were, five of us in this tiny little room. I was incredibly impressed. (laughs) Here I was in a tiny room and one of the other four people there was the president of the United States. Wow! Wait till I tell my grandkids. But anyway, the president started talking and got about ten or fifteen, maybe thirty seconds deep into his comments, and I looked over at the equipment and realized there wasn’t a thing going on that tape. There were two settings. One was for a feed to KCNY and the other was to the tape machine, and it was set to KCNY. And KCNY wasn’t taking the feed at the time, (laughs) or else they would’ve heard the president talking.

 

Now, I faced a quandary. Do I interrupt the president of the United States or just let him go ahead and finish and we have nothing on tape, and I just couldn’t see that. So summoning my courage, I interrupted and said, “Mr. President, excuse me, but we have a problem with the equipment, and with your permission I would like to correct it because we’re not getting anything on the tape,” or words to that effect. He very kindly said, “Oh, please correct the equipment.”

 

So I had to lean—it was so small I literally had to lean over the president. I was very close to him. Out the corner of my eye, I know that Secret Service agent, I’m sure, (laughs) sort of wondered or whatever. Anyway, it took ten or fifteen seconds to make the correction and then he finished his statement. You know, it was a nice statement about how nice to be on the campus or whatever it was like that. It wasn’t any big political statement although one of the newsmen, Charles Murphy—I think he was with NBC—got hold of the young lady who did the tape there and said, “Could I listen to the tape?” You know, he was looking for a story. And so Gayle probably asked me—I don’t know about that. Anyway, we did give him permission. There wasn’t any great news in there. It was, Howdy, hometown folks. Good to be with you, kind of thing. That’s far more than you ever wanted to know, but I just had to tell those stories.

 

THIBODEAUX:   It’s a good story the way he interacted with the students.

 

ROCHE:   Indeed.

 

THIBODEAUX:  In fact, that is a wonderful thing. I’d like to find out about how he stayed connected to the university and his influence on the university. One more thing about that visit, what was your first impression of President Johnson when you met him in the room?

 

ROCHE:  Knowing that he was coming from a funeral, his demeanor did not particularly strike me as unusual. I think I recall thinking that he was a little bit down, but as he walked into the president’s office we were lined up as a reception line, and I think the challenge of shaking hands took hold of him and he worked the line, which he loved to do. Clearly, pressing the flesh was really important to him, and I think a great deal of strength for him. That’s how he learned much or what he learned and stayed in touch all the way up through his political career.

 

But I got the treatment, as we each did, as he entered and of course introduced myself, Mr. President, my name and all that and what I did at the college. For the five seconds that we were there face-to-face, he looked into me and I had the impression—I’m pretty tall, six feet, but he’s several inches taller—and so he was taller than—he was looking down on me, and that he was looking into my eyes and almost reading everything in my mind. There was something about his eyes that really impressed me. And it must have been that ability as part of the Johnson treatment that was so famous that gave him such an ability to convince people on certain matters.

 

But he warmed to his topic. When he’d worked the reception line, we all sat down and, as I said, it was mostly a monologue, which is appropriate, although there were a few questions. A few people asked questions.  One thing that he said struck me that I didn’t know at that time. Subsequently in my reading and I’ve discovered the truth in there. His mother wanted him to go to Baylor. She went to Baylor and her family was the Baines family, and one of their predecessors had been the president of Baylor in the middle 1800s, one of the early presidents. So her family had a long history with Baylor. She apparently really wanted young Lyndon to go to Baylor, but it was beyond the question in terms of money and distance. Baylor is another hundred and twenty miles away, and Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College is like thirty miles away and much less expensive to attend. The president commented that his mother—or maybe he said mother or family, I forget which—really wanted him to go to Baylor. And that surprised me because I had been led to believe up until that time that Southwest Texas was the place he was bound to go.

 

THIBODEAUX:  But he expressed no regrets?

 

ROCHE:   Didn’t seem to. He seemed very happy and not only in that statement but in many other things he had said. What was the story? He was senate majority leader—no, it came in one of his speeches—and I don’t recall which one—when he made a reference to Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College as his alma mater. He did often, I understand, on the senate floor. And one time he made a comment that that is my alma mater, Mr. President, meaning the president of the Senate during the time I guess he was in the Senate. So he had a great deal of pride, I believe, in this institution. I think evidence all points in that direction.

 

THIBODEAUX:  I heard a story that when he was running as vice president on the Kennedy ticket that he’d hoped to end his campaign at Southwest Texas but wasn’t able to. Do you know that story?

 

ROCHE:   No, I do not. I really don’t. I had heard that.

 

THIBODEAUX:   I think that Dr. [John G.] Flowers just didn’t want to be so politicized on campus.

 

ROCHE:   Perhaps that was what occurred. And of course, when he was elected in 1964, Southwest Texas State provided the band as the lead of the entire presidential parade. I was so delighted because our college band got, oh, twenty or twenty-five minutes of airtime. All three networks were focused on our band in front of the viewing area after he was inaugurated, and here the parade was organizing behind our band. But there was our band out performing in front of the presidential viewing platform for the twenty or twenty-five minutes while the rest of the parade was trying to get lined up. But I was back here in San Marcos watching them, and I was just tickled pink to see us getting all that airtime.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Well, moving back a little bit, do you remember when he was on campus in 1961 for the spring commencement?

 

ROCHE:  Yes, I do indeed, and he made the speech at that occasion, that primarily he was the principal speaker. If I’m not mistaken and I’m a little hazy on this, was he awarded the honorary doctorate at that time?  It was then or later, I believe he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the university. Maybe it was some years later. [May 27, 1962]

 

But the story I was mentioning to you that when the—it was in Evans Auditorium the graduation exercises were held. I don’t know what Evans Auditorium—it was Evans Auditorium at the time, and obviously named after President Evans. And I don’t know what the building serves as today, but there is Strahan Gymnasium, I think, is where all the basketball games are played, but they were played in that gymnasium at that time. [Dr. Roche confirmed the location as the Strahan Gymnasium.] And the stands were absolutely packed, and of course, mostly with proud parents and in comes the procession led by President Flowers and President Johnson. All of a sudden I heard little whisperings that was going on of disappointment. People were saying, Oh, we can see Lyndon any old time we want to, but where’s Lady Bird? They’d heard, I guess, that Lady Bird was going to be there. (laughs) They wanted to see Lady Bird because, Oh, Lyndon, well golly, yeah, we can see him anytime we want to, but we don’t get to see Lady Bird. I thought that was very interesting.

 

THIBODEAUX:  That is. I think she was so popular here.

 

ROCHE:  Oh, indeed, she was, even though she was a graduate of the University of Texas.

 

THIBODEAUX:  His next visit was for Mr. McCrocklin’s inauguration.

 

ROCHE:   I guess it was. I really don’t recall precisely each time he was here. I know of those, and that would’ve been in November—was it in November of 1964?

 

THIBODEAUX:   I know it was in ’64.

 

ROCHE:   I believe it was either late October—I think early November. Yeah, it was in November of 1964 because he made a comment in his remarks and he said, “I like this installation of a president so much I think I’ll have one of my own here in a couple of months.” (laughs)

 

THIBODEAUX:   That was very good. Do you remember anything about that speech?

 

ROCHE:   I really don’t in spite of the fact that after it was over, I believe, I actually transcribed it and had it in form to present to the press. That was one of my duties as director of the news service to host the press anytime they visited campus. But I don’t remember the speech that well. I have not read that speech in years. As you know, he did announce the formation of the Job Corps, I think, at that speech and the placement of, I guess, the first Job Corps center here in San Marcos out at Gary Air Base. Beyond that I’m very hazy about the speech.

 

THIBODEAUX:   You talked about some interaction with Secret Service. Was that at this event or was that at another?

 

ROCHE:  I had an interesting experience with Secret Service. (laughs) I don’t tell this one to too many people. But my job once the Secret Service had cleared press representatives through, other than the White House press—they came as a group and were handled separately. But the local and area media they had to clear through me. Once the Secret Service had cleared them and passed them on through, then they stopped—I was their next stop. Well, they were clearing some press people, and I motioned one of them to come on over, thinking the Secret Service had already cleared them. They hadn’t. (laughs) And the Secret Service man let me know that, Don’t you ever do that again. He really—but that was only a year after President Kennedy’s assassination. I do not fault them at all for being extra careful.

 

It was interesting how the Secret Service mellowed over the years perhaps because they were now familiar with the president’s alma mater and those of us here that they would be working—that would be some of their contacts. I had very good relations with them after that one incident even to the point, I think, on one of the president’s last visits they gave me a pin, a little pin, that I could put on my lapel, which had a design on it, and it said how close I could get to the president. Having sat about ten feet away from him in President McCrocklin’s office, I assume that was how close I could get. But they issued pins, I guess, not only to me but other staff members who would be having regular contact with the president when he came on campus. And it shows how the Secret Service became less nervous, I guess you’d say, about their responsibility, and it is a huge responsibility. And I think that all of us applaud the duty they have to protect the president of the United States regardless of who is occupying the office. It’s a very important task. But that just shows that over time the Secret Service had mellowed quite a bit.

 

THIBODEAUX:   I remember you—talking about the Secret Service that you had mentioned that Secret Service had some concerns about some of the citizens in town?

 

ROCHE:   Yes. Of course, a lot of ranchers around this area, many ranches, and of course that leads to hunting and to having weapons to keep undesirable animal life away that are marauding and harming the domestic stock. And ranchers do have a tendency to rack those rifles in their pickups, and that was real fine. I don’t know whether they’re still doing it today in this area or not. I live elsewhere, so I can’t comment about the San Marcos situation.

 

But back then it was common to see several pickups a day going through town with the guns racked in front of the back window in the pickup. Well, apparently that made the Secret Service nervous when Lyndon Johnson was in the area. And I’m not sure how it transpired, but apparently that concern was relayed to the local news media and so the San Marcos Record, I assume the editor Walter Buckner made the decision, ran either a story or an editorial—probably an editorial—asking the folks in the area with rifles in their pickup gun racks to do something else with them, take them down anytime the president—and I guess, the vice president is in the area. I don’t know what the result of that was. I probably at the time did notice. But it did create a situation where the San Marcos Record  ran something that called upon the area folks to set the Secret Service at ease.

 

THIBODEAUX:  A question about Mr. McCrocklin and Lyndon Johnson. Do you know anything about their relationship?

 

ROCHE:   Very little. I do know that Dr. McCrocklin was mayor of Kingsville, is my understanding, at one time, and I’m not sure whether he was mayor at the time he left there to come to Southwest Texas as president. I understand he was active in political matters in that area and I presume in the state, and thus there must have been some contacts between the two. As a person who could observe from afar, if you would, I detected that there did seem to be a good working relationship there. And clearly the president thought enough of Dr. McCrocklin that he would ask him to come to the Johnson administration as the—no, he was the number two man in the Health, Education, and Welfare Department, so a very high honor to Dr. McCrocklin. So they knew each other and apparently knew each other well. I’m sure that one of President Johnson’s secrets of success was that he just knew a lot of people, and he knew them well. I guess Dr. McCrocklin was one of those folks who, since he did serve in the Johnson administration, was maybe a little bit better known than most others.

 

THIBODEAUX:  Were you still there when the transfer of the fish hatchery took place? Do you remember that?

 

ROCHE:   That, as I recall, was in process as I left in 1967. I know I heard discussions of it before I left in 1967. The transfer of title of the fish hatchery property from the federal government to the state of Texas and namely, the Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College, in my hazy recollection but it at best is that, is that they were already looking at plans for the building that sits there now. It’s the administrative building for the university, the J. C. Kellam Building. But that’s about as far as I went on that one.

 

THIBODEAUX:   That was a good example of their beneficial, I guess, relationship.

 

ROCHE:   Yes. And of course also the president’s announcement during the inauguration of Dr. McCrocklin that the Johnson administration was going to establish the Job Corps and then establish, I guess, its first center here in San Marcos, that was quite an honor. It couldn’t help but reflect somewhat on that relationship between Johnson and McCrocklin.

 

THIBODEAUX:   You were not here when the McCrocklin controversy came about?

 

ROCHE:   No. I was not here at the time. Of course, friends of mine kept me informed about the things that were occurring there, but I was, I guess, in Illinois at that time and had no firsthand knowledge of it.

 

THIBODEAUX:   It was curious wondering whether or not his relationship with Lyndon Johnson at that point may have been detrimental to his case mainly because being in the Johnson administration that he garnered some national attention.

 

ROCHE:   He couldn’t help but. And I guess wouldn’t know on that. My last contact with Dr. McCrocklin probably came in the summer of 1967. I left in August of 1967 to go to Southern Illinois University. I began my doctoral work then, and have been away ever since except for occasional visits and I love to come back to this town. It’s a wonderful town and were it not for children and grandchildren in another part of this country, I would be back in an instant.

 

THIBODEAUX:   Well, that’s good to know. 

 

One other event that I skipped over was the 1964 signing of the Higher Education Act. Can you tell us your memories of that?

 

ROCHE:   Yeah, that was ’65 actually, as I recall, 1965. As I mentioned, we knew that President Johnson had signed the—I forget the name of the earlier act which is the lower grades—the Public Education Act or something like that a year or so earlier—had signed that bill at the, I guess, the high school in Johnson City where he graduated. And we knew that the Higher Education Act was working its way through Congress, and I think most of us just in the back of our minds figured he’d likely want to come here and sign it.

 

I did get a call after the bill had passed—I don’t know how much later, maybe a week or two later, but it might’ve been days—from the White House, and I guess it was a Secret Service representative, I presume, but I’ve really forgotten—saying that the president had decided to come here to Southwest Texas State, his alma mater, and sign the Higher Education Act of 1965. A great recognition of the president’s feelings for his alma mater. I recall that President McCrocklin and his assistant and I—I think it was just the three of us—met with representatives of the White House, and I presume probably part of the arrangement staff plus Secret Service, and there were two or three representatives. We met at a restaurant out on Interstate 35, as I recall, and I honestly don’t remember a whole lot about that meeting. But the time was set and subject to the president’s approval, I guess, and arrangements were identified, what they wanted. The decision was to sign the Higher Education Act in front of the main building on the quad. Perfect, absolutely perfect. Only one possible problem and that’s the weather. But it was—what time of year was that? I’m trying to remember. Was it in the spring? It was during a time of year when the weather normally is good.

 

My responsibilities of course were to arrange for the media, as it was anytime the president was on campus, to host the media and help them in whatever way I can, the White House press or the area media. One of the things we had to do was to get a photographer’s stand prepared, and that was important because the TV stations wanted that footage. (end of CD) And we got the dimensions from the White House, as I recall, how big it should be and everything, and we were just going to build one big nice big one.

 

Somebody came up with the idea, what about the weather? Now, how are you going to move that down to—we decided the alternative would be Evans Auditorium for the signing if the weather turned bad. And as we said, Lyndon Johnson would not let the weather be bad. (laughs) But as it turned out it did. Well, we also had to make arrangements for telephone, and we had telephones up. I think we put those probably in what was at the time the fine arts building, which as you come out of the main building on the quad, it’s the building to the left. I don’t know what that building is now. But we also had to run a parallel—another set of them down to Evans Auditorium [Dr. Roche corrected location to Strahan Gymnasium] just in case the weather did turn bad. Thank heavens that we had a duplicate set of phones down in Evans Auditorium, and we decided to build the photographers stand—not one big one—but two small ones. And it’s a good thing because the weather turned bad, we just loaded up the smaller ones on a truck and took them down.

 

Well, I’m giving you my perspective as director of the News Service. And I’m trying to remember how large a crowd there was. I don’t recall a huge crowd there, but gosh, I guess maybe I was caught up with my work with media and maybe didn’t notice. So the president wound up signing it in, as the photographs show, in Evans Auditorium. And it was wonderful in that photograph taken of his signing that the various people standing behind him because I remember Professor Nichols was there. I haven’t seen that photograph in quite a while, but Dr. Nolle—Dean Nolle, President McCrocklin and several other folks are probably representing—and I don’t know who—I don’t recall who they are. But the college was really well-represented on that occasion.

 

In my years at the University of Alabama and the Higher Education Act would come up, I would probably say, That’s Southwest Texas State then College, later University. Now, of course, Texas State University, and I’d brag, “Well, I was on the faculty and I was there when he signed that act,” (laughs) as if I took any credit for it at all. That’s my recollections.

 

 What an important event that is in American history. It said some things that allowed us a more balanced approach to education. It allowed the nation to include women, minorities of any kind, give them a greater place at the education table, and consequently in athletics but in many other ways, we have seen the impact of that very important act and even as it was proved again recently, I think the basic pattern is still in place. So I have to believe that the president of the United States was guided to a significant extent by his attitudes toward education, and some of those values that we talked about that showed up in those early College Star editorials found expression in perhaps a more mature kind of way in the Higher Education Act of 1965, as well as obviously in other acts, but we’re talking about the Higher Education Act of 1965. That was clearly one of young Lyndon Johnson’s concerns as the editor of the Star and remained so in that letter that he wrote back to Dr. Evans in 1937. As he and his administration helped draft and pass that Higher Education Act, a real testimony to the wonderful work that that president did in that very important area and the influence that this institution had through the president on that act.

 

THIBODEAUX:   So this is a question I ask everyone. What is your opinion of President Johnson’s greatest legacy in the Central Texas area? It doesn’t have to be the nation but for this area.

 

ROCHE:   Well, everyone said, of course, there are many. I’m inclined to think it’s the Lower Colorado River Authority, and I’m not enough of a historian to know how deeply he was involved in that, but I have to believe he was a major figure in the development of the LCRA. It has done amazing things for Central Texas. So that would be my response. And that doesn’t ignore the important contributions that he made through larger acts that affected this area, but specifically Central Texas, that’d be my guess, my thought.

 

THIBODEAUX:   That was a good one. I think that’s all the questions that I have. Do you have any other stories or business to talk about that I missed? (end of interview)