Luci Baines Johnson Interview: Nov. 22, 1963 and the Transition

well as you know we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your relationship with the Kennedys your memories of that fateful day and the the ensuing days when your father first took the presidency well start with the Kennedy family Lucy what do you recall about your family's relationship with the Kennedy family respectful gracious listening my father had a great deal of admiration for President Kennedy and for mrs. Kennedy as did my mother that was all that was transferred to me I know I've heard a lot of comments by people over the generations about judgment animosity estrangement between different members of the Kennedy family or the Johnson family or either of their staffs as for me personally none of that was a part of my life I never heard my parents say anything except words of respect and empathy tremendous amount of oh but for the grace of God and personal angst and passionate desire to to lift the trauma that had befallen that young and beautiful and vibrant family and you know my father's words oh I would give all that I have if I weren't standing here today were written on that speech that he delivered to the people of the United States but they were emblazoned in his heart what you recall your first meeting with President Kennedy well my first meeting with candidate Kennedy took place at the Democratic National Convention after senator Kennedy had defeated senator Johnson and I had a lot of mixed emotions obviously I was a young girl of 13 this was a traumatizing time I went in with my father while President Kennedy was dressing I felt awkward about being there at the time fearful that maybe I ought not to have been somehow and yet he invited me into his room with my father and did all the human being could do to look me in the eyes to reach out and give me a to make me feel like this was all going to be alright we were going to be a team he needed my father is I needed my father and that if I would give him my support and enthusiasm that would be a gift beyond measure now we all know that my support and my enthusiasm was a little import but that's not the way he made me feel and I loved him for that and my father made it very clear that that's what he wanted that we were a team and that is from those moments on that's what I felt what do you recall about your father's transition from majority leader in the Senate to vice president you know that states it was difficult my father loved the Senate all that he has written indicates that that was a golden time in in his life members of the Congress were his family in fact years later when I married for the first time there was criticism that maybe it was a state wedding because we were having so many people from the Congress invited to the to the wedding and yet we felt like golly if we admitted all the people from the Congress you know who would we've invited as their friends if those were the people that you you you who understood your journey back then you went to school together with their kids you went to PTA meetings as as parents to church as parents to little league games as parents and children to to church and synagogue if it's a very different it was a very different time so you might fight with frenzy on the on the on the floor of the Senate or the house but afterwards you came and and had a drink together or went over to each other's houses and and you put your arms across the table and you tried to as my father would quote Isaiah come and reason together and understand that each of you were just trying to do the best you could by your convictions and the people you served did you get a sense of the evolution of President John's President Kennedy's and Vice President Johnson's relationship during the Kennedy administration well I've heard a lot about you know it's hard to separate sometimes mark history as it was in history in the rear view mirror I was just 16 years old when President Kennedy was assassinated and I've heard an awful lot about who thought what when where and why afterwards either from people's conversations or from what I've read or what I'd listen to so I recognize that memory can be an imperfect servant but I do believe I have one very strong advantage and that I was so young and so impressionable and was lifted into a situation that was so beyond any experience that I had ever had that some ways it sort of synthesized and it's sort of frozen in time maybe in a way for me that it might not be quite so much with people who had more history and and more experience I felt my father during the vice presidency was really in a position that was very difficult for him and that he was struggling with he was in charge in the Senate and he knew it and he exercised it and yet he had a great deference to everybody on both sides of the aisle and he knew that if he took too much charge he would be less effective he needed to have that right position of leadership coupled with that right position of respect and deference in the vice presidency it's kind of hard to to define your roles in so many ways the president defines your roles and I know that it meant a great deal to my father that President Kennedy deferred to him for leadership in the in space I know it meant a lot to him that President Kennedy deferred to him to the degree that he did about the temperament the climate of the Congress that he had been so much a part of but I know that it was hard for him to be in the position of needing to to wait to show that deference daddy was a student of history first and foremost and so waiting and showing that deference being a team member was first and foremost and sometimes and I suspect when needing to do that was in conflict with what he thought might need to be done at the moment must have been hard but I felt like it was about biting your tongue and biding your time right what was your experience like on November 22nd 1963 well I don't think that there's a person alive today who doesn't know exactly where he or she was when President Kennedy was shot or wouldn't better yet when they were told about the shooting of President Kennedy and I am no exception I thought for many years that it was every American and then a married a man who was British and I spoke with his family and I came to realize that this was really a worldwide experience at the head of the leading country of the free world who was handsome and young and vibrant with a new strength and charisma that had captured the world stage was all of a sudden wiped off from it in a moment of violence that we really for at least a generation had been had been spared on a national basis it it left everybody feeling it since a personal grave violation and I am no exception I know exactly where I was what I was doing what I had eaten a before I heard every moment of it is is clearer to me than anything about yesterday's yeah you're you you were in Washington your parents were obviously in Dallas your sister was in Austin Texas what how did you learn of the the attempt on President Kennedy's life well I was in Spanish class and a young girl came running into my class a classmate saying the president's been shot the president's been shot and other members of the class responded with comments like you know don't talk like that in front of Lucy she's here and the and and the poor girl who had announced it you know felt a sense of you know gosh I'm just trying to tell you all what's happened and then there was of course an immense amount of Twitter and and and a real sense of trauma for all of us and my teacher who had been on the Bataan Death March in the Philippines took a commanding role in the class trying to bring us all together and said this is just conjecture this is not something that we know and until we do girls there will be Spanish now you can imagine how many of us were prepared to have Spanish and yet I think she who had been through so much trauma at a very tender age and her life had this fortitude of you will move on and none of us were prepared to move on but all of a sudden the bells of the National Cathedral began to ring and ring and ring and 400 young women without a word of instruction got up and marched single-file towards the gym which also served as our Chapel and I marched too and all of a sudden I looked up and I saw two girls breaking line something that just simply wasn't done in an all-girls school in the 1960s and it caught my attention until I realized why everyone was moving back so they could move forward was because they were my best friends and there was a keen awareness that they ought to be close to me because my March was going to be a different one and so we marched down into the gymnasium without a word sat in our seats fell to our knees and we're told by the headmistress that President Kennedy had been shot that Governor Connally had been shot that it was a grave situation that had taken place in Dallas but they did not know what the outcome would be all that they knew was the president and governor Connally needed our prayers President Kennedy what's my precedent but but he was also my father's boss and he had also become I felt my personal friend governor Connelly was my uncle Johnny he had worked for my father but we had literally lived together in the same house we had played together prayed together they were family and nobody ever mentioned my father and my mother and yet I knew they were there too I listened I pray I rose from my chair when we were dismissed I went out into the quadrangle that was next to the gymnasium I looked up and saw a young man approaching me and heard a young girl saying man on campus which I guess was being said because he was young and he was good-looking and there weren't many men and it was sort of an announcement to girls who might be leaning over tending to their underskirt or something that they might not want to be and I recognized that it was one of my father's secret service the Secret Service had been very thoughtful and sending somebody I knew and as Jean Nunn approached me I did all that I could think to do and that was to run in the opposite direction run from him rather than to him as if by doing so I could avoid hearing what I knew he had to tell me and what I knew I couldn't bear to hear my running or outrunning the Secret Service of obviously was a ludicrous thought he caught me but his arms around me like a big brother and said I'm sorry Lucy I'm so sorry and I remembered looking up to him and into his eyes and taking my fist and literally knocking his chest and thing Oh Jean and I remember him saying I'm sorry Lucy and I said no Jane and he said I'm sorry Lucy and nobody said what no and I'm sorry was all about because it was just unthinkable it wasn't it's not something you could verbalize and then I caught my breath and my conscience and I said I suppose we have to leave then and he said yes and I looked up at him because it was a question that was in the middle of my throat that I dared not ask but knew I had to and said and Daddy mama and he said they're okay as okay as they can be when did you first make contact with your parents after the shooting well I'd like if I could to go on with the rest of that story I asked Jean if we needed to go to the headmistress office look I said we were going to leave that's what we needed to do and when we did Jean of course told the headmistress but there was all that time as we walked kind of arm and arm where he knew what I knew and I knew what he knew but nobody could even say it we left got in the car went to what was our home there wasn't a vice-presidential home at the time and something very significant that I would like to share if I could took place many many years later I was taking one of those girls who joined me in the halls to march to the gymnasium Helen Lindo Gordon through the library with her two young daughters and I was sharing this story and I looked at her Lynne and I said Helen you know I've often wondered over the years what happened to you after we were dismissed did you go back to class where was the school dismissed what happened to you and she looked at me just dumbfounded by my question said oh my god Lucy you remember I never left you I went with you to miss Lee's office I climbed into the car with you we crouched on the floor because we didn't know if there was some sort of conspiracy if we could be vulnerable until we got out of the car at your home and I never left your side until you were in your parents arms and all of a sudden every bit of that came back and all of these years with more and more conversation and more and more understanding of post-traumatic stress syndrome I had thought of that as something that happens people at war are to their families I've never really looked at it on a personal level in terms of the assassination but I guess I just had felt so acutely alone so terribly isolated those hours between my learning of the assassination until I was in my parents arms but I didn't even remember that my best friend that never ever left my side when did you first speak with your your parents after the assassination had occurred when they came back two M's I saw them on TV I desperately wanted something to do that would be positive in the southern part of the United States where I had grown up when some daddy dies one of the first things you do is you go to the kitchen you start making a pot roast or cookies or something to take to somebody's house that obviously wasn't going to be a useful activity on my part and so I thought what can I do and I recognized that I went to an all-girls school my heroin clean didn't feel much initiative to to so turn the weak sometimes and so I went and washed my hair it somehow felt irreverent it somehow felt the wrong thing to do and and yet I know it would need to be done and in the days to come there might not be the time I stayed glued to the television set to live news which was not as much a part of our daily existence as it is today with on a 24-hour news cycle we're bombarded with what is the news of the moment and a lot of rehashing of it all day long but that wasn't within my experience news was something that happened in the morning the news was something that happened at 6 o'clock at night news was something that happened at 11 o'clock news wasn't in your face all day long but that day it was and so I like Americans across the country went to the man that everybody said we trusted most Walter Cronkite and I sat and I watched and I cried and I said how could it be it can't be true it can't be true it can't be true as I began to digest of course it was you saw your father's first remarks to the nation which he made it Andrews Air Force Base and then shortly thereafter I take it they returned home yes and and the irony of it is the great irony of it is I went to the Secret Service immediately and said I want to go I need to be at Andrews I need to be standing there to greet my parents and it was the first of many times that the Secret Service would take charge of my life and they said no Lucy we simply cannot take on any X more exposure of your family to the public eye then we have to you're here you're safe your parents know that and for you to leave would only potentially add to their angst and therefore we're saying no not we're asking you now but clearly they were telling me now and that was the kind of relationship we had it was one of my asking they're denying our accepting the object of my inquiry for the next five years do you remember what your parents said to you when they returned when you were reunited after that day just hugs just the same words that Gina and I have had for each other I'm sorry I'm sorry and no no and then the sense that we will move on we'll move on together we just hope you understand that our lives will not be our own and they weren't ever were those next couple days like what do you recall about the ensuing days after that tragic day my parents never seem to sleep there was always a thundering heard of folks through the house there were a lots of these are what we will do being shared I remember years later reading Jack Valenti's book about the night after the assassination when there was so much conversation about how we needed to move on how the President may have been killed but how we couldn't let his dreams die with him how our country would move on because that was the right thing to do by his convictions and the right thing to do by our convictions and I can remember looking out my door before I went to bed that night of November 22nd and seeing the light on and hearing voices and I can remember getting up in the middle of the night because it was a sleepless night for the world and seeing the light on and hearing the voices and I can remember doing that sort of time and time again and then falling finally falling into sleep and getting up with daybreak so I wasn't there listening to what was taking place but I surely am there to confirm that there was a very vigilant a voice of planning and commitment going on in the room next door to me afterwards I was present for all of the funeral commitments I marched to st. Matthew's Cathedral behind my parents I was in the process of personally converting to Catholicism and so I felt a special comfort in being in that church I watched that unbelievably strong and beautiful first lady hold the hands of her children with grace and stature I never saw anybody look more alone in my life and yet she was surrounded by such a large and vibrant family my heart broke as did our nation's when they saw that little boy salute his father's casket I went home to a sense of emptiness because I had no role to fulfill anymore and yet my parents had no time to call their own somehow I was expected to go back to school and expected to go back to learn that was my job and yet I felt consumed with the angst of it all there was no psychological grieving counseling that you see go on so much today and institutions who are met by this kind of trauma I I remember the first argument I think I ever heard my parents have witnessing it I heard my parents voices raised at each other which was just not something I've been exposed to and yet I lived right across the hall from them I confess I did where I probably had no business doing I I was called by their raised voices and I I walked out into the hallway and I stood there and listened to a conversation that should have been thoroughly private but wasn't and I heard my mother say to my father Lyndon I just simply can't move on that day and my father's saying bird I know I understand but December 7th is a day that works for the Secret Service works for mrs. Kennedy it's a day we have to move into the White House and my mother's saying Lyndon any day but that absolutely any day and my father's saying bird I don't want to deny you anything in this life you've been my life's partner you're my best friend I understand where you're coming from but these are not our decisions it works from mrs. Kennedy it works for the Secret Service it's what we have and my mother seeming to take a deep breath couldn't see her could only hear the pregnant pauses and saying you're right I'll do what we have to do what was her resistance to that day well I was a young girl of 16 I hadn't taken American history I hadn't taken world history I didn't realize that that was her 900 December 7th of course was a day that lived in infamy merely for all time but especially for her generation because it was the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor I couldn't understand what was a hang-up mother about a particular date and yet for them to start their journey as the 36th President of the United States and his first lady on the day that was so filled with scars for them to add to the scar of the assassination the scar of the memory of World War two just I could imagine in retrospect how onerous that felt for mother and I can see in retrospect my father's courage and recognizing that it was not a decision to make about our personal preferences it was a decision about what was the right thing to do by the widow of our slain president and by the security of our country and it became acutely apparent that a lot of the decisions and the days to come would be made by what we had to do and needed to do more than what our personal preferences were we moved in to the White House on December 7th 1963 and that night was sort of the first moment of life was going to go on and there would be personal time and personal space for us my parents took a break from the incessant meetings that they were a part of from dawn until midnight to go to the comfort of a close friend's home and have dinner now the close friends home that they chose was a staff member and I have no doubt that they probably worked throughout the meal but at least they were in the privacy of loved ones space and off the public stage but for a moment and I was in my room at the White House which was far different than any room I'd ever slept in I had a fireplace and all of a sudden instead of feeling the burden of the previous couple of weeks I began to feel a little bit of a fancy at the future I asked my girlfriend who had come to spend the night her name was Beth Jenkins she was a daughter of Walter Jenkins where my parents were if she knew anything about fireplace flues and I am convinced that she comforted me into thinking that she did possibly I just comforted myself but the bottom line is I lit a fire and in a matter of moments I felt no comfort at all because the room was enveloping in smoke and I recognized that I could be in a desperate situation and I didn't know even how to get to the bathroom yet how to put the fire out after I got the only source of water that was close so I sort of blindly felt my way to the bathroom door found a juice glass went and tried to put it out recognized that that was going to be far too lengthy a process went back into the bathroom with a trash can that I found managed to fill the trashcan with water and doused the fire out in a great sense of stress and panic mode climbed up on the top of my desk to open what were I guess six-foot eight-foot ceilings and windows rather in my in my bathroom only to have my breath totally taken away by the fact that a Whitehouse policeman was directly underneath me and I was a 16 year old girl in a nightgown the trauma of having my personal space so painfully invaded and recognized with obvious horror and judgement by the policemen below I left my heart racing the thought that my contribution to history might be that I'd burned the place down the first night was pretty overwhelming I spent that first week in the White House which you might think would have some sense of excitement with some sense of trauma and that it was my responsibility to help clean the smoke off of the walls paint over the mistakes that I have made it was a great lesson for me that first week to recognize the repercussions of my own actions could indeed have a public imprint not just on my life but on my family's life but on the country's life in retrospect I think it probably was a very helpful experience traumatic as it was to introducing me to life in the White House as a teenager because on that very first night I came to appreciate that I was just a part of a team my mother came to referring to the White House sometimes as the public housing the best public housing in the world but indeed still just that and we were simply visitors and we better make sure that our time there was a credit pretty much did you see a change probably in your father as he took on the burdens of the presidency oh it's just feel the weight on his shoulders but there was never a moment of why me he never could afford to do that and I think most of us when we go through some sort of trauma need to go through that passage of why me but daddy needed knew that the country needed know it demanded his leadership at the highest level he could muster and he made it abundantly clear to all of us not just those first days but really all the days of the next five years that he knew our tenure there would be a very short time and there really could be no wasted moments very few private moments and in those first few weeks no moments really much at all to call your own those first two weeks the entire White House was draped in black because there was a month of mourning and so you walked through the halls with your voice low their heads are bowed you tried to be a shadow part of the backdrop you knew that there was so much more important activity taking place you didn't dare to have a personal question to either of your parents and my sister went back to school and Texas I was pretty much on my own my father was working non-stop on the first of many commitments to President Kennedy's agenda a tax bill and it was going to take his every breathing moment before Christmas but after the month mourning was over on my mother's birthday December 22nd out came Christmas we had a tree we lit it the country was going to survive for tomorrow and we were going to be a part of it and so in the midst of all of this dawn to midnight fervor over getting the tax bill out there were still twinkling lights and a sense of life would go on my hope was a selfish hope of an adolescent we couldn't make it home for Christmas my daddy's focus was are we going to get a tax bill and we'll get before Christmas are there won't be any going home for any of us December 24th all of a sudden it was packing your bag time and we were headed for the ranch and the comfort of some sense of normalcy whatever that was that I could ever capture again I'd grown up half a year in Texas half year in Washington all of my life I've had a bizarre educational experience it's no year in any one place ever no continuity of curriculum living in multiple houses my parents couldn't afford to just lock the door we always had to rent the house out and so no sense of your space staying your own you had to take that space with you or else it was going to become somebody else's but when we got to the ranch there were memories of other Christmases other Thanksgivings other birthdays a sense that this was one place we really could call home because it was conflict about the White House it was home and yet it was the people's house I'd learned the lessons of light in the fireplace that I was just a tenant here and it was a great lesson to learn because as a tenant I had a tenants responsibilities to live by the rules and the bottom line I had been a teenager with a driver's license all of a sudden that driver's license was just the chance to operate a motor vehicle not to say where it would go Lucy what is your most enduring memory of John F Kennedy a very private moment that moment at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles California when a young vibrant candidate for the President took time off to let a young girl know that her feelings mattered and he wanted me to be a part of a great team a lot of people will say their most enduring moment maybe of that funeral cortege and that that little boy saluting his daddy well it's seared in my heart forever too but I choose to remember most the optimism of the Kennedy administration the inclusiveness and the caring that was shown to me that day when he simply reached out and said welcome aboard because I think as I look back on that day when President Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were sworn in as president and vice president that they really asked a nation to come let's forge a new frontier together and I choose to remember that he asked me to Lucy thank you very much

Channel: TheLBJLibrary

Views: 120,716

Rating: 4.6100278 out of 5

Keywords: Assassination Of John F. Kennedy (Crime), Lyndon B. Johnson (US President)

Id: Tu7ZC94MCho

Length: 52min 51sec (3171 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 12 2013