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John B. Connally Oral History Interview I, 10/1/69, by Joe B

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John B. Connally Oral History Interview I, 10/1/69, by Joe B LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION LBJ Library 2313 Red River Street Austin, Texas 78705 http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/biopage.asp JOHN B. CONNALLY ORAL HISTORY, INTERVIEW I PREFERRED CITATION For Internet Copy: Transcript, John B. Connally Oral History Interview I, 10/1/69, by Joe B. Frantz, Internet Copy, LBJ Library. For Electronic Copy on Compact Disc from the LBJ Library: Transcript, John B. Connally Oral History Interview I, 10/1/69, by Joe B. Frantz, Electronic Copy, LBJ Library. INTERVIEW I DATE: October 1, 1969 INTERVIEWEE: JOHN CONNALLY INTERVIEWER: Joe B. Frantz PLACE: Governor Connally's office in Houston, Texas Tape 1 of 1, Side 1 F: Governor, you and I, I think, share experiences in this. We must have both been undergraduates at the time that Lyndon Johnson first emerged from the crowd, and I would just like to have on record how you first became aware of him. C: Well, I first became aware of him in my undergraduate days at the University of Texas in, I would guess, around 1934 or 1935. My family lived at Floresville, Texas. At that time he was secretary to Congressman Richard M. Kleberg. F: You were in his district. C: Yes. So he came to Floresville, the Congressman did, and Mr. Johnson did from time to time. My daddy was quite active in--of course, it's not a big county or big city, so obviously my daddy knew him. My daddy had known his father, as a matter of fact, years before. So I first heard of him at that time, around 1934-1935. I did not really become personally acquainted with him until after he became director of the National Youth Administration. F: Were you in Alvin Wirtz' senatorial district, or does that lie outside? C: We were not then in his district, as I recall. F: He was not a factor in your life at that time? Connally -- I -- 2 C: Not at that time, no. Senator Wirtz was from Seguin, but he was not a factor in my life at that time. In the latter part of 1935 or 1936 I was in the University, and through Mr. Sam Fore, who was the publisher of the Floresville Chronicle-Journal, I applied for and got a job from the National Youth Administration, actually working principally restacking books in the state library in the capitol building and making the magnificent sum of seventeen cents an hour. At the time I got the job I went over and actually saw Mr. Johnson who, as I say, was then state administrator of the NYA. As I recall, that was the first time I met J. C. Kellam and Bill Deason. They were all part of the NYA. F: You didn't know you were meeting part of your future, did you? C: That's right. I didn't realize how much of my future I was meeting. Then in 1937, when Mr. Johnson resigned as National Youth [Administration] administrator to make the race for Congress, I again got involved in a very limited way, really. F: You were in law school at that time? C: Yes, I was in law school and did some work in his campaign headquarters. F: Were you solicited or were you just an interested young prospective lawyer who wanted to get his feet wet? C: Well, both. I was interested and also solicited, again by Mr. Fore. At that time Mr. Johnson had not lived in that congressional district for very long, and so a great many of his old friends from Mr. Kleberg's old district, which is the adjoining district, came over into the Tenth Congressional District and did an awful lot of campaigning. So on my own volition and also at the request of Mr. Fore, who called me and wrote me and so Connally -- I -- 3 forth, and wrote every friend he had in Austin asking them to go to work and help Mr. Johnson, why, I got involved in a very minor way in the campaign. F: What did you do mainly? C: Oh, answering telephones, putting up placards, mailing out material. F: Just piecework. C: Just the piecework, just the routine work, really, primarily around the headquarters office. Then I guess the third phase of my association began in the spring of 1939. F: You were president of the student body what year? C: I was president of the student body in 1938-39. I was elected in the spring of 1938, took office then and served until the end of school in 1939, so I was really elected in the spring for the school year 1938-39. In the spring of 1939 I had a number of friends out on the campus, one of whom was Eddie Joseph, and I began to pick up [hints that I might get a federal job] from two or three sources, one of whom was Senator Wirtz, whom I'd gotten to know in the congressional campaign of 1937. I had been down and had talked to him. He asked me what I was going to do when I got out of school, and I told him I didn't know. Well, would I be interested in some federal job? I said, "I don't know. It depends on what it is." In the meantime, to digress a moment, in 1938 in the summer, because of my campus political activities, I had gotten involved in Ernest Thompson's campaign for governor and had worked a great deal during the spring of 1938 and into the summer. We had late primaries back in those days, and I was working full time in the Thompson Connally -- I -- 4 headquarters. That was the year of the [W. Lee "Pappy"] O'Daniel blitz. O'Daniel had won the primary with a clear majority, so in the run-off election I went over and worked for Jerry Mann, who was running for attorney general that year. So in the spring of 1939 I had had some overtures and had every reason to believe that I could get a job down in the attorney general's department. But more and more I began to hear people out on the campus saying, "Say, I understand you're going to go to work for the federal government." And I said, "No, I don't know anything about it." They said, "We've been getting questions about you." I said, "I don't know anything about it, never heard of it." Eddie Joseph operated the Campus Man's Shop, I believe was the name of it, on the Drag [Guadalupe Street], and I recall specifically on two different occasions he brought it up and asked me what kind of federal job I was going to apply for. F: To interrupt for a moment, this is the first time Eddie Joseph's name has come into any interviews. Was he close to Johnson at this stage? C: Yes, he was. He'd worked for him, and Eddie was quite well known around town. I was at a loss to understand why he was asking me these questions about my applying for a federal job, because I hadn't applied for any. I didn't have any idea what he was talking about. F: You were just trying to graduate. C: Yes, I was just trying to get out of school and having a hard enough time doing that. The second time he brought it up I thought something must be going on, so I said, "Now, this is the second time you've brought this up. I have not applied for a job anywhere, and there's bound to be some reason why [you're saying this]. This is three or four times Connally -- I -- 5 people have mentioned this to me. Now what's going on?" He said, "Well, I can't tell you, but I've been asked about you. There are some folks that have been talking to me about you, and I've been asked to give my opinion of you. I just thought you'd applied for a job." He didn't tell me what it was. Later that summer--I was finishing up that summer in law school--I guess it was Senator Wirtz who called me and said Congressman Johnson was coming to town and would be there on a certain day and wanted to visit with me. F: You hadn't had much if any direct contact with the Congressman since he'd gone off to Washington? C: No, I had not. So I told him that was fine. I met the Congressman and talked to him, and to make a long story short, he persuaded me to go to Washington as his secretary. He told me that his secretary, Sherman Birdwell from Buda, who'd been with him since he first went to Congress, wanted to come back to Texas and was coming back, and he was going to have an opening and wanted me to go up there. He explained the job and what it was, and in his typical way he made it sound like you'd be right next to the throne. To a young fellow twenty-two years old who'd never been to Washington it sounded pretty exciting and pretty alluring. F: I remember the announcement. We all thought, "Man, that lucky so-and-so!" C: Well, in those days, you know, to get a job you were lucky. And although I had some reasonable hope that I could go with the attorney general's department, frankly at considerably more money, I nevertheless agreed to go to work for him at $175 a month as his secretary in Washington, and did do so.
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