had faked sage or cool.
Without a stammer and with only modest glances at the copy on the easel, word-for-word as I had written, President Johnson sounded almost as if he were speaking off the cuff—or from his own notes. His eyes seemed mostly fused on the crowd of Salvadorian youth and their smiling parents who stood in the playground and who applauded loudly as the interpreter translated my words into Spanish. On the spot, I recall that I swore to myself, LBJ was better than JFK could possibly have been.
John Lindsay (same name as the New York mayor but different fellow and later my pal) of Newsweek strolled from the press area, approached me and spoke: “You wrote that. I don’t know you. But I watched your face.” I swayed more like sagebrush than sage but remained silent in dead giveaway.
Lucy Johnson had capped the dedication with a rousing one-woman concert at the piano. Like Father, the daughter was a hit. I was more than that. Try thunderstruck. Over ensuing years, I would write multiple hundreds—perhaps up to 7,000 I have reckoned—speeches. None gave me equal thrill like that morning in San Salvador. The only sentence of that speech that hangs in my memory is that “education is the revolutionary music of democracy.” Miss Henry of Park School in Red Fork, Oklahoma would have swooned if only she had known.
The program ended and classrooms filling, our motorcade quickly assembled. Black limos transported Presidents Sanchez and Johnson, other presidents, Ambassador Castro and the not-so-dignified staffers northward on Pan American Highway One toward the Peace Corps camp. Marty Underwood, ever on his toes, had organized a “spontaneous” crowd at a small village in the jungle. A chanting, happy crowd surged onto the two-lane highway and blocked the entourage.
Fearlessly stepping outside the stalled car as secret service men scrambled, LBJ walked among the mass of humanity “pressing the flesh” with handshakes and “Buenos Dias.” Salvadorans are men and women who on the whole are short in stature but at the moment were tall with respect for the American president. In short years, revolution would spread across El Salvador and the ambassador, my old college pal from Oklahoma University Ed Corr, was forced to travel to work in an armored car. But, on this day, the President towered head and shoulders taller, both in size and in fearless appreciation of gentle and good folks. Johnson glowed, shook hands and said “howdy” in Spanish reflecting his days as a school teacher in a small Hispanic town in South Texas. He looked like the man I had tried to capture in his speech at the sparkling new LBJ school.
In our stalled limo, McPherson in typical good humor playfully began a slow chant: “Rostow for president…Rostow for president…” Others in the car joined that chant that sent blood or at least blushes to Walt Rostow’s stoic face: “Shut up,” said the national security advisor. But, outside the car, the Spanish (or Indian language) speakers picked up the chattered: “…Rostow for president.” Mercifully, LBJ climbed back in his car, the motorcade restarted, the chatter ended and Rostow glared curse-like but with half a grin at the bemused McPherson. Rostow never was elected but he would have been a far better president than most who have held the office. McPherson would even have been better as president.
Revenge turned on McPherson at the Peace Corps camp. LBJ had great difficulty with delivering the tailored text that the veteran and able McPherson had written. Then, when the President pressed a button programmed to light-up the television station, nothing happened. We scurried to cars and returned to San Salvador. Our car was quiet. No joking.
After showers in borrowed house, that evening President Johnson hosted a reception honoring about a half dozen of his fellow presidents and invited the speech writers. Organizing a circle of chiefs of states and scribes, LBJ led in a singing of “Happy Birthday President Sanchez.” The lacking in musical harmony was compensated by the feeling of warmth between neighbors.
Later, I would seek out the former Governor of American Samoa, H. Rex Lee, who had successfully installed educational television on that South Pacific island, an American protectorate. Lee flew to El Salvador, fixed the television problem and reported back that the station was broadcasting as planned. LBJ was pleased and later named him to the Federal Communication Commission after the nomination of John Criswell, another Oklahoma-born pal, was rejected. Criswell drew undeserved but bad publicity growing from the fact that, as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, he had been in charge of the ill-fated convention in Chicago. Remember the place where LBJ did NOT celebrate his birthday?
Aboard Air Force One, flying northward from El Salvador, the plane landed, dropped off presidents of other Republics where, appearing at the door, LBJ delivered brief remarks—including some bland words I had drafted. He bade farewell. Aboard was the Mrs. Castro, the wife of the ambassador, collecting her reward crafted by Marty Underwood’s suction-cup hand.
I was seated on a sofa, when a gentle southern lady saddled next to me. She introduced herself as Mrs. Biddle-Duke, wife of the protocol chief.
“I don’t think I know you,” she said. I mumbled my name. “ Are you that newspaper man from Oklahoma?” she asked.
As I nodded and she continued, “The president certainly liked that speech you wrote.” I muttered thanks, was overwhelmed and no doubt glowed. Then I had a flash: where is Miss Henry at a time like this?
Back at the White House, my absence had prompted Shoemaker to gain another loaned writer named Ed Krueser, a member of the diplomatic corps. While the assignment was a detour for his career, Krueser and I worked together and became close friends. We entered an intellectually open relationship. Holding a master’s degree in foreign affairs, he began to confide his informed but contra views about the Vietnam War. Wow! Quoting 4,000-year-old Vietnamese poems, he asserted that those Vietnamese country folks long had both feared and hated their Chinese neighbors for centuries. Kreuser privately dynamited the Pentagon’s “domino theory” that if Vietnam fell, so goes all of Asia. We both hid such views and continued to spout the party line in hundreds of drafts of letters.
While I was an Army veteran who was lured to serve for the benefits of the G. I. Bill to finance my college education, I already held healthy skepticism about the motives and politics of the military establishment. Hearing Kreuser’s insider stories about the State Department and in my later experiences, I increasingly realized that America spends too little on diplomacy and too much on weapons and military doings.
Like fellow Oklahoman Will Rogers had said: “Anyone who thinks civilization has advanced is an egotist. You can’t legislate intelligence and common sense into people. You can’t broaden a man’s vision is he wasn’t born with one. Humanity is not yet ready for real truth or real harmony.”
Getting sensible answers is a challenge. After the White House and when I moved to a job as a congressional aide, I would field questions more loudly. Like: “why does this country sponsor colleges for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, but no such academy for want-to-be diplomats?” Foreign service officers must finance their own university educations to become eligible for State Department service as diplomats. The military service academies are free and even pay future military officers a salary while in college. Few Americans sympathize with such thinking. The Pentagon has a super propaganda agency.
Casually with military friends, I sometimes would ask, “how many golf courses are owned and operated by the Department of Defense and at what cost?” I never got an answer. The State Department, owns zero country clubs and no peace colleges. Who cares? The taxpayers should.
Learning the ways and woes of government were enhanced during that hot July month of 1968 when Marty Underwood called and told me to quickly grab the suitcase and be ready to leave within an hour. I met Underwood on West Executive Avenue, took a White House Mercury driven by a soldier (dressed in civilian clothing) to Friendship Airport at Baltimore. All dressed in civilian clothing, a cadre of secret service and Army Signal Corps men materialized for a flight to Los Angeles. With tickets in ha
nd, Underwood was in charge and made no reference to our ultimate destination until he herded the group into a room near the LAX gate marked “Honolulu.”
“This is huge, a top-secret thing. We’re advancing a big meeting with President Thieu of Vietnam and President Johnson” Underwood said. Later when we were seated together Underwood: “You were a reporter at the Honolulu Advertiser.”
Surprised that he knew about my itinerant newsman past, I nodded agreement about the employment as Underwood continued: “ That paper has a nasty habit of running a headline that reads ‘Pickets Greet LBJ.’ Can you get those guys to tone it down? Negative headlines help no one. At this meeting it is important that everyone is as relaxed as possible. Try to convince them.”
That was my assignment upon arrival in Honolulu. It was more complicated that appears on the surface, but I moved and made a phone call from my room in the Royal Hawaiian there on Waikiki Beach. Scott Stone answered. He was the morning newspaper’s military writer, was a Naval Reserve Officer with top security clearance and my pal. Stone gladly agreed to join me for lunch at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel although baffled by my presence and