David E. Conrad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biography

David E. Conrad (1928-2019) was faculty member in the History Department.  When he turned 18, he joined the U.S. Army and served in occupied Japan (1946-1947). He served again in the Korean War as an officer and staff historian.  He completed his Bachelors, Master's, and PhD at the University of Oklahoma.

Conrad accepted a position at Southwest Texas State College, teaching history from 1957-1967.  During his time at SWT he was awarded a Fullbright Lectureship (1964) and co-authored Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Formative Years, which was published by the college in 1965. 

In 1967 he accepted a faculty position at Southern Illinois University, where he retired as a full professor in 1995.

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Part of the LBJ 100 Oral History Project

In this telephone interview, David Conrad provides an overview of joining the History faculty in 1957 and working with Jimmy Taylor, Ev Swinney, Bill Pool, and Emmie Craddock.  He talks about being selected as part of the team to write Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Formative Years and the research involved in writing the book.

Full audio is available for this interview. Reading Room access only.

Transcript (PDF) not available.

Interview with David E. Conrad

 

Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux

Date of Interview: February 6, 2008

Location: Telephone interview

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Interviewee:    David E. Conrad - A former Professor of History at Texas State University, Dr. Conrad co-authored Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Formative Years, which was published by the college in 1965. 

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BARBARA THIBODEAUX:  This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University. Today is February 6, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I’m interviewing Dr. David Conrad by telephone. (Recording stopped)

Dr. Conrad, can you first give me some background information about how you came to—was it Southwest Texas State Teachers College at the time?

DAVID CONRAD:  Yes.

THIBODEAUX:   And just tell me about your time here.

CONRAD:  Let’s see. That was 1957. I was in graduate school at the University of Oklahoma finishing my—I had just finished my—what they called comprehensive exams and hadn’t written my dissertation yet, so I looked around for a job and got an offer at San Marcos. Chairman then was Jimmy [James] Taylor, who was one of my favorite guys of all time. And so I was there from 1957 to ’67, history department along with [Everette] Swinney and Bill [William C.] Pool and Emmie Craddock.

THIBODEAUX:   And you worked on your dissertation while you were at Southwest Texas?

CONRAD:  Yeah. Yeah. I finished it in ’62.

THIBODEAUX:   And that was Forgotten Farmers?

CONRAD:  Yes. Yeah, that was not the title of the dissertation, but that was published later on as The Forgotten Farmers.

THIBODEAUX: Did that give any background information on, like, Johnson’s heritage, just the farming background?

CONRAD:  Not much. That was about tenant farmers, sharecroppers and so on, and those were different kinds of farmers there in the Hill Country where he grew up.

THIBODEAUX:   Well, how did the idea originate to write the book, Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Formative Years?

CONRAD:  I guess that was after he became president, and I don’t know who originated the idea. It came down from the administration, Dr. [John G.] Flowers and Dean [Leland] Derrick and they just picked us three to write it. And we got together and divided up the parts rather than trying to write, you know, any other way. We took different segments of Johnson’s life and had up until the time he went to Congress, and the whole thing was underwritten by the—well, we called it the college in those days, and it was published by them.

THIBODEAUX:  How was the focus developed? Was it something that was decided upon by the three of you?

CONRAD:  More or less. They wanted a book about Lyndon Johnson at Southwest Texas, and I think we decided to expand it farther back to his boyhood and us also do the part after he graduated, his first few years in teaching and politics.

THIBODEAUX:   Do you remember the reason why the administration wanted the book written at that time?

CONRAD:   Well, Johnson was very connected to the college even when he was president. I remember one time he was the speaker at commencement, and as it happened, I was the first one through the line to shake his hand. He came down to, you know, meet with the faculty after he spoke—no, I believe it was before. But he was there quite a bit. In fact, in the 1960 election Pool and I were very active trying to get him elected vice president and John F. Kennedy president, so I remember we set up a kind of a political rally at the high school gymnasium in Wimberley, not a very big place. He came there and spoke, and afterward Pool and I talked with him and he wanted to end his campaign on the campus in 1960. So we went back and told Dr. Flowers about that—he was the president—and they were going to have banners across the road—across the street and all about the election. Flowers decided no, that was too political. So we backed off on that, but I think the college was very interested in kind of laying claim to Johnson and making sure that everybody knew that he went to that college and he got his education there.

THIBODEAUX:  Just in a nonpartisan way though apparently from Dr. Flowers.

CONRAD:  Yeah. He was too worried about politicizing things, and that’s been a problem—if you read the book. Earlier on political presidents at that place who’d get in trouble and get fired or get crosswise with the politicians in the state.

THIBODEAUX:   Did each of you try to draw the readers to a conclusion toward the end?

CONRAD:  I did. I think what I was about was trying to show that Lyndon Johnson got a pretty good education at that college, and it affected his thinking and his politics and his policies as president.

THIBODEAUX:   I believe you did the middle section— 

CONRAD:  Yeah, those three chapters.

THIBODEAUX:   —a chapter on the college and his life in the college and his experiences as a journalist as writing editorials at the college.

CONRAD: Right.

THIBODEAUX:  Can you just give a little information about his relationship with Dr. [Cecil Eugene] Evans and maybe how that moved him toward, you know, a future career in politics?

CONRAD:  Apparently there was a very good connection from the beginning, and when Johnson got to the campus he—there’s a story in there where he was walking across the campus with his cousin—I’ve forgotten her name. She said she wanted to get involved in something, and he said, “Well, you ought to go talk to the top man,” whoever it was, and she said, “Oh, I wouldn’t—I’d be afraid to do that. You know, I’m too shy.” He said, “That’s who you ought to start with.” Well, that’s kind of what he did. He became more or less the student assistant to the president. (laughs) They didn’t have telephones in those days between departments, so he took messages to all the departments from Evans. And they kind of came to recognize him as being part of the administration.

THIBODEAUX:   I think you make a point with Dr. Evans and his work-study program. It sounds like maybe that was the background for future programs in the War on Poverty.

CONRAD:  Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good point.

THIBODEAUX:   Why do you think President Johnson continued to have so much pride in his tenure or time here at Southwest Texas?

CONRAD:  That’s the way he was. He was very proud of being who he was and where he came from. Any political speech he made—I went with Dr. Flowers one time to—this would be—yeah, that same year I think, ’60—had a big barbecue up at Johnson City. And Johnson was there speaking, and that was what he was telling those people there, you know. “These are my people. This is where I come from. When I see election statistics going up on a board, I look for this district first.” And he felt the same way about the college.

THIBODEAUX:   In your next chapter, “Young Man in a Hurry,” I know that’s all about White Stars, Black Stars.

CONRAD: Yeah.

THIBODEAUX:   And that’s an awfully big topic there. (laughs) What was the relationship between the Black Stars and the White Stars? Was it a friendly competition?

CONRAD: I guess it was—yeah, it seems to have been fairly friendly.

THIBODEAUX:   And there’s always been a question about how it was started. Did you ever come to your own conclusion whether or not Lyndon Johnson was in that original group that started the White Stars?

CONRAD: I think there’s no doubt about that. There’s a guy been working on the White Stars contacted me a while back. Are you aware of that?

THIBODEAUX:   No. I’m aware of the book that was written on the White Stars by, I think, Mr. [Roy] Willbern?

CONRAD:   Okay. That’s probably what I’m talking about.

THIBODEAUX:   Okay. I just thought that had been quite a while ago.

CONRAD:   I’m not sure what he found. I don’t think I’ve seen it. But it was Lyndon Johnson’s style. I think that’s the point to make about it. He was—the Black Stars were dominant. They held all the political offices. They went to the head of the line. They got all the girls. And according to one story, which I never could confirm, he was blackballed in the Black Stars. So he organizes the White Stars. It’s his kind of thing.

THIBODEAUX:   One thing I found interesting about that is he never seemed to put himself up as the frontrunner candidate for the large offices. He seemed to be kind of in the background. Is that true?

CONRAD:  Well, I think the office he wanted most was editor of the Star, the newspaper, and it paid money. It paid enough really for him to go to college. And I don’t—a student vice president and things like that, I don’t think that was—I don’t believe he held any of those positions.

THIBODEAUX:   No. I think he was on the student council but none of the larger offices.

CONRAD: Yeah.

THIBODEAUX:   It seemed like he was always in the background.

CONRAD:  Um hmm.

THIBODEAUX:  I guess that was one place where he was able to practice politics.

CONRAD: Well, he was—as you can tell from the White Star story, he was a behind-the-scenes organizer and manipulator, not necessarily the candidate.

THIBODEAUX:   In the chapter on the journalist, I think you talk about Lyndon Johnson was a mature student when he came to the college and—

CONRAD:  Yeah.

THIBODEAUX:  —some of his ideas were already formed. Do you think that’s true, that in his editorials those were things that he came with, ideas he came with?

CONRAD:  I think he came with some. His father was in politics, and his mother was apparently a very intelligent and pretty well-educated woman. He’d always had an interest, so, yeah, some of those editorials the first year have to be that.

THIBODEAUX:   Did you find any evolution of thought throughout his tenure?

CONRAD: Yeah. I think you can see influences from the professors he had, especially [Howard M.] Greene, in his editorials.

THIBODEAUX:   Was there a constant thread or theme that you could see throughout?

CONRAD:  It’s patriotism, mother, country, morality, hard work, dedication, all those good values that you wouldn’t find college writers writing about today much, would you? (laughs)

THIBODEAUX:   No. I think that’s true. They would be thought as pretty corny, I think, today.

CONRAD:          Yeah.

THIBODEAUX:   Can you describe your research process?

CONRAD:  Mostly interviews. I did a lot of interviews. I was looking over that the other night, and I didn’t even remember some of those. There were over there in San Antonio and up in the Hill Country. The administration helped with that. They set up interviews really, or told me who to contact and who I needed to talk with. Leland Derrick was the dean after [Alfred] Nolle, and he was kind of helping with that process. I think he’s probably as much as anyone in the administration the one who’s responsible for that book.

THIBODEAUX:  Do you remember your most enlightening interviews or interesting interviews?

CONRAD:  Yeah. They set me up to take a fishing trip with Prof. Greene. We went down to Aransas Pass, and his brother lived down there and fished every day. So we went down there and stayed with him and fished in the Gulf. So riding down there with Prof. and coming back, we did a lot of talking and I heard a lot of very interesting stuff. By that time though I don’t think he was the fire-eater that he once was. He’d kind of mellowed and he was getting old too.

THIBODEAUX:   Can you give us an example of an interesting story?

CONRAD:  Well, let me think. He talked a lot about the heated debates, although they never got personal, in his classes between Johnson and a fellow named Henry Kyle, who I knew when I was at the college there. He was still around San Marcos, still arch-conservative. I thought that was pretty interesting, the fact that two people like that involved in very substantial and in-depth debates on political issues and civic issues like that, that was pretty interesting.

Prof. told me (laughs) a funny story about there was a professor named Cecil Hahn, history, and Prof. Greene had this piece of land up in the Hill Country west of San Marcos. He cultivated some kind of a special breed of hogs that lived up there more or less wild, and they were big and rangy and had tusks, and they were mean he said. So one time Cecil asked for permission to go up there and hunt deer. And he was sitting there at the base of a tree—I’ve heard this part of it from Cecil himself—he was sitting at the base of this tree and waiting for a deer to come by, and here comes this big old hog. After all the stories he’d heard from Prof. about how mean and dangerous they were, the hog came at him and he just shot him dead. (Both laugh) So he told Prof. about it, and Prof. told him, “All right, you’ve got to pay me for that hog,” and so he did. Then he decided that, okay, I’ve bought a hog, so I’m going to go butcher it, and he went up there and tried to do that. But it was such terrible tasting meat—of course, a boar hog can’t be eaten anyhow, but anyhow, he couldn’t eat any of it.

THIBODEAUX:   Professor Greene is credited with influencing Lyndon Johnson’s political thought. How did Professor Greene impress his students so much?

CONRAD:  Well, every campus, I think, has a kind of a legendary character. Do you have any now on that campus?

THIBODEAUX:   I’m sure. (laughs) But I can’t think of any to mention.

CONRAD:  (laughs) And apparently, he was that on the campus. He wasn’t really very scholarly. I don’t think he ever wrote anything or published anything. I don’t think he ever did a lot of graduate work. He had a master’s degree, but the book tells you about the story about how they wanted him to go up to the University of Texas and finish his PhD and he went up—Jimmy Taylor told me this one. Jimmy Taylor had very little use for him—he was the chairman—and I think it was because he had so much trouble with him, you know. He was just obstreperous. He went up there and he came back and told Jimmy Taylor, said, “Those people up there can’t teach me anything.” (laughs)

THIBODEAUX:   That is—  

CONRAD:  I had a lot of trouble understanding Prof. Greene. I’d never taught with him. I wasn’t on the faculty—I mean, he was not there—he had already gone when I got there. One night I was working on what to write about him and I was really struggling with it. So I lived out there on Ridgeway Drive and Bill Pool lived about four doors down, so I just walked down to his house and we sat down there and had a drink or two of whiskey and I got a better picture of Greene. Bill understood him pretty well. It was the idea that he was a really original thinker and he could stimulate people to think in new ways, and that seems to have been his appeal in class.

THIBODEAUX:   Can you give me an example of his original thinking?

CONRAD:  He was more or less a populist and I think his theories about government were a bit simplistic but about kind of a collective will of people governing something. Stuff along that line would be about the best I could say about it. The problem is he never wrote anything. You don’t know really what he had to say except what others can tell you about it.

THIBODEAUX:   That is a loss. Do you think you can see any of that in Lyndon Johnson’s political philosophy while he was president or just later on?

CONRAD:  I think so. Yeah. The whole Great Society thing, bringing together the country and governing from the grassroots up, that sort of thing, that would be Prof. Greene’s kind of thinking.

THIBODEAUX:   You also quoted, I think, Bill Deason, who was quoting Professor Greene, talking about, “Democracy is a necessity of compromise.”

CONRAD:  Yeah.

THIBODEAUX:   Do you think that’s something that Lyndon Johnson also gathered from him?

CONRAD: That ought to be embroidered on a—what do they call it—a sampler in Lyndon Johnson’s bedroom, you know. (Thibodeaux laughs) He was always quoting one of the books of the Bible where it says, “Come, let us reason together.” And the art of the compromise, that’s Lyndon Johnson.

THIBODEAUX:  Did you have any contact with Lyndon Johnson while you were writing the book?

CONRAD:  No. No. No, he was president then and, yeah, it was awfully hard to contact him at that time.

THIBODEAUX:   Did Dr. Pool have a relationship with Lyndon Johnson beyond just meeting him a few times?

CONRAD:  Pool had a relationship with everybody. He was the most gregarious guy you can imagine, and I remember that time we met with him at Wimberley that I was telling you about.

THIBODEAUX:   Yes.

CONRAD:  We were standing outside that gym. It was in the summer, and Johnson had worked until he got that crowd in the palm of his hand. He spoke and spoke and spoke, and he worked up a sweat. He had his coat off and his shirt was wet. So we’re out there and he’s got his arm around old Pool and they’re talking like old friends, you know. And that’s when he proposed the idea of ending his campaign at the campus.

THIBODEAUX: I’m just going to kind of skip around a little bit.

CONRAD: I think Pool had probably known him quite a bit in the past.

THIBODEAUX:   Since you did do some work on his 1960 campaign, can you tell me anything about his relationship with the Hispanic population, especially in the San Marcos area? Did he court their vote?

CONRAD: I would say not particularly. He was courting everybody’s vote, you know. That’s what he was, but as a voting bloc Latin Americans at that time were really not very prominent at all.

THIBODEAUX:  Are there any stories that you can relate that did not make the book?

CONRAD:   Let me think. Yeah. When I went through those editorials, some of them weren’t signed. And I learned I thought to be able to identify one of Johnson’s, and he was the editor of the paper at the time, so that was a pretty good guess anyhow, by the content and the tone of it and so on. Well, I ran across one which was really moving about a man who had great potential and it was all kind of wasted because he was an alcoholic. It was not a long one, but it was—and that was the one that troubled me when I was working that night. I went down and talked with Pool about that one in particular because I thought that that was Johnson writing about his father. His father was a drunk, I think, or at least an alcoholic. And Pool said, “Well, may be,” but he didn’t think I ought to use it—or he didn’t think I had enough to base it on to make any conclusions like that. And I think he was probably right. So I didn’t use it.

THIBODEAUX:  Were there any other stories?

CONRAD:   Oh, a little—some of the people that I interviewed were pretty snide, and Lyndon Johnson didn’t have 100 percent admirers, not around San Marcos. So I heard stories about how he left town owing people money and how he was a kind of a sissy and wouldn’t fight people. I interviewed one of his old girlfriends and her husband sat there and listened (laughs) to every word.

THIBODEAUX:   I bet that was nerve-racking for her. (laughs)

CONRAD:  Yeah, right. (laughs) The make-out place was the fish hatchery in those days. Is that still there?

THIBODEAUX:   Well, the federal fish hatchery is no longer there. It’s now the J. C. Kellam Building.

CONRAD:   Are the pools of water still there?

THIBODEAUX:   There are a couple of pools, and the fish hatchery has moved to the old college farm off of McCardy Lane.

CONRAD:  Oh, okay.

THIBODEAUX:   And that story of the fish hatchery is another LBJ story about how he gave the land to the college to use. It’s kind of an interesting story about, I guess, presidential power there.

CONRAD: Yeah. Yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.

THIBODEAUX:   I didn’t mean to interrupt your story about the make-out place. That is interesting. At the fish hatchery?

CONRAD:  Yeah. There were stories about who he went down there with, and it’s the kind of college stuff—I didn’t find any need to put it in the book.

THIBODEAUX:   Just more gossipy type stuff.

CONRAD:  Like gossipy stuff.

THIBODEAUX:   Did Mr. Lowman tell you a story?

CONRAD:  Who?

THIBODEAUX:   Mr. Al Lowman. A story about when Lyndon Johnson lived above Dr. Evans’ garage?

CONRAD:   Yeah. Yeah. Lowman did.

THIBODEAUX:  Can you tell that story?

CONRAD:  Told me a lot of stories. The one I remember about living above the garage there was where he was crossing over with a towel to take a shower at the gym. Is that the story?

THIBODEAUX:   I think that’s one of them, yes.

CONRAD: Al Lowman wouldn’t know any more about it than anyone else. (Both laugh) He was a much younger guy. Of course, that family has been around a long time. Al Lowman is a good friend of mine.

THIBODEAUX:   I think he just mentioned that he had told you a story, I think, after the book had gone to publishing, or something like that.

CONRAD:   You know, I don’t remember that.

THIBODEAUX:   Robert Caro visited San Marcos to write his book. I was wondering, did he contact you?

CONRAD:   No.

THIBODEAUX:   Do you know if he used your book?

CONRAD:   Yes.

THIBODEAUX:   He did as a reference?

CONRAD:   Yeah. I reviewed his book—

THIBODEAUX:   Oh, okay.

CONRAD:  —for, I think, it was the American Historical Society. I didn’t think much of it. He has too much of a negative view of Lyndon Johnson. Anytime Lyndon Johnson did anything to try to do a good job at it, you know, he thought that was just blind ambition, manipulation.

THIBODEAUX:   Do you have an opinion on where that came from?

CONRAD:  What? That idea?

THIBODEAUX:   Yes.

CONRAD:  Well, that’s kind of an eastern Ivy League attitude that they had toward Johnson. I ran into that a lot.

THIBODEAUX:  Did any other author or biographer of Lyndon Johnson contact you?

CONRAD:  There was one other well-known historian who came down and talked with us, and I can’t remember who that was. Pool talked with him, and I think Jimmy did but I didn’t—I wasn’t in on that. I’ve forgotten who that was.

THIBODEAUX:   So your book was used as a source for other material on Lyndon Johnson?

CONRAD: Oh yeah. It’s been used quite a bit. I mean, there’s nothing else on those years at that college.

THIBODEAUX:   Well, this year’s celebration of his one hundredth birthday I think really will use your book quite a bit because there’s a lot of focus on how Southwest Texas Teachers College influenced Lyndon Johnson and vice versa. So I figure the book will be used quite a bit this year. Which kind of leads me to an opinion question. Which do you think had the greatest impact? Was it Southwest Texas on Lyndon Johnson or Lyndon Johnson on Southwest Texas?

CONRAD:   Well, you know, he’s got to be the leading graduate. When I left there—let’s see, he was still president, yeah—so it’d be kind of hard for me to assess what the impact has been over the years after that. But I think the college definitely had an effect on him. The university now, right?

THIBODEAUX:   Yes. And I can’t get it straight when it was Southwest Teachers State College—

CONRAD:  No, that was before.

THIBODEAUX:   Before. So when you were at the school, what was it called?

CONRAD:   Southwest Texas State College.

THIBODEAUX:   College. Okay.

CONRAD:   No, wait a minute. It changed while I was there. It was Southwest Texas State Teachers College, then they dropped the “Teachers.” Yeah, while I was there, and then it was that way for I don’t know how long.

THIBODEAUX:   After doing all your research, did you come away with any, I guess, different conclusions? Were there any surprises? Anything that really interested you?

CONRAD:  I think the main conclusion that I drew was that it was a pretty good college, and the graduates of that college were pretty valuable to the local society. The whole teacher training business, I make a point in there that Johnson grew up in an area where his teachers were trained at that little college and that he went to college there and so on. So the institution itself had an important effect on that region there, and that there were some good people. I don’t think when I got there, there were more than a dozen PhDs on the campus. Maybe that might be a little low, but so it certainly wasn’t a high-powered research institute, but it was doing a good job of taking small town and rural kids and giving them a good, sound training, and not just teachers because even by the time Johnson got there, it was more than that.

THIBODEAUX:   I understand this was—I don’t know if we can call it a labor of love, but it wasn’t a labor of profit?

CONRAD:  No. (laughs) No. We never got paid anything.

THIBODEAUX:   So this was mainly a publication for the university?

CONRAD:   Yes. Yeah. We were just going to hire it printed. Also, we contacted—what’s the guy’s name—Buck Schiwetz or something—did the artwork? That was Pool’s idea. Texas Books and Boyd Saunders.

THIBODEAUX:   Boyd Saunders, yes.

CONRAD: Texas Books at that—like Carl Hertzog and all those, they had a lot of artwork and that’s what Pool wanted to have in there.

Oh, I was going to tell you one other thing. The book got reviewed at the time in quite a few scholarly journals. And one fellow, again an eastern establishment Ivy League type, thought that I was awfully defensive about the college when I was talking about the presidents who went to small colleges and how you could get a good education at a small college just as well as you could at an Ivy League school or something like that. He thought I was overly-defensive about that in the review that he wrote.

THIBODEAUX:  Was that—that’s the only opinion that you heard like that though, right? Now I remember reading the chapter and— 

CONRAD: Otherwise the reviews were—they were pretty good. Yeah. That’s a pretty good book really.

THIBODEAUX:  Yes, it is, and it’s going to have a long-lasting impact on the—read for a long time to come, so you certainly have something to be proud of.

CONRAD:  Well, you see, if it hadn’t been written then, we couldn’t have interviewed all those people. And that’s where—especially the first and second chapters that I wrote comes from, that and reading the college Star. Of course, you could still do that, but, yeah, those people, I bet you, almost none of them left now.

THIBODEAUX:   No, they’re not, unfortunately.

CONRAD:  Look over the footnotes in those chapters.

THIBODEAUX:   You interviewed— 

CONRAD: Endless, endless interviews.

THIBODEAUX:   Yes. Dr. Noll or Nolle?

CONRAD: Nolle? 

THIBODEAUX:   Nolle?

CONRAD:  He was a fine old gentleman. He almost had a German accent, but he was a scholar of the old school.

THIBODEAUX:   I think one of your frequent interviewees worked at the college as a janitor.

CONRAD:   Yeah.

THIBODEAUX: Was that Clyde Nail?

CONRAD:  Yeah.

THIBODEAUX:   That was an interesting perspective going from interviews with administration all the way down to the janitor.

CONRAD: Right. (laughs) Yeah. I had to use a little Spanish with one of them.

THIBODEAUX:   Well, that’s all the questions that I have, but I’m sure I’ve missed something, so do you have anything you would like to offer?

CONRAD:  Well, tell me generally what’s going on. This is the hundredth anniversary of—hundredth birthday?

THIBODEAUX:   Yes, the centennial celebration. There’s a national celebration.

CONRAD:  They opened the LBJ Library in Austin. He invited me and Pool to that thing, and we went up there. I came down for it and it was nice. Got some really famous people there that night—that day.

THIBODEAUX:   I bet, and so many of them have passed away also.

CONRAD:  Yeah.

(End of interview)

 

Conrad’s Written Addendum to the Oral History Interview Recording:

While I was doing the interviews, I interviewed one of the White Stars. I think it was Deason, but I’m not sure about it. I thought the interview went reasonably well, but later I got a call from Deason and he was very upset about some of the questions I had asked. I think it had to do with his personal relationship with LBJ, who was then president. He got so heated that I became suspicious and asked if there was something he was trying to hide. He said no and hung up. I found out later that he then called President McCrocklin and told him that he wanted me fired. McCrocklin told him a flat no. He never said a word to me about it, but I found out through Dick Henderson, who was chairman then and who had overheard my conversation with Deason.

Here’s a funny story if you don’t already have it. You have to know the people to get how really funny it is. Dr. Flowers had a secretary named Miss Taylor who was very protective of him. He was a bit aloof, and she managed everything in his office. You had to get her permission to see him. She treated him like he was the king. She was a large and sort of awkward woman—we used to joke about how she might look in a ballet tutu. On the occasion when Johnson was scheduled to be commencement speaker, Flowers office got a call from the White House. An aide wanted to know at what point in the program the President was going to speak. Miss Taylor informed him that the President would speak first and then Mr. Johnson would speak. At the commencement, LBJ told what she had said and was greatly amused by it.

The Formative Years was published by the “Southwest Texas State College Press.” That was more or less my idea. There was no such press at the time, but I suggested to [Dr. Pool] that this might be the beginning of a press at SWT. He agreed and talked Derrick into it. However, the Administration never did anything to establish a real press while I was there.

            . . . I enjoyed my years at SWT and had a lot of friends there— still do. It was nice to remember those times.

(End of interview)