WASHINGTON, SAN ANTONIO, HOUSTON, FORT WORTH
Kennedy was edgy on Thursday morning, probably worried that the feuding Texas Democrats would wreck the trip and Jackie would be so miserable that she would refuse to campaign next year. As soon as he arrived at the Oval Office he asked Lincoln to check the forecast for San Antonio and Houston. The day before, the Navy had promised cool weather, and Jackie had packed woolen suits. Lincoln reported that today the Air Force was predicting that Texas would be warmer than normal. He swore and called the naval office responsible for the forecast and bawled out the hapless sailor who answered. He fumed some more after learning that Jackie’s bags had already gone to the plane. “Hot. Hot,” he complained to Lincoln. “Jackie’s clothes are all packed and they’re the wrong clothes.”
He met briefly with Charles Darlington and Thomas Estes, his ambassadors to Gabon and Upper Volta. As they left, Darlington noticed him putting a hand on his back before straightening up, a gesture he recognized because he also suffered from back pain. But sometime that morning Kennedy would also tell O’Donnell, “I feel great. My back feels better than it has in years.”
Because of the cool and drizzly weather, Nanny Maud Shaw was opposed to letting John ride the helicopter to Andrews with his parents. Kennedy overruled her and dressed the boy in a peaked yellow sou’wester that made him resemble a tiny fisherman. Caroline put on her favorite clothes to say good-bye, and she and Shaw waved from the roof.
As Kennedy and his son were walking to the Marine Corps helicopter, an aide handed him a letter from McGeorge Bundy requesting a two-week vacation in January. He grinned and scrawled across the bottom, “Fine. I think it’s time I left myself.” Hale Boggs, who had called Dallas a “hornet’s nest,” was passing the White House as the helicopter lifted off. He jumped out of his car and waved, even though he knew no one could see him. Kennedy spent the short flight teasing his son and kicking his foot until he shouted, “Don’t, Daddy!” When John learned that he was returning to the White House he burst into tears.
Kennedy tucked a file card into the bathroom mirror of his compartment on Air Force One containing the statistics he had asked Powers to collect. They showed that whereas he had won Texas by only 46,223 votes in 1960, Lyndon Johnson, who had been running for senator as well as vice president, had beaten his Republican opponent by 138,693 votes, and the Democratic governor of Texas, Price Daniel, had won by a margin of 1,124,972 votes. He planned to cite these numbers to remind Texas Democrats that too many party members had voted Republican for the top of the ticket and to shame them into a greater effort on his behalf in 1964.
The enmity between Senator Yarborough and the more conservative party establishment led by Governor Connally and supported by Vice President Johnson was real, but the notion that Kennedy could resolve it by visiting Texas for a few days was preposterous. Johnson and Yarborough lived in Washington, and if that had been Kennedy’s only goal he could have easily invited them to the Oval Office for peace talks. His principal reasons for going remained the same as when he had proposed the trip the previous year: to raise money; energize the party; demonstrate that he could appeal to the oil men, executives, and rednecks composing its conservative wing; and improve his chances of winning Texas by the kind of margins Johnson and Governor Daniels had enjoyed in 1960. To reach out to conservative Democrats, he was speaking that evening at a dinner in Houston honoring Congressman Albert Thomas that would be attended by the city’s business community. The next day, there would be a Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Fort Worth, a luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart, and a fund-raising dinner in Austin at which Johnson planned to introduce him by saying, “And thank God, Mr. President, that you came out of Dallas alive!”
The trip would end with a weekend at Johnson’s ranch that he was dreading. During the flight he told Powers and O’Donnell, “You two guys aren’t running out on me and leaving me stranded with poor Jackie at Lyndon’s ranch. If I’ve got to hang around all day Saturday, wearing one of those big cowboy hats, you’ve got to be there, too.” They both declined, saying that they had promised their families to be home by Saturday.
He poked his head into Jackie’s compartment as she was brushing her hair and said, “Oh, Jackie, just thought I’d check to see if you were all right.” She was beginning to find his constant concern with her happiness tiresome. “Yes, Jack, I’m fine,” she said, the irritation in her voice apparent. “Now will you just go away.”
He strolled down the aisle to where the reporters were sitting. He was smoking a small cigar and had to parry questions about whether or not it was Cuban. (It was.) A reporter asked him about Goldwater and he joked, “I don’t think Barry is going to have time for a presidential campaign, though. He’s too busy dismantling the federal government.”
To reduce the risk of Jackie’s becoming tired, he had insisted that their schedule should be relatively light and had refused a request from Congressman Henry Gonzalez, one of his strongest allies in the state, to visit a San Antonio high school that Gonzalez had arranged to have renamed in his honor. Gonzalez now took him aside on Air Force One to complain that he was spending only two hours in San Antonio, even though he was more popular there than in the other cities on his itinerary. After Gonzalez pressed him to change his mind and stop at the new John F. Kennedy school, he promised to return sometime that winter to dedicate it.
For months Gonzalez had been complaining to him about the dangers faced by U.S. advisers posted to South Vietnam. His godson, Miguel Jr., was a helicopter cargo master and despite being an “adviser” had flown more than three hundred combat missions. After coming under hostile fire and being forced to grab a rifle from a South Vietnamese soldier to shoot back, he had begged Gonzalez to send him a pistol. Gonzalez had related the story to Kennedy and asked how he could deny soldiers like his godson the means of defending themselves. Kennedy probably had Miguel Jr. in mind when he had shouted to McNamara, as he was preparing to announce the withdrawal of a thousand advisers by the end of the year, “and tell them that means the helicopter pilots, too.” Before returning to his compartment, Kennedy turned to Gonzalez and said, “Oh, and by the way, Henry, I’ve already ordered . . . all the helicopters to be out of Vietnam by the end of the year.”
Teenagers filling the observation deck of the San Antonio airport screamed “Jackie!” She waved as the president strode to a chain-link fence and shook hundreds of outstretched hands to the consternation of his Secret Service agents, who were finding it impossible to enforce the rule that the hands of anyone approaching him should be visible and empty. Gonzalez had been standing in a San Antonio crowd like this one when a man shoved a .38 into his stomach and pulled the trigger. The gun had misfired, but he still suffered flashbacks. He had one as Kennedy was shaking hands, telling a companion that it would be easy for someone in the crowd to kill him, and recalling a recent conversation with Congressman Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, during which Mills had snarled, “That damn princeling, silver spoon in his mouth, what the hell does he know about Texas?”
When Kennedy campaigned in San Antonio in 1960, sixty thousand spectators had lined the route of his motorcade. Today, more than twice that number had turned out. He heard shouts of “Viva Kennedy,” saw hundreds of schoolchildren cheering and waving flags, and brushed showers of confetti off his hair and shoulders. Spectators broke through police barricades when he stopped to shake hands with some secretaries standing outside an office building, prompting a reporter for the San Antonio Express to observe that “despite the conglomeration of Secret Service agents on hand, it’s appalling to note how simple it would be to approach a president.”
He kept a close eye on Jackie. When she began appearing apprehensive, he tried to distract her by suggesting that they make a game of counting the “jumpers” and “leapers” in the crowd, but there were so many they soon abandoned it. The wind was strong and the motorcade sped through some of its twenty-six-mile route, messing up her hair. Seeking shelter from the wind, she asked Governor Connally, who was sitting next to his wife, Nellie, on the jump seats, if they could trade places. Kennedy immediately made them switch back. The back bench was higher than the jump seats, and anyone sitting there was more visible.
There were some sour notes. Demonstrators from the NAACP held signs proclaiming, “Rights Not Favors” and “Mr. President, You Are in a Segregated City.” A man jumped from the sidewalk and gave him an energetic thumbs-down. An American Legion post had hired a skywriting plane to spell out “Cuba?”—a reminder that he had still not dislodged Castro from power. A constable on traffic duty overheard a man in a stopped car telling another that the president would not “make it out of the city alive,” but drove off before he could stop them. The Secret Service failed to keep a mental patient dressed as a priest and carrying a black bag from taking a front-row seat for the ceremony at the Brooks Aerospace Medical Center, where the president was dedicating a medical library and laboratories.
Senator Yarborough refused to ride in the motorcade with Lyndon and Lady Bird and climbed into the third car with Henry Gonzalez, a departure from protocol that would dominate the following day’s front pages. It was payback for Connally’s failure to invite him to a reception for the president at the governor’s mansion the next evening, and for not seating him at the head table at the fund-raising dinner. Asked by a reporter to comment on these snubs, he said, “Governor Connally is so terribly uneducated governmentally, how would you expect anything else?”
Kennedy gave no hint to the crowd at Brooks that he had ever harbored doubts about the lunar mission. His speech demonstrated how quickly he could change his mind, and how much personal experience—in this instance, his visit to Cape Canaveral—could sway him. He told them that Americans stood “on the edge of a great new era characterized by achievement and by challenge” that called for “pathfinders and pioneers.” He recounted having seen the Saturn rocket booster that would soon launch “the largest payload that any country in the world has ever sent into space.” He reaffirmed his commitment to the space race, saying, “I think the United States should be a leader. A country as rich and powerful as this . . . should be second to none.” He said that when the Saturn rocket was launched in December, “I hope the United States will be ahead. And I am for it.” He closed with a poetic image, recounting how as boys the Irish writer Frank O’Connor and his friends would take off their hats and toss them over orchard walls that appeared too high to climb. Once their hats were on the other side, they had to follow them. “This nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space,” he said, “and we have no choice but to follow it. . . . With the help and support of all Americans, we will climb this wall with safety and speed, and we shall then explore the wonders on the other side.”
Five minutes later he stood in a laboratory at Brooks, peering through the porthole of an oxygen chamber similar to the one at Children’s Hospital. Four airmen had been inside since November 3, living like lunar astronauts at a simulated altitude of 27,500 feet and breathing 100 percent pure oxygen. He put on a headset to speak with them, the same way he had communicated with Patrick’s doctors. After wishing them good luck, he asked the scientist in charge of the experiment if space medicine might lead to improvements in oxygen chambers for premature infants. Before leaving Brooks, he invited Astronaut Gordon Cooper to accompany him to Dallas, saying that he could use having a “space hero” along on that leg of the trip. Cooper declined, explaining that he had to be at Cape Canaveral the following day for some important tests. Had he gone, he would have ridden in the president’s limousine, sitting in the backseat between Jack and Jackie.
Kennedy was jubilant during the flight to Houston, twirling in his swivel chair and asking if the reception would be as good as in San Antonio. Fearing that the crowds in Houston might be sparse, he had decided against a formal motorcade. Fewer people did turn out than in San Antonio, but they were equally enthusiastic. He asked Powers to estimate their number. “For you? About as many as turned out the last time you were here,” Powers said. “But a hundred thousand more today for Jackie.” Kennedy beamed. Looking at his wife, he said, “Jackie is my greatest asset.” As they pulled into the Rice Hotel, Powers noticed him giving her an adoring look.
The hotel had stocked their suite with caviar, champagne, and Heineken beer. Before they could enjoy it, Johnson arrived for a meeting and Jackie disappeared into the bedroom. Two weeks before, Johnson had told his friend Horace Busby that when he was with Kennedy in Austin on the evening of November 22, he planned to inform him that he had decided against running for vice president in 1964 and would instead return to Texas to run a newspaper. “You be the editor and I’ll be the publisher,” he had said to Busby. “You’ll let me write at least one column a week and we are going to run all the interests out of Texas.” Busby knew that he had been trying to buy a newspaper, but did not think he was serious, and that like any “star performer” he just needed to be flattered and cajoled.
His meeting with Kennedy was so acrimonious that Jackie could hear them shouting from the next room. Kennedy was angry because he believed that Johnson could have made peace between the warring factions in Texas. He had complained to Bobby earlier that Johnson was “a son of a bitch” because he would not “lift a finger” to settle the Yarborough-Connally feud. Nothing had happened that day to change his opinion. After Johnson stormed out of the suite, Kennedy told Jackie, “That’s just Lyndon. He’s in trouble.” He did not explain if he was in trouble with him, or because of the Bobby Baker investigation, or because he could not control Yarborough and Connally.
Jackie admitted disliking Connally. “I just can’t bear him sitting there saying all these great things about himself,” she said. “And he seems to be needling you all day.”
“For heaven’s sakes, don’t get a thing on him,” he said. He pointed out that if everyone on the trip ended up hating one another, “nobody will ride with anybody.”
He doodled on a sheet of hotel stationery, drawing a sailboat heeling slightly in the wind. He put a diamond-shaped figure above it, perhaps one of the kites he and John had flown off the back of the Honey Fitz the previous summer. The doodle was unusual because there was not a single word on the page. Most of his scribblings communicated impatience and boredom. This one was evocative and serene.
He and Jackie dined in their suite with the publisher of the Houston Chronicle. A poll commissioned by the paper showed Kennedy losing Texas to Goldwater by about 100,000 votes if the election were held that day. He told Kennedy that as a courtesy he would not be publishing it until he left town. Kennedy was impressed that the poll showed Connally running ahead of him, and Yarborough winning by the largest margin of all.
The atmosphere was more cordial when Lyndon and Lady Bird came into their suite after supper. When Lady Bird asked what he would like to do at their ranch on Saturday he told her that he wanted to ride, a request that must have surprised Jackie since he was allergic to horses and never rode in Virginia. But he was serious enough to order riding breeches sent overnight from the White House. Perhaps he was rewarding her for coming to Texas by doing something that he knew would please her.
David Broder would write in the next day’s Evening Star, “Mrs. Kennedy, on her first official excursion outside Washington since her husband’s election, unleashed her dazzling smile, her demure charm and her dashing wardrobe on the obviously impressed citizenry of San Antonio, Houston, and Fort Worth.” Jackie also counted the day as a success. As her private secretary Mary Gallagher was brushing her hair, she said, “Gosh, Mary, you’ve been such a great help. You’ll just have to plan to do a lot of campaigning next year.”
Before driving to the Houston Coliseum for the testimonial dinner honoring Congressman Albert Thomas, the Kennedys stopped in the hotel ballroom to address a meeting of the League of United Latin American Citizens. He introduced her by saying, “In order that my words will be even clearer, I am going to ask my wife to say a few words to you also.” She delivered some well-practiced sentences in Spanish, beginning, “I am very happy to be with you and part of the noble Spanish tradition which has contributed so much to Texas.” There were cheers and shouts of “Olé!” Lady Bird thought the president looked “beguiled,” and Powers noticed them exchanging another loving look.
Jack Valenti, one of Johnson’s aides, had helped organize the testimonial dinner and was crouched below the stage when Kennedy delivered his speech. From this vantage point he could see his hands shaking as he spoke. It was not a minor tremor but a violent shaking, and Valenti was amazed that someone who appeared so relaxed when he spoke extemporaneously could find it so daunting to deliver a prepared speech. Nerves may have caused him to flub a line and say that the United States was about to fire “the largest payroll” into space. He quickly corrected himself, saying “payload into space.” Then, demonstrating how quickly his mind worked, he quipped, “It will be the largest payroll too. And who should know better than Houston. We put a little of it right in here.”
He and Jackie arrived in Fort Worth shortly after eleven that night and checked into a small three-room suite at the Texas Hotel that the Secret Service had chosen because it had only one entrance. Mary Gallagher should have preceded them so she could unpack Jackie’s suitcase and lay out her nightclothes, but she had taken the wrong motorcade car and arrived late. Kennedy chewed her out for a slip-up that, like the erroneous weather report, he considered a threat to Jackie’s happiness and her willingness to campaign the next year.
They could not sleep in the same bed because the special hard mattress that he brought on trips covered only half of the king-sized box spring and the hotel had neglected to provide a single mattress for Jackie. She was so exhausted that instead of calling housekeeping, she decided to sleep alone in the small bedroom. They embraced and he said, “You were great today.” She went next door and laid out the pink suit and pillbox hat she would wear the following day.