Lillian Secrest Buie's Weblog

Attending Event with President Lyndon Johnson in Raleigh

Fall 1964

Dear Girls,

What an exciting week. And I’m pooped – just can’t get going today at all. I skipped church, ate Chip hamburgers for dinner, and still didn’t get anywhere with the six sets of papers in my book satchel begging to be graded. Six weeks end tomorrow, and I am sadly behind. At times like this I wish I were unconscientious. But when I do get desperate and hand back papers with only a grade and no comments, my children look at me with such disappointment that I haven’t the heart to do it again. After all, they deserve to feel important.

We decided at the last minute to go to

Raleigh

. Mary Odom and I both feel that the Democrats need more enthusiasm in

North Carolina

. Yet we confess to an inability to work up any great excitement over Lyndon Johnson and none at all for Dan Moore (running for governor of

North Carolina

), so we felt this might be just the shot in the arm we needed. Jim was of course in ecstasies of excitement at the mere suggestion of seeing the president; think of all the times he just missed seeing him in

Washington

or got a glimpse of his shadow! I designed a placard for him, and Libby Gwynne drew it for me – two beagles and a grinning, deck-of-cards-toothed little boy with the caption: “Me, Him and Her Are All for LBJ.”

We left after school and arrived in Raleigh around 6:30, but after we had parked in some secluded spot on that confusing campus, it took us some time to hike to the coliseum, and the doors were shut in our faces just as we got up to them. Jim burst into tears, but Mary and I were determined. We saw some uniformed men putting up a rope around a parking area, and we were the first ones to grab it, and we didn’t move for anyone. A crowd began to gather around us. We stood for three hours in the rain, and cold, and almost froze to the rope. I thought I was going to catch pneumonia. Finally, we heard the welcome sound of sirens, and the big limousines began to pull right in front of us. The last vehicle to arrive was a bus marked V.I.P; we spotted Terry Sanford’s mother, Mrs. Cecil Sanford, from Laurinburg as she stepped off the bus. I said to Jim, “Slide under the rope and follow that woman. I’ll find you eventually.” Luckily the rope slacked enough for me to step over it, and I ran and caught up with what turned out to be the gubernatorial party. When a secret service man stopped me at the second door, I announced confidently and blithely, “Part of the

Sanford

party,” and rushed right in. Mary and Tes were right far behind us, but Mary spotted some of he press she had known from her newspaper work, and got a pass. Phillip (age 12) wouldn’t hang onto the girls’ hands as his mother had told him to do, so he got stopped.

Jim and I were inside the inner ribbons right at the foot of the platform, where we could watch every expression on the first family’s faces.

In fact, when President Johnson made the remark, beginning, “I’m freer than when I was the age of that little boy right there,” he pointed at Jim. You should have seen that child’s face; it was electrified.

Mary and Tes stood at the back of the platform where they could hear but couldn’t see too well. Mary told Tes to reach up to the platform and grab cousin Luther Hodges by his coattails and tell him who she was. She did, and he motioned to her to stand at the bottom of the steps where the party would descend the platform and she could shake hands with everybody. So she and Mary got to shake hands with LBJ, Linda Bird, and Lady Bird. Tes said everybody grabbed at the President’s hand and pushed hers out of the way, so she finally grabbed his watch and swung on.

Lady Bird is much more attractive than I had thought, except for that horrible nose she is almost pretty. I don’t know why Linda Bird isn’t pretty, for she has a gorgeous complexion and lovely eyes. She gave a good talk.

It was an experience those kids will never forget.

Letter to Daughters At College One Day After President Kennedy's Assassination

Saturday, November 23, 1963: (Lil’s two oldest children, Kathy and Ann, were away at college when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.)

Dearest Girls,

I had already written in my mind a gay, silly letter to tide you over until we meet on Wednesday. However, I never did get it down on paper. You know how hard I depend on those two qualities – a deep, abiding faith and a sense of humor. Well, I still have the faith tho’ it’s shaken, but my sense of humor is “in the coffin there with Kennedy” and I don’t know quite how to manage until it comes back to me. They were his two outstanding qualities, and for many reasons I felt a very special affinity for this president. Happiness is seeing your favorite ideas in print, and so many times I read just exactly he ideas I had tried to express to you spelled out in his beautiful, eloquent command of our language – ideas that I felt but could express only falteringly.

In 1953, when your daddy John and I attended our first National Association of Retarded Children meeting in Chicago, we learned that the Kennedy family was very special, rich enough to give their afflicted daughter every possible advantage, but far more concerned in using their money to help the afflicted of others; a family that refused to wrap itself in selfish grief at the loss of their oldest and most promising son in war, and also the loss of a daughter in an aircrash. Instead, they perpetuated the memories of their young ones through foundations in their names to help others.

When the President and First Lady gave their first little boy the loving nickname, Johnjon, just as we had done, the sense of affinity grew stronger. Then, over the summer, when they lost their little son, Patrick, in the same way Mac and Ann lost their first-born, that long-felt empathy became an irrevocable attachment.

So yesterday’s shock remains a deep, personal grief, multiplied 180 million times or more.

You know your daddy. He can’t bear to see my cry, and tries to hide his grief by being gruff. He brought me a bottle of Geritol and insisted I dry my eyes and take that. Yesterday, when one news commentator closed his remarks by saying, “and President Kennedy had one other very important rendezvous on Monday. He had promised that little boy he always referred to affectionately as Johnjon that his daddy would be back for that all important third birthday,” tears rolled beneath your daddy’s glasses. He blew his nose hard, and roared, “Aw, turn off that blankety-blank television.”

Jim and Celeste have shared my heartbreak, and Jim (age 9) has retired in tears again tonight. He wants so much to do something about it, and I know just how frustrated he feels. He kept saying how he hated Oswald and wanted him killed, but I reminded him that it was hate which killed his president and that only by being a little better than we might have been and by fanning whatever bit of sweetness God has given us could us, could we really do anything about bringing about good from evil. He came to my bedside at 8:30 this morning all decked out in his cub scout uniform (you know how sloppy he usually is on Saturday, doesn’t even dress until midday), and when I questioned his dress, he replied, “I thought it would be a good way to show respect for President Kennedy.”

He, Tes, and I went over to Cheraw at 11 and had lunch with the Secrests. Phil (age 12) was completely overcome with grief. He kept saying, “Why couldn’t have the bullets just been reversed, for John Connolly instead of Kennedy?” I must confess that unworthy thought had occurred to me, too. Mollie (age 6) had mumps and I told her I would write her cousins that I had been to see Miss Fat Face and you’d never guess who it you’re Your Uncle Mac has a toupee and looks really young and handsome. Tes and Jim say that he looks handsome and “just like a teenager, but I liked him better as a man.” I don’t think I’ll pass that comment on to him.

He really is broken up over the assassination but takes it out in raging and ranting rather than tears. It’s easier, I’m sure, to be able to cry, and I’ve really let the tears roll, partly I think because I couldn’t cry about (the death of my friend Kathleen, an alcoholic). Her death deeply depressed me, but her life for the past two years was so much worse than death could possibly be. Mac says Johnson will be a strong president, not like Andrew Johnson (who became president after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated). He thinks the Republicans would be very foolish to nominate Barry Goldwater now. He hopes Hubert Humphrey will run as vice president with Johnson.

Well, enough of that, although I can’t think of anything else. Governor Sanford has asked that schools be closed on Monday, but he also declares Labor Day a holiday, and employers pay no attention to that.

The Duke-Carolina football game, as you know, has been postponed until next Saturday, and we don’t know if we’ll go. Would you want to go? Probably not. Flora Steele has taken one of those extra tickets, and she was really disappointed that the game was postponed. Do you know that she has never seen a football game?