Out in Front by Jeb Byrne

Author:Jeb Byrne [Byrne, Jeb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781438431468
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2010-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

The occupant of the Office of the President on this day climbed from his convertible in Rhode Island and walked nearly a mile along Occupasstuxet Road and the Post Road, handshaking and talking his way toward Brown University. The scheduled time for the trip from the airport to the university, checked out by our advance team, was twenty-two minutes. It took President Johnson's motorcade nearly one and a half hours. Crowds were thick everywhere, and Kennedy Plaza and LaSalle Square in Providence were roadblocks of people. Some young girls screamed as though they were taking part in those marvelous events at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. The jacket of Secret Service agent John Chipps was ripped down the back and his trousers along the seams. A friendly photographer provided some tape to hold his trousers together.

The creeping pace on a sunny day was too much for a new Lincoln convertible in the motorcade borrowed for the occasion and driven by Detective Donald Kennedy of the Providence Police Department. The engine went afire, and flames shot from under the hood. The passengers, Admiral George C. Burkley, who was the president's physician, Jack Valenti, and Secret Service agents, jumped out. Up ahead the president's car spurted forward as the Secret Service passed the word about the fire. When it was determined that the trouble was just an automotive malfunction, the old speed was resumed.

Finally, the motorcade pulled up to Meehan Auditorium at the university, where the president entered a trailer parked near the doors and, inside, donned academic robes and a decorous expression before joining the convocation procession. Addresses tire me, so I wandered out of the auditorium, returning to the trailer to talk with Sergeant Paul Glynn, who was serving as the president's batman. I treated myself to one of the 7-Ups that had been provided for the president's dressing room. When the president reentered the trailer, he received a brisk toweling from Glynn and a fresh shirt. The time schedule was awry, so we hurried to the cars. The president rode to the airport in a closed limousine. But before boarding his plane he shook the hand of every member of the police detail within reach.

Hartford was a repeat of Providence, but the airport was closer. The crowds continued to be astonishingly thick. When the motorcade bogged down a few blocks from The Hartford Times, I got out of the vehicle in which I was riding and walked over to the Times where the president was to speak from the portico. Arrangements were shipshape. When the president arrived and began to speak, he paid the usual hyperbolic tribute to his political allies, which never failed to amuse me:

Governor Dempsey; my longtime friend and valued adviser, Tom Dodd; your able and courageous Senator Abe Ribicoff; Congressman Daddario; all members of the most effective Connecticut delegation to the Congress; my old and trusted and helpful friend who may get us elected, John Bailey; your distinguished Mayor Glynn; my fellow Americans:

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