Lady Bird by Jan Jarboe Russell

Author:Jan Jarboe Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781501106996
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2023-04-06T19:17:04.767238+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lady Bird’s Thin Line

“If you don’t do anything else for me, please be sure that I get the President and Mrs. Kennedy into the living room door at the ranch and not the kitchen door,” Lady Bird told her assistant, Bess Abell, on the morning of Friday, November 22, 1963. Lady Bird was already in Dallas with the Kennedys on their campaign swing through Texas.

Abell was at the LBJ Ranch near Johnson City preparing for the group’s arrival later that night. The schedule called for the President and Jackie to spend Friday night at the ranch and stay over the following day for a barbecue and mini-Wild West show. The question of which door—the front or the back one—the Kennedys would use for their entrance was only one detail that preoccupied Abell that morning.

She also was rehearsing a sheep-and-dog act on the banks of the Pedernales in front of the ranch house. Someone had the idea that perhaps after eating a plate of barbecue, Mrs. Kennedy would enjoy an afternoon of watching Texas dogs round up sheep, a regular practice on ranches but not one likely to appeal to Jackie’s tastes. Lady Bird had good reason to be worried.

Three nights before, Mrs. Kennedy had made her first official White House appearance since the death of her third child, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who was born prematurely on the morning of August 7, 1963, and who died two days later. The Johnsons were among the many people who sent sympathy notes. Theirs, written by Lady Bird and signed by both of them, said: “You give so much happiness—you deserve more. We think of you and grieve with you. Would say more but you would have to read it—and I fear want to answer it—don’t.” Now Jackie, still shaken from the loss of her child, was on her way to Texas for a campaign trip she was in no mood to make.

Kennedy had pushed her to come. A split in the state Democratic party between U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough, a liberal, and Governor John Connally, a conservative, threatened to damage the ability of the Kennedy-Johnson reelection ticket to raise substantial contributions in Texas, where politics is a high-stakes business.

Connally thought Jackie’s presence would soften the President’s visit, make it appear less acquisitive of campaign dollars. He also knew Jackie would help draw both large crowds and big money. Texas women, like women everywhere, gravitated to her sense of style; they would gladly pay $100 each to have dinner with her, if only to get a firsthand look at her clothes. Connally’s insistence infuriated Jackie. Later she would complain to William Manchester in his book The Death of a President that she “hated” Connally, whom she described as having had a “petulant, self-indulgent mouth” and “ruinous” good looks.

Given Jackie’s state of mind, there was probably nothing Lady Bird could have done to please her, even if tragedy had not intervened. Still, in those final hours of preparation, Lady Bird walked her usual thin line.

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