had ordered a change from Lincolns to this lesser regal model with same chassis in a sensible image move) whisked staffers to Andrews Air Force Base and an awaiting Jetstar. Aboard stepped LBJ’s top speech writer Harry McPherson; the boss of speech writers Charlie Maguire; National Security Advisor Walt Rostow; a White House intern whose name now eludes, and Joe Carter of Red Fork, Oklahoma. We flew to Madill Air Force Base in Florida for lunch and were treated with rank equal to four-star generals. It was a pretty good promotion for me, an erstwhile Army corporal. Then, while reading highly classified briefing books about the various presidents in our future, we flew across the Gulf of Mexico to the heart of Central America banana republics. Civilian-clad sergeants chauffeured us to a nice house. It was a home that had been quietly surrendered for our use by an unnamed American diplomats’ family who had left for vacation on the beach. Such generosity was usual and customary.
With U. S. Marines guarding the premise, a teletype had been set-up in the house and Rostow spent hours reading secret dispatches from the “situation room,” including massive clips from newspapers worldwide. He shared with me the latest news but not the secrets. Rostow was quiet, academic and very polite. We relaxed with Maguire who stood by for a meeting with the president to learn what should be in speech texts that Maguire then would assign to writers.
The quietness was interrupted when Marty Underwood called me and said: “I’m sending a car for you.” I joined him in the nine-story Intercontinental Hotel, El Salvador’s finest. The two of us were alone examining the top floor suite while Marty was muttering words like these:
“He shouldn’t stay here.
“ This country has bad earthquakes.
“See? Only two elevators to serve the penthouse!
“He should take the ambassador’s house but doesn’t want to upset the family or get bad press. Hell, they don’t mind. But he demands a hotel room.
“Damn the earthquakes and God save him from the pundits. What can I do?”
Joe Carter of Red Fork, Oklahoma grunted agreement but could offer no answer.
Underwood had talked with Ambassador Raul H. Castro, a veteran diplomat and the former governor of Arizona, who agreed that the presidential party would be safer and more comfortable at his house that was owned by the United States government and traditionally provided for the ambassador’s comfort and safety. Delighted with Castro’s offer, Underwood sweetened the deal by promising to take the ambassador’s wife back to Washington aboard Air Force One. Mrs. Castro jumped at her part in the deal. Underwood had only to convince the president.
As we puzzled in that penthouse suite, the hotel telephone rang. Marty answered:
“Hello Mister President,” he said smiling. Then Underwood followed with a series of “yes, sirs,” to questions obviously about whether things were ready for the Presidential flight from Bergstrom Air Force Base in Texas to San Salvador. “Yes, sir,” Underwood said again to questions that I couldn’t hear. Then I saw a sly grin cross the face of that lank, incredibly clever advance man. Underwood quickly and simply cupped his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. With slight movement his palm created an ugly sucking sound. I bent near to hear the telephonic voice question: “What’s that, Marty boy? What’s that?”
“Just a little tremor,” Underwood lied after he removed his paw from the mouthpiece. “They have earthquakes here. You’ll be on the ninth floor. The building just sways a little bit. The two elevators work. Well, they work most of the time.”
“Did you say that ambassador doesn’t mind if I stay in his house?” Underwood later told me that Johnson had asked.
“He will be very happy and so will his wife,” I heard the advanceman reply and witnessed his smile. If lying to the president was a crime, Underwood would join a long line of defendants. There would be no earthquakes or bad press while LBJ, family and personal aides were in San Salvador quartered at the sensible and safer ground level dwellings. Until this disclosure, Underwood’s lie was forgotten history.
It was an earlier earthquake in El Salvador that then shook my career. The following day, the speech writers joined Lady Bird Johnson’s press secretary Liz Carpenter for a tour of the proposed sites of the Presidential visit including the new urban LBJ public school that LBJ would dedicate on the site of one demolished in an earlier quake.
Immediately following LBJ’s dedicatory speech, Salvadoran students would flock into the new two-story building and resume their education. Walking behind the fire-ball Liz Carpenter, we trooped through classrooms without comment until entering the library when Carpenter exclaimed: “Where are the damned books?” She actually used a different word, but out of respect for a great old pal, I am using the more acceptable word “damned” here.
“Oops,” said an escorting American staffer from the USAID office, “I guess they haven’t been delivered.” Carpenter was tops as a questioning authority based on years as a news women before joining the Johnson team. At the White House, she sometimes summoned me to an early morning meeting where possible jokes, terse replies to obvious questions and comments about the President’s activities were quickly composed in a memo. The job was to compose text. Liz was superbly funny. I tried to contribute some thoughts, but mostly I laughed at Carpenter’s high humor. She was not being funny that day in El Salvador at the LBJ Elementary School. In Red Fork vernacular, Liz was “pissed off.” The press would have had a field day if they had discovered a library without even one book.
“ Those books had damn sure better be here tomorrow when the President comes,” Carpenter said in true Texas lingo. The shelves magically were filled the next day.
As the day wore on, the team of staffers traversed into the jungle on Pan American Highway One to a Peace Corps camp. Following dedication of the LBJ school, the president would take the trip to speak and to flip a switch to commence a new public television system that would broadcast educational programs to huts and villages across the small country. Following these on-site inspections, Carpenter had arranged a luncheon in the home of an expat American widow who had inherited a sizeable coffee bean plantation. The house was expansive and high on a hilltop.
The host’s full name eludes me these decades later. However, her nick name, “Mimi,” regal bearing, attractive features and platinum blonde hair are vividly recalled. She recounted how, while in New York for the birth of her child, her native Salvadorian husband had been killed in a car wreck but she boldly returned to claim management of the plantation. For amusement, Mimi said she would stand on her porch and, with her powerful rifle, she would shoot Armadillos that uprooted the coffee plants.
McPherson, while a loyal son of Paris, Texas and knowing the wrath of gun owners, had been the principal author of LBJ’s sensational, sensible and courageous speech urging gun control in the wake of the shooting deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Recalling Harry McPherson’s mute reaction to Mimi’s sharpshooting remains vivid.
In response to LBJ’s proposal, from its seven-story office building The National Rifle Association (located across a Washington street from the two-story Foundation for Science) had aroused all red necks and lunatics to denounce common sense. In that remote home in San Salvador’s jungles, McPherson understood Mimi’s shooting and was diplomatically silent. After all, the lady had a gun. We simply sat down for lunch.
Topping an elegant white napkin meal, coffee was served.
“Did you grow this coffee yourself,” I asked the hostess.
“Hell no,” she replied, “it’s instant.”
My curiosity pleased, we drove back to home base in San Salvador where McGuire, returning from meeting with the President and said calmly: “McPherson has the Peace Corps speech and Carter writes the LBJ school text.”
I was stunned. Me? Joe Carter, sixth son of a six-gun tottin’ cowboy turned box car painter, would write words the President would publicly utter! While I had written many words
as a published newsman and later in White House letters, I had previously written only one speech. It was for the Republican attorney general of Oklahoma who had implored me to help him in a tight spot where he didn’t know what he should appropriately say. In exchange, Attorney General G. T. Blankenship of Oklahoma paid me no money but he often slipped me news story tips.
Writing for LBJ was an infinitely greater challenge. Using a typewriter that mysteriously had appeared, I pounded away. I wrote. I tossed away failed drafts. I rewrote. I scribbled out sentences, words and finally completed a text. I handed the marked-up, messy sheets to Maguire who, after just a glance, dispatched my work to “the typing pool” via a Marine Corps messenger. In short time, the retyped copy returned with two words written by presidential hand: “shorten it.”
I sweated, edited, rewrote, trembled and “shortened it.” Again, after a quick glance, the “chief of speech writers” Maguire whisked my gems back to the typing pool. That’s the last I heard until the following morning. At the sparkling new LBJ public school, President Johnson arrived, mounted a platform in the crowded courtyard and looked down at the paper on the podium. I stood between Charley and Harry. I was tingling. Nervous? Yes. But I believed that I