Dateline May 15, 2017, The Presidential Libraries of Texas
Having had our tire scare, thanks to the honest crew at Gene's Tire in Bossier City, we got on the road for Dallas and a two-day tour of the Texas presidential libraries.
The George W. Bush Library. Our first stop was the George W. Bush library on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. As you walk in, a beautiful gallery holds Portraits of Courage, the president's tribute to the men and women who served after September 11th. It was a special exhibit while we were there, and we hoped it would be made permanent, because it is the highlight of the place.
President Bush painted all of it himself: sixty-six full-color portraits and a four-panel mural of service members he came to know personally after the war, each one shown beside the story of that veteran, written in his own hand.
Another part of the library is given over to a room called A Nation Under Attack. We remember that day all too well; Janice still has her entry badge to the World Trade Center. The room honors the lives lost on September 11th, with artifacts that include a length of steel from the towers and the bullhorn the president used to speak to the crowd at Ground Zero. Like every presidential library, this one has a replica of the Oval Office, set up with the desk and the pictures and the sculptures each president chose, and George W. had made a spot in his for the dog.
The George H.W. Bush Library. We finished there and drove south to College Station to see the elder George Bush's library, on the campus of Texas A&M. It was wonderful, full of the history of his life and times: his service in World War II, the family gatherings at Camp David and the house in Kennebunkport, Maine, a replica of the situation room where you can walk through the decisions of Kuwait and Desert Storm, and a special section for Barbara Bush and her work on literacy, AIDS awareness, and volunteerism.
John had met him once, years before. He was Vice President at the time, and an old friend invited John to a small political gathering up in New Jersey. John arrived late and was ushered in and introduced, and the first thing the man did was tease him, in a put-on accent, about coming all the way from "Longuyland" just to see him. They both had a good laugh over it. A very personable and lovely man.
The Lyndon B. Johnson Library. We drove on to Austin and pulled in for the night at Pecan Grove, an RV park just across the river from downtown.
If you are headed to Austin with an RV, this is the find of the century. Pecan Grove has only about a dozen overnight spots in what is otherwise a full-time RV park, cash only, and the people could not be nicer. You can catch the bus right out front to get downtown or to the LBJ Library, which is just where we went in the morning.
The library sits on the University of Texas campus, and it is a fine one. The videos were fascinating, and you can listen in on his taped telephone calls, which are really something. The man was a piece of work in how he handled Congress; the story goes that he would call you to the White House and more or less drink you under the table until you came around to his way of thinking. There is even a robot that recites some of his speeches in his own recorded voice.
He did a great deal, but Vietnam was his undoing. As he put it himself, once Walter Cronkite turned against the war, he knew he could not run again. He speaks at length in the exhibits about Vietnam and how it weighed on him. John entered the Army in 1967, during the war, and was thankful to serve in Korea and Germany rather than Vietnam. Lady Bird kept an office at the library after it opened and served on the university's Board of Regents.
Every one of these presidential libraries was a fine experience, and whatever your politics, each is a piece of history worth standing in. In the morning we drove out of Austin, looking forward to an afternoon in San Antonio.
