JFK and LBJ. Caro with Moyers on the Plane

Just a few minutes ago I left a comment at the site of drshow.org and today's 50 minute interview with Robert Caro, the Pulitzer prize winning author of the LBJ bios.....Here is my comment: Great show. I read the New Yorker excerpt and have been fascinated for several days. The program repeats tonight in Alabama and I will be listening a 2nd time. Just today I confirmed that Bill Moyers was on the plane with President Kennedy's Body and LBJ on the flight from Dallas to D.C. I have a note that I treasure from Moyers, so fascinating stuff indeed. As many across the nation have done and considerably more will do on the 50th anniversary next year; the Where were you on that day question will gain even added significance. I as a 5th grader in Gaffney, S.C; my father a Baptist minister. Later I was to become enchanted by Marshall Frady's coverage of the Civil Rights era. Just Saturday by happenstance within ten minutes, I had two conversations at a flea market in NE Alabama. One with a minister who had a part in a funeral for an Uncle of Lady Bird in Billingsley, Alabama. From that I couldn't help but imagine Lady Bird had some influence on LBJ as he navigated Selma; Selma just about 20 miles from Lady Bird Taylor's Alabama roots. And another with a football player, McClendon, who was on the 63 championship team with Joe Namath and Bear Bryant. He remembered Bear went ahead with practice that afternoon, but the next day the away game with Miami was called off. Our conversation was lightly framed by my reference to Howell Raines 1983 TNR piece Goodbye to the Bear, about Bryant's relationship with George Wallace. Alabama's dilemma continues, and now it is up to Bama Coach Nick Saban to levy some influence on Bama Gov Bentley on the immigration law. To that extent in my world, Lyndon and Martin and the repercussions of Nov 22, 1963 are still very much alive. I may share this with friends from Gaffney, particularly my graduating class of 71 and see what some of them remember later this year and again in 2013 from Central Elementary School and the area. It has already last fall been interesting to see what some of them were thinking, particularly the class of 63 and 64. Gaffney did go ahead with an away game that night against Lancaster, and that year won a state championship, so they had that much in common with Bear Bryant and Joe Namath. All this registers with me as just two months ago for the first time in my stay in Bama I was in Selma for the anniversary of the historic March; and the day after in the mail was the Furman Alum mag and a tribute by Doug Cumming for Marshall Frady, Furman's 63 grad who covered the Civil Rights Transition for major national magazines; A Baptist ministers son who wrote a magnificent biograpy of Martin Luther King; a great bio of Billy Graham and the George Wallace bio on which the TNT movie was based. Jesse Jackson spoke at Frady's funeral in 2004, and there was mutual adoration between Frady and Will Campbell, both appreciated by David Halberstam; who wrote the Best and the Brightest and the book on the Boston Red Sox, The Teammates.