Oral History Transcript - Terry Collier - February 28, 2008
Interview with Terry Collier
Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux
Date of Interview: February 28, 2008
Location: Fredericksburg, Texas
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Interviewee: Terry Collier - Both 1969 Texas State journalism graduates, Terry and his wife Cathy edit and publish the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post newspaper. Terry is a former Star editor.
Topics: Mr. Collier’s work on the College Star covered president James McCrocklin’s dissertation controversy and the swearing in of James McCrocklin as undersecretary of HEW in the Johnson Administration. Other topics include campus protests in the late 1960s and coverage of Lady Bird Johnson and events at LBJ Ranch as publisher of the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post newspaper.
BARBARA THIBODEAUX: This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University. Today is February 28, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I am interviewing Terry Collier at Fredericksburg, Texas.
Mr. Collier, even though you have agreed to the terms and conditions of the release pertaining to this interview in writing, will you also verbally acknowledge your acceptance with a yes or a no?
TERRY COLLIER: Yes.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you.
Mr. Collier, you said that you were a freshman when President Johnson came to the university to sign the Higher Education Act. Can you describe that event?
COLLIER: Well, I wasn’t actually assigned to go to the event. I was what they called associate sports editor as a freshman. If you make the associate, it sounds pretty heavy, so I really wasn’t focused on news then. I do recall it was a rainy day, and I believe that was—he was there several visits, and this was a visit he actually came in the newspaper office, and at that time it was in what was then called Lueders Hall. I don’t think that building’s there anymore. It’s been razed, but as you face Old Main, it was to the left. It was, like, a three-story building where home ec[onomics]. was in there, and of course, the journalism department and I don’t know else.
But anyway, I remember him walking through and kind of looking around and then that was pretty much it. I think he may have come there for a moment just to see what the old newspaper office was like. I suspect when he was there it was in Old Main, but I don’t know that. And then he just left and so beyond that, except for the coverage—Edmond Komandosky was the editor of the Star then, and so he pretty much took care of all that, and so I don’t remember that much about that particular visit except I did actually get to see him briefly.
THIBODEAUX: Did you see him at any other campus visits?
COLLIER: Yes. In August of, I believe it was my junior year, he was there for summer commencement, at—I believe it was at Evans Field. It was outdoors anyway. And he did the commencement address, and that’s all I recall about that visit. I didn’t get assigned to cover that particular event either, so I don’t recall.
THIBODEAUX: So you were involved with the Star from the very beginning of your college career?
COLLIER: Um-hmm. Yes. Thought I’d died and gone to heaven. (Both laugh)
THIBODEAUX: So how did you become editor?
COLLIER: Just working up through the ranks. I just loved being around. I’d hang around there all the time when I wasn’t in class or—I wasn’t big on dorm life. I lived in a dorm room all four years because I didn’t want to cook and clean an apartment. So, cafeteria food didn’t bother me, so when I wasn’t there, I’d go up and hang out at the office and pick up any kind of work I could get. I started out doing sports. Then one of the most wonderful things was that every weekend if we weren’t playing in San Marcos, the Bobcats were on the road in the old—shucks, what’d we call it—the Lone Star Conference, and we’d go from Alpine one weekend and then a weekend later or the week after, it’d be Huntsville. Then we’d go to Commerce, then we’d go to Abilene to McMurray, then we’d go down to Kingsville, and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Seriously. We’d get up on Saturday morning and drive to these places, do the game that afternoon, and sometimes had to leave on Friday night because, like, Alpine’s a long trip. So it was wonderful.
Then I got to be sports editor my sophomore year. Junior year I was made managing editor, and then senior year I got to be editor. It was just hanging around and doing the work.
Meanwhile, I’d got a job working for the university news service, so I had a lot of connection with the department chairman and other staffers, like Pat Murdock and Lily [Lillian Dees]—she was the secretary in that office. And so you just rub shoulders, be in the right place at the right time. In this case familiarity did not breed contempt because they let me stick around. (Both laugh) So that’s how I got moved up.
And in those days it wasn’t a student-elected position. There was a board that you had to appear before. You had to write a paper of sorts to tell why you think you would be a good choice as editor of the Star in this journalism department—I forget what kind of board it was—but it was of faculty members I suspect, and they chose me. There was another guy that was vying against me, and they chose me instead and made him the business manager, advertising manager or something like that.
THIBODEAUX: Did the Star cover just campus news, or did it pick up any in San Marcos?
COLLIER: We didn’t try in those days to cover San Marcos city council or anything. We had a column called “Off Campus” and if there was something going on in the world or the United States that we thought—and it was very subjective, I’m sure—that might be of interest to the student body, we did that. But we felt that let’s cover what we know the best, this is our little world here, let’s do this. That was our philosophy, and we just tried to cover it as best we could.
The Star in those days—it was a laboratory newspaper where kids worked on the paper as part of their Reporting 1 or Reporting 2 classes. You may actually write a story—or perhaps likely you wrote a story for class that would be published, and that was the way you learned. And it was sobering to see your story in print—uplifting but at the same time sobering because you thought, oh my gosh, people are going to read this, not just like doing it for a professor and say, Well, I hope I get a good grade. Once that gets into you, you’re hooked for life. When you see your name in print or see a picture you’ve taken, it’s the most jazzing thing I can imagine ever happening.
THIBODEAUX: You had mentioned going to Washington, DC, and I guess as a photographer?
COLLIER: It was the summer between my junior and senior year, and as such I had to stick around and go to summer school to put out the summer Star.
Dr. James McCrocklin was going to be sworn in as undersecretary of HEW under HEW Secretary Cohen. He was appointed to that position by President Johnson, and it was a short-term thing, like six or seven months. This, I think, happened in June or something of that summer, and he was due to be finished by January, a short-term deal. So they chose me and the student senate president to represent the student body.
So before I went there, I went to Dr. Buckley, who was then—Dr. Frank Buckley was the journalism department chairman, and I said, “Dr. Buckley, I can write some stuff, but I don’t have any experience with a camera.” In those days, they didn’t give all of us a photography class. We had photographers and then we wrote the stories or whatever. So he said—we have this little Yashica DTLR, twin lens reflex camera—and he said, “Well, you’re going to take this and stick a flash on it,” and he said, “Here’s your settings.” And he took a little piece of paper out and he wrote the f stop and the shutter speed down and he said, “Be sure you got your camera turned on, you got film in it, and you’ve got these two settings.” So I stuck that piece of paper in my pocket, and me and the student senate president were flown to Washington at, I guess, the university’s expense. Maybe Dr. McCrocklin paid for it, I don’t know.
We got to stay in the Lafayette Hotel, and they took us to some really nice places. It was just wonderful.
But that day—that morning—seems like it was a Saturday, I believe we went to the Department of HEW and I’m standing there in this big hall—or this big auditorium, I guess it is, and there’s a bunch of other photographers and newspaper people around there. And I had this little TLR, and I probably looked as green as all get-out. There was this photographer, as I recall, was probably from UPI or AP, I don’t know who, with all this camera equipment hanging all over him. He’s standing next to me, and kind sidles over, leans over and he says, “Say, given the lighting in this room, what do you think our f-stop ought to be?” (laughs) I said, “Just a minute,” pulled out my little piece of paper, and I said, “I’m shooting it at 125 at f8.” (laughs) And he obviously knew that I was a rube, but he was having fun and was just making conversation, but I thought that was—for some reason I thought that was funny.
But I got the shot. We put it in the paper of Cohen and Dr. McCrocklin. Secretary Cohen, I guess, was swearing him in or presenting him some sort of documentation for his temporary position, and that was it.
Got to tour all over Washington. It’s one of the few times I’ve been out of Texas, so even though I grew up in the city of San Antonio, I was pretty green.
THIBODEAUX: Did you know Dr. McCrocklin?
COLLIER: Yeah. I’d speak to him from time to time, and later on when the problems surfaced with his dissertation, I spoke with him more often then. I would call him up and ask him for comments about this or that, and he was pretty much correct but not—he didn’t give me a lot of information. He had his problems, and I guess he just figured, I’ll tell him what I need to and see what happens.
THIBODEAUX: Was that a challenge to you or to your staff to report on that situation very—with a balance—
COLLIER: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX —and with objectivity?
COLLIER: Yeah. Sometimes I think we were in over our heads and we didn’t know, we thought—I don’t recall. It’s been too long. I’m sixty-one now. That’s been a long time ago. And the other night I was looking through the articles I wrote, and I thought, you know, this isn’t so bad. I looked back on that, and I thought, yeah, you did fair. And we tried to be fair about it.
That was our biggest thing about being fair. Part of it was because we didn’t know the details. I knew what the Detroit Free Press said. I knew what the Texas Observer said, but I didn’t know what was what because some people had agendas in the newspapers and other publications. So that’s why we would try to get something from Dr. McCrocklin, and he’d either give something like, I really don’t have anything to say about that now. We didn’t hammer it a lot. But we stayed with it. Whenever there was a new development, we tried to represent the student body or the interests of the student body in the Star. But it was definitely a challenge because at that early age, I was very, very bent on being equitable.
I remember on the previous year—I think it was the previous year. I can’t remember—my roommate, who I also went to high school with, was our so-called political writer I know our senior year, and he wanted to go participate in an antiwar rally in San Marcos. I said, “Well, that’s fine but you can’t write about it.” He said, “Well, why not? I’m the political editor.” I said, “That’s a conflict of interest. You can’t write about something you’re emotionally involved in.” He was furious at me. He wouldn’t talk to me for over a week. And we shared the same room, but I just—you know, I may have been right or wrong, but I thought, you just don’t do this. So that’s indicative—I hope that I was trying to be fair and balanced. Because you don’t know if you’re involved in something, you don’t know just how objective you truly are because frankly nothing you write is totally objective.
But we tried to do that, and I felt bad for him and his family. It was interesting though because a lot of people on campus—and some professors—were very upset with him or not happy with the way—you know, thought it was demeaning of them having their degree or demeaning to the university. But I thought, let’s get all the facts here before we point fingers. A lot of people probably thought I copped out, but I just thought, I just can’t—it’s not me.
THIBODEAUX: Was it intimidating to have so much, like, national attention and attention from some of the local newspapers, like the San Antonio Express covering the same story all the time? Did you feel like you were in competition?
COLLIER: Kind of. Kind of was a little intimidating I guess you could say. As I said, we did want to represent the student body, and we didn’t want to come off looking like dummies, you know, like someone who didn’t know anything and didn’t know what to do. So I guess if we erred, we erred on the side of caution because once the words are out, once they’re in print, it’s hard to put them back. You can’t. And I didn’t have the expertise and none of us had the time. After all, we were students. We were supposed to be going to class although I loved to spend most of my time in that building, in the journalism building.
I remember once I was taking the German course and I was making an A in there, and I got a progress report. And I said, “What’s going on?” I went to see the professor, and I said, “What’s the matter? My grades are all good.” He said, “Yeah, but this is a participation class,” so I got a little reminder there, this is college, by the way.
So the same thing goes with Dr. McCrocklin’s situation. All the other events were going on, and we had to somehow find time, as all college students do, for everything. It’s a balance. So, yeah, it’s kind of like going to Washington that time. It’s sort of intimidating to be standing with the people that really are pros, that really know what to do with a camera or know what to do with a—how to spin a story or write a story about some event. But that’s all they do. So sometimes you have to remind yourself, hey, you’re just a kid. You just do the best you can.
THIBODEAUX: These are a couple of opinion questions on that situation.
COLLIER: Um-hmm.
THIBODEAUX: Just a couple of these. There has always been comment from the people that supported McCrocklin that this was political, but they never explained what that meant. Do you think that just referred to campus politics, or did it have a wider connotation?
COLLIER: I always suspected that it had a wider connotation than that. It was a way to get back at President Johnson because he did appoint Dr. McCrocklin. None of this surfaced until after Dr. McCrocklin became undersecretary of HEW, as I recall. There was a guy named Heinel or something like that, he was a writer for the Detroit Free Press, I believe. There was also something called the Hart Report, H-a-r-t, I believe it was spelled. And there were two marine documents, and I think Dr. McCrocklin at one point in his reserve experience went to Quantico or someplace like that to do some research. Maybe that was it, where he got information for his dissertation. Anyway, it alleged that there was a lot of things between his wife’s master’s thesis and his dissertation, there was some verbatim passages in there, in which I don’t know what McCrocklin said about that, I don’t recall. He may have said, Well, I got them out of the Hart Report, or, I got them out of the documents that I studied when I was up there. I don’t know.
But anyway, as far as opinion goes, I suspect that there may be some grounds that they were after LBJ to get to him through McCrocklin because the war was becoming very, very unpopular by then. Of course, ultimately, President Johnson decided not to run for reelection. But I tend to think it wasn’t so much campus politics as it was a bigger thing than that.
THIBODEAUX: So McCrocklin being involved in democratic politics apparently with President Johnson and getting that appointment may have caused problems on campus? I mean, did it make it look political?
COLLIER: Well, yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of like a ripple effect when you throw a rock in water. I mean, the people who may have—who started or introduced the whole issue, the thing rippled out to the point where professors on campus and students said, “This looks bad for us. Our college president—it doesn’t look so good for us that he’s done this.” So it did become localized ultimately because I don’t think Dr. McCrocklin was unpopular at all before this happened, but boy, it snowballed really fast during our senior year. And of course, ultimately he resigned.
THIBODEAUX: It’s kind of just an interesting coincidence that both of President Johnson’s associates, friends, Robert Hardesty and Mr. McCrocklin both left unfavorably from the university. It sort of just seems a political thread running through there.
COLLIER: Um hmm. I could see how people would draw that conclusion.
THIBODEAUX: Yeah. But that’s, yeah, just coincidental. (laughs)
COLLIER: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: Yeah. Oh, “prexy.” You know, I read some of the—
COLLIER: Oh, the prexy headlines. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: —and I kept seeing this “prexy,” and I just went, I don’t know even what that is. So I just kept on going and finally I came to the ending where he made a statement explaining the plagiarism charges. So I was wondering, what does “prexy” stand for?
COLLIER: It’s abbreviations, a headline abbreviation for president. I’ve never seen it since then. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: Where?
COLLIER: I don’t know. It was something we picked up. It’s like in the old days of headline writing before my time even, people—the word, ticket, is pretty big, so they’d call it ducat, d-u-c-a-t. And nobody knows what a ducat is anymore, but we’d use that from time to time because we couldn’t squish ticket into a headline or in a one-column head. So we used to use these little—sometimes they’re euphemisms, sometimes they were just—but that’s where prexy came from. It would’ve been better to call him something else, but we were kids. (Both laugh)
THIBODEAUX: I was just wondering, I have never heard that before. So I thought that was an unusual nickname or something that the campus had for him.
So can you describe—again, this is kind of opinion—describe the political climate on campus during the 1968-69 era when you were there?
COLLIER: Well, there was an event that kind of perhaps reflected—and I say, perhaps—the student body’s attitude about the war. At that time a lot of us were trying to figure out what we thought about the war. I told myself at the time that were I drafted—even though I had a college deferment by that time—I would go because to not go, in my case anyway, presented more problems than it would solve.
But there was an event that happened in front of the student union, I think it was during my junior year, when some folks showed up with some antiwar pamphlets or literature of some kind to distribute. And if memory serves me correctly, there were enough other people around there that were not happy about that, that they took this literature and burned it right there on the sidewalk or street or something. I don’t know where they did it. In Southwest Texas there were a few demonstrations, but they were pretty benign. There was one out in a field, and I can’t remember if it was down, like, on the soccer fields. I think it wasn’t even on campus property. But there was a demonstration, but you know this. They were very tame. They were just people talking and letting off steam.
I remember when Martin Luther King was assassinated. There was a day later or something—there were two or three students, maybe more than that, I don’t remember—who just sort of sat down up on the quad in just of a moment in memory or moment of silence just sat there and didn’t really do anything. You wouldn’t call it a sit-down strike, so to speak, but they were just demonstrating their remorse, I guess. I remember Dean Martine—I think was the dean of students then—came by to see about them, but he may have just—I don’t know what he said to them—he may have just been saying, I understand how you feel bad, or y’all might want to take this somewhere else. I don’t know what he told them. But anyway, it was so tame at Southwest Texas.
It was known—I didn’t know at the time—as a party school. It seems over the years on-and-off it had that reputation. I didn’t get that because I didn’t party that much. I was too busy having fun with the newspaper and whatever. But it really just wasn’t a lot of turmoil. People seemed to be more interested in painting the stallions or things like that. Campus life was just—we had dances. I know when I was a freshman or sophomore, they had dances like every Friday or Saturday night at the Lair. It was wonderful.
I suspect that the student union was trying to figure out ways to keep kids from leaving campus every weekend because a lot of people’s suitcase—they’d go home to Austin or San Antonio or wherever on the weekends. And they wanted to keep kids by so you could enjoy campus life, to know what it’s like to develop your own personality without going home every other weekend to mom and daddy and your old friends, and grow up and develop your own personality. I don’t know what their motive was, but it worked for me.
THIBODEAUX: It’s interesting that there was activity on the UT campus at that time, whether or not—why it didn’t spill over to San Marcos, or were the people at San Marcos going to UT to protest?
COLLIER: Yeah, it could be that—I remember one time there were some UT students that came to Southwest, but I don’t remember—maybe that was the propaganda burning incident. I don’t know. But it just wasn’t that much, and it could be that the university—the regents—maybe not the regents so much—but the administration was really—they kept a handle on it. They knew what was going on, and they did what they can to—I think frankly if there were a lot of interest among the student body, we’d’ve had it anyway. And there just didn’t seem to be that.
THIBODEAUX: I know there was one demonstration—a calm demonstration—about McCrocklin.
COLLIER: Yes. Yeah, there was that one with something like, oh, a hundred and fifty or two hundred people—I don’t remember—on the quad. I think that was in anticipation, perhaps, of his announcement that he was going to—or maybe he decided to appear before a sort of a press conference or something or other. I think people wanted to say, Okay, we want to know what’s going on here, you know. We can’t seem to get the whole story. You read the Observer, and you see or read one thing, and you might read the Express News or American Statesman and see another. See our paper and they probably didn’t get enough to satisfy them, so they wanted to know what was going on.
So he had this press conference, and he had this prepared statement, that you mentioned. He didn’t say a lot. I think he had a short—he made the statement, and then he had a short press conference afterward, and it was—I think the admission was somewhat limited, and about ten minutes or so and it was over. Then later on—I think he went to Dallas or someplace to appear before the board of regents or some administrative body. Maybe it had to do with this committee with regard to his degree anyway, and at that point he submitted his resignation. He said something like, I’m doing it so I can devote more time to clear this up and clear my name or whatever, and that’s about it. That was towards the end of our senior year. I don’t remember much after that. (laughs) I was focused on getting a job.
THIBODEAUX: Where you there when the fish hatchery was—
COLLIER: Yes.
THIBODEAUX: —____________ out?
COLLIER: Well, my senior year I think—I don’t think the fish hatchery was actually functioning as such. I didn’t get that impression. It was more of a place to go down and study or just catch some sun or read or what have you. I just don’t remember much about that. It was a pretty place down there. I don’t think it was an official fish hatchery then, or was it? When did they stop using that?
THIBODEAUX: Are you talking about where the old fish hatchery where the J.C. Kellam Building is now?
COLLIER: Yes. Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: That had been given—that was a fish hatchery—national fish hatchery—
COLLIER: Yeah, at one time.
THIBODEAUX: —and then given to the university—
COLLIER: Right.
THIBODEAUX: —under McCrocklin’s term.
COLLIER: Okay.
THIBODEAUX: President Johnson came and gave it to the university.
COLLIER: I don’t remember—that may have been before I got there.
THIBODEAUX: And then I think in 1969, the university gave the federal government land where the fish hatchery is now over on McCarty Lane, I think.
COLLIER: Oh, okay. I don’t remember any of that.
THIBODEAUX: So when did you come to the Standard Radio Post?
COLLIER: I came in August of 1973.
THIBODEAUX: Did you take it over from the Dietel family, or was there a transition?
COLLIER: No. At the time the Standard was its own newspaper, and the Radio Post was the paper the Dietel family had. The Radio Post was formed back in the ‘20s I believe it was by William Dietel, the father of the Dietels, who were running it when I moved here. He actually had been the editor of the Standard. He was a school administrator or principal in Comfort [Texas] and I forget where else. As I understand it, he was hired to be the editor here, and I think was the editor for a year or two and then may have had some sort of falling out. I don’t know, maybe there was no falling out and he just wanted to go out and strike out on his own. But anyway, he literally went across the street (laughs) from where the Standard was and started up the Radio Post and with another fellow whose name I forget. And he wanted to sound modern, so I guess he decided we’re going to use the Post, and to sound modern, radio sounds modern, so that’s where we got the name, Radio Post.
In the ’80s, I believe around 1980 or so, the Dietel family—the kids seemed to be interested in doing other things, so the family—there was a sister Erna and Freddie was a brother, and Norman was another brother—and they were getting up in years. They ended up selling it to a fellow and he ran it for a while and he sold to another guy and didn’t do so well.
Finally, the Dietel family took it back. By that time they’re really up in years. News momentum, it’s hard to pick it back up again, so we bought the name and the goodwill and what little was left, and that’s how we have this long—you know, Fredericksburg itself is a long word, and then you’ve got Standard and then you’ve got Radio and then you’ve got Post. So it’s rather—it’s probably the longest newspaper name around, I guess. But that’s how we got it.
I moved here—Catherine and I moved here after we finished our graduate school. We were two years at Southern Illinois University and moved here that August. I remember when we pulled into town with a little Mustang pulling our U-Haul trailer, the county fair parade was just turning around in the middle of Main Street to head—and the reason I say it was just turning around because it was the last entry. It was the county float, and the county float went one way, and we went another at that corner and went over to the little rent house we found, and we’ve been here ever since.
THIBODEAUX: I talked to Mrs. [Rosemarie] Hageman, who was Mr. Dietel’s daughter—younger daughter and she’s contributed many photographs, I think, from the newspaper that her father had taken, to the LBJ Museum in San Marcos that a lot of pictures of LBJ. I think he was very close—I don’t know how close, but they were friends and had a lot of paper time.
COLLIER: Yeah. Mr. Arthur Kowert, who was the publisher before Arby, he died in 2003, one year and one day after moving into this building. But he was frequently called up by President Johnson to come up to the ranch to take pictures. Adenhauer, the German chancellor might be there, or John Tower might be there, or Lord knows who would show up, and he said, “Art, come on down and take pictures.” So Art has a lot of pictures—we have a lot of pictures in our files, which if that’s something that the university might be interested in looking at, we’d be happy to expose you to that.
Thibodeaux: Oh, absolutely.
COLLIER: We have lots of old negatives, black-and-white negatives. Of course, that’s what everybody shot in those days, but, yeah.
And Mrs. Johnson was always so gracious and kind—she was truly a lady. I know when Catherine and I first moved here, Art arranged for Cathy and I to go. It was after President Johnson died. He died while we were going to school in Illinois, but he invited us out to the ranch to have tea with Mrs. Johnson one day. She invited him and he said, “Can I bring my new guy along, my news editor, and his wife?” So Art and his wife and Cathy and I went out there, and it was very nice. Of course since then, every time there was something big happening at the ranch or with the national—or with the LBJ State Historical Park, our paper has always been very supportive of whatever’s happened out there. Of course, this last year when she passed away, we pulled out all the stops and put out a special section because she was a Gillespie County girl.
THIBODEAUX: There’s a lot of activities going on this year at the park, so it’ll be in your paper frequently, I assume.
COLLIER: Um hmm. Our attitude with this paper is like it was when we were at Southwest Texas with the Star. We cover what we know and we don’t try to cover beyond that. We just don’t do that. Let the dailies do the national and the international and the state news, but we’ll take care of Gillespie County. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: I’m sure your readers appreciate that.
COLLIER: I hope they do.
Thibodeaux: That’s a good idea. I live in Wimberley where we have our little paper and it’s good that they just do that too.
Is there anything else that I haven’t covered that you would like to add?
COLLIER: No. We were always proud that President Johnson came from—was an alumnus of Southwest Texas and I was always proud that my name was at one time on the—they had a bronze plaque or something on Old Main, and my name was on the same plaque with LBJ when he was Star editor. He was, I think, maybe one semester or summer, I don’t remember, so he was a newspaper guy for a while there at Southwest before he graduated and went on to teach and then got into politics.
While we always didn’t agree with stuff, and a lot of it I just didn’t understand what was going on in Washington, it was special. It was a special time. Just being around—I’ve always been awed to some respect about the people that I was able to be exposed to because of President Johnson’s affiliation with Southwest Texas or here in Gillespie County. But I was always impressed with the fact that these people are just like you and me when it gets right down to it. They’re just people, so I don’t know.
THIBODEAUX: Did you meet anyone else interesting at the ranch when you’d gone over there to cover things?
COLLIER: A lot of interesting people, probably not folks—by the time we moved here in ’73, I of course met Luci and Lynda, but they probably don’t remember us too much because they have—their area of exposure is elsewhere in Austin and Virginia and Washington. But specifically, no, just average people, I guess you could say.
THIBODEAUX: The Johnsons were famous for having a lot of barbecues and parties just for the local people.
COLLIER: Um-hmm. Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: Well, thank you very much. I certainly appreciate your taking the time to visit with me today.
COLLIER: Thank you. I enjoyed it. I like going down Memory Lane.
(End of interview)