Oral History Interview - Gayle Granberry - April 23, 2008

Interview with Gayle Shipp Granberry

 

Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux

Date of Interview: April 23, 2008

Location: San Marcos, TX

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Interviewee:   Gayle Shipp Granberry – A 1967 journalism graduate of Texas State University, Mrs. Granberry scored points with President Johnson when she “ambushed” him for a live interview during her student journalism days.  Mrs. Granberry became the first woman in Texas (and the third in the nation) to be news director of a metropolitan television station when she was named the first news director for what is now KVUE-TV in Austin.  She is currently a spokesman for Seton Hospital.

 

Topics:            Interview with President Johnson on campus radio show, internship with KTBC –TV, Lady Bird Johnson, working as staff for Senator Ralph Yarborough in Washington D.C., coverage of symposium and funeral for KVUE – TV

 

BARBARA THIBODEAUX: This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University.  Today is April 23, 2008.  My name is Barbara Thibodeaux.  I am interviewing Gayle Granberry at San Marcos, Texas.

 

                        Mrs. Granberry, 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 no.

 

GAYLE GRANBERRY:   Yes, I am happy to accept.

                       

THIBODEAUX: Thank you very much.

                        Would you start out by giving us some background information.  Are you from San Marcos?

 

GRANBERRY: Yes, I grew up in San Marcos and went to Southwest Texas from the years 1963 through 1967 when I graduated.

 

THIBODEAUX: What were you involved in on campus?  What kind of activities, jobs?

 

GRANBERRY: Mostly journalism things.  I was involved in the journalism department, and I also worked for the journalism department.  So I spent a lot of time doing that.

 

THIBODEAUX: You also worked for the news service while you were a student?

 

GRANBERRY: Yes, yes, while I was a student and started a little campus radio show.  I was actually the first person involved in that and that’s how I got to meet Lyndon Johnson was through the little radio show.

 

THIBODEAUX: I think that was in 1965?

 

GRANBERRY: I think it was 1966.  I’m pretty sure it was ’66.  I maybe wrong, but I think that’s when it was.

 

THIBODEAUX: Did you have any association or see him on campus any time before then?

 

GRANBERRY: You know I don’t remember really having seen him.  It wasn’t until I was a junior or senior that I was really paying any close attention.  But I know that he was on the campus before that.  I just don’t recall seeing him.

 

THIBODEAUX: Will you tell us the story about when you did get to meet and interview President Johnson?

 

GRANBERRY: I would be happy to tell you the story.  It’s actually one of the fun experiences of my life.  We had the radio show and I thought, gee wouldn’t it be really cool if the President would say a few words on our radio program.  So I waited outside the administrative building because I knew he was having a meeting with the president of the college.  So when he came out I walked up and stuck out my hand and said, “I’m Gayle and I have a radio show and I wondered if you would be willing to be on my campus radio show.” 

 

                        At least two guys grabbed me.  Each by one arm and he just smiled because he was a very nice man and he said, “Let her go.”  We talked for a couple of minutes and then he said, “Okay.”  So I took him up to the second floor.  We all had to climb these little, narrow stairs that I actually ended up falling down several times in my career, into my little closet where we made the recordings because remember this was a pretty good while ago, and we had an old tape recorder.  It was me, him, and two secret service guys.  We talked for five to ten minutes.  It was a very pleasant interview.  He was very nice.  I was probably not the best interviewer in the world at that time and I think he didn’t tell me anything that he didn’t want to say.  I haven’t heard the tape in a really long time.  Among other things it is a reel –to-reel tape and I can’t play that anymore.  But it was really pleasant, and actually it ended up not only being on my little radio program, which was on the weekend, we taped it and put it together and then played it on the weekend, but there were little clips from it that were played on the national news because there were national reporters and they asked us to make a copy of it and make it available.  So they did and then they shared it with the other people.  So that was really pretty exciting for me.

 

THIBODEAUX: Wasn’t there a national news commentator who contacted you?

 

GRANBERRY: It wasn’t actually a news commentator.  I think that perhaps my friends have told you about that, but it was Jack Valenti when he was working for the President as his press secretary.  And he just sent me a really, really kind letter and thanked me on behalf of the President.  It was really nice, something I keep.

 

THIBODEAUX: I would imagine.  Do you remember any of the questions or any of the comments?

 

GRANBERRY: Absolutely not.  That has been a really long time ago. (laughs)

 

THIBODEAUX: We have the tape at the university, right?

 

GRANBERRY: I think you do probably have a tape.  Once again, I have a tape too, it’s just been such a long time I don’t remember.  I do remember that the burning issue of Vietnam was not as big an issue at that time.  I don’t think we talked about that.

 

THIBODEAUX: Did you see LBJ on campus after that?

 

GRANBERRY: I saw him another time, but I don’t remember exactly when it was.  This was the end of my junior year and actually, as a result of having this meeting, I had applied for an internship at KTBC in Austin, the TV station that the Johnsons owned and they accepted me.  I couldn’t help but think perhaps it was a result of that because he was very into students.  He was very supportive of students.  He was very supportive of Texas students and really very much supportive of Southwest Texas students.

 

THIBODEAUX: Do you have any memories of working at the TV station?

 

GRANBERRY: Yes, lots of memories working at the TV station.  I don’t remember seeing him at the TV station though.  I don’t know whether I was just not there, I know he was there.  Actually, though I did see Mrs. Johnson there on a much more regular basis.

 

THIBODEAUX: Going back to campus, I did want to ask you something, we talked about the 60s.  President Johnson saw the nation’s youth as a tremendous resource for improving the world as evidenced by the Peace Corp and VISTA.  Do you remember if the emerging youth movement and encouragement from these federal programs had any effect on students at that time.  Were they more interested in going into public service?

 

GRANBERRY: I think actually there was a lot of commitment on the part of students.  Not personally that I know students who were personally committed to it, but we had several programs where students who were getting ready to go into the Peace Corps came to San Marcos to be trained and I actually got a chance to meet a number of those.  Looking back on it, I wonder if because Southwest Texas was Johnson’s school, maybe that is one of the reasons why there was this associated program.  But I did meet lots and lots of students who went through that program and they were going all over the world.  It was a pretty exciting time.

 

THIBODEAUX: Do you remember any of those interviews?

 

GRANBERRY: That I did with the Peace Corps students?  Only they were kind of personal interviews.  They were just about what folks had been doing, what they were anticipating doing at their various assignments in Africa, Asia, and all over the world – mostly taking care of people, helping them learn basic hygiene, digging latrines.  That part was kind of interesting actually.

 

THIBODEAUX: After you left you went to work for, is it KC, I’m sorry, what are the call letters?

 

GRANBERRY: KTBC.

 

THIBODEAUX: KTBC. I’m sorry.  I confused those.

 

GRANBERRY: And actually no, I just interned for KTBC.

 

THIBODEAUX: And later you went to work for KVUE?

 

GRANBERRY: Yes, actually the year that they signed on at KVUE. (phone ringing) There were some things that happened between then.  I was a junior when I actually did the interview with the President and then the next semester is when I worked for KTBC as an intern.  The semester after that I actually came back to Southwest Texas and worked for the college because I was trying to save money so that some friends and I could spend the summer in Europe which we subsequently did and that was kind of fun.  But after I returned I got a job in Washington working for Ralph Yarborough who was the democratic senator at that time.

 

THIBODEAUX: That’s very interesting.  We always hear so much about the split in the party with Yarborough and the conflict between him and Johnson.  Do you have any reflections on that?

 

GRANBERRY: The reflections that I have on it is that there was an ideological difference between the two.  But as far as I know both President Johnson and Senator Yarborough were always nice to each other especially at public events. Because his staff was in Washington at that point and time, being a Texan in Washington was kind of an exciting thing to be.  We were included in a lot of, not White House events, we didn’t get invited to White House dinners, but peripheral events around Washington largely because we worked for a Texas senator.

 

THIBODEAUX: So what were your duties?

 

GRANBERRY: I was the PR flunky.  (laughs)  It was my first job out of school.  It was fun.  I had a good time.  It was an exciting time.  I got to see and witness a whole lot of things that I look back on and you think about it and when you’re living through it, it doesn’t seem as important, but some of the things were pretty important.  I got to see President Johnson decide not to run for re-election because I was there watching TV in my living room when he did that.  After Martin Luther King Jr. was killed there were riots in Washington and they burned houses two streets from where I lived.  So you know there were just a lot of things that went on in Washington during those times.  It was very turbulent, kind of made it exciting – had a little danger and risky-ness to it.  So I was glad I did that.  That was a wonderful thing to do, but then I came back to Texas.  Actually I came back to Texas along with a lot of other Yarborough staff to work for Hubert Humphrey’s election campaign.  I never really did go back, I mean I went back for a month or so but after that I resigned because I really didn’t want to live in Washington anymore.  I came back to Texas and got a job at a TV station in Houston.  Then after they had signed the TV station that I had worked for in Austin on, I really wanted to come back to this area.  I started working for them and I worked for them for the balance of my career as a reporter.

 

THIBODEAUX: Is that when you saw President Johnson, well former President Johnson give a speech at the University of Texas?

 

GRANBERRY: Yes at the University of Texas and I can’t even remember what the event was, but it was something to do – it was with the LBJ school.  They had already opened that at that time, and it was fairly new, but it was some event they were hosting.  So we were covering it.  That was just a pretty exciting time for me.   It was one of those things where what happened for me is I found everything that he had ever said about civil rights to be believable because he just stopped in the middle of this conference when no one was expecting it and that’s not what he was talking about and said, repeated Martin Luther King Jr.’s line, “we shall overcome,” with a big emphasis on the “shall.”  It was exciting.  Of course, after he died we got a chance to cover his funeral and there was a lot of Washington pomp and circumstance that showed up in Austin during that time too.  It was interesting.  It was an exciting part, he was not a gigantic part of my life and I certainly know I was just a gnat in his life, but it is something I really do remember.

 

THIBODEAUX: So what do you think is President Johnson’s greatest legacy in Central Texas?

 

GRANBERRY: We were talking about that.  It is hard to say for me.  I know that he changed a lot of attitudes in Central Texas, probably not as fast as they needed to be changed, but President Johnson was actually more supportive, I think, than a lot of people think of, people who disagreed with him.  I know that he had the reputation for just kind of barreling over and mowing people down, but I thought he actually did more listening than more people realize.

 

THIBODEAUX: I have heard that.  So you’re not the only one with that opinion.

 

GRANBERRY: I’m glad.  (laughs)

 

THIBODEAUX: Those are the questions I have, but is there anything that I have missed, anything else you have to share?

 

GRANBERRY: Again, I was a very small part of this pretty gigantic life so I don’t really remember a lot.  When I started at Southwest Texas, obviously, I had, again, a peripheral relationship that went quite a bit longer than that because it actually went through when President Johnson died which I guess was in ’73. My TV station had only been on the air two years at that time, so then that was really a mega event in the history of Austin – his funeral at the LBJ Library.

 

THIBODEAUX: Do you remember any details about that?

 

GRANBERRY: I remember that his family was extremely kind and courteous to everyone.  Mrs. Johnson was one of the nicest people I ever met in my life.  She was always, they talk about her and did recently after her death, about being a southern lady, but she did treat everyone with great kindness.  Whenever you were around and you were a media person and you would walk up and say – hi Mrs. Johnson, I’m so-and-so, and blah, blah, blah, she would put her hand on your hand and say, “Oh yes I remember you.”  Of course I don’t believe that for a second, (laughs) but she was a terrific lady.  I really liked her a lot.

 

THIBODEAUX: Well thank you very much Mrs. Granberry.  I appreciate the interview. 

 

(End of interview)