LBJ Museum hosts Neal Spelce for spring lecture

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Museum of San Marcos hosted renowned Texas newsman and author Neal Spelce for its Spring Lecture.

Spelce, alongside his daughter Cile Spelce Elley, discussed his new book “With the Bark Off: A Journalist’s Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media” and shared memories of his time with LBJ during his lecture on Wednesday.

Spelce said he met LBJ while working for KTBC TV in Austin and later went on a world trip with him while he was working a fellowship at CBS News in New York City. “I didn’t know where

“I didn’t know where we were going,” Spelce recalled. “[LBJ] said, ‘We’re going around the world … President [John F.] Kennedy is sending me to these key spots around the world to tell these leaders that we’ve got a new administration in Washington.’”

Spelce spoke of his time during the trip where he visited Vietnam and India as a member of the press corp.

During Spelce’s career, he covered presidents from Harry Truman to George W. Bush. His book highlights his experiences with LBJ and other moments from his career in journalism. Spelce worked a 60-year career in various fields, including radio, television, journalism, marketing, advertising, public relations, broadcast program syndication, public speaking and consulting. He served as Senior Advisor to U.S. Sen. John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign. Additionally, Spelce served as a communications consultant to Texas Gov. Ann Richards and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.

During Wednesday’s event, Spelce discussed his final time seeing LBJ before his death on Jan. 22, 1973.

“Last time I had spoke to him, at the LBJ Library, it was open and he wanted to have a symposium that was a part of the library’s functions and we had a civil rights symposium and it had every major civil rights leader in the country,” Spelce said. “It was a very tense time — very tense. Emotions were raw.

“So [LBJ] went out and at the end of the symposium, he was chatting with the crowd when a young man stood up and yelled at him and started walking toward the podium ... So, the young man spoke and said something, it was accusatory. It wasn’t a ‘hey, you’re a great guy.’ It was a speech he had written and LBJ stood there and listened. He took a nitroglycerin pill and put it under his tongue because he was having heart palpitations at that time … I don’t remember [LBJ’s] words exactly: ‘If we have the courage, if we have the strength, if we have the will and we work together and we try to conquer diversity … We shall overcome.’ He died the next month.”

In closing his discussion, Spelce said the LBJ Museum is a “wonderful tribute” to the former president.

“He was a good man who believed fervently in his core values and what he felt was important,” Spelce said. “And, he persevered through so much and some of it had to be part of his upbringing here in the heart of Texas.

“Be sure and continue the good work because LBJ is going to be recognized more and more as the years go by,” Spelce added. “He was a very, very consequential president … His impact on this country is more recently being recognized after we get past the immediacy of his presidency and you look back at what happened and how it happened and what was going on at the time and he just moved right through all of that.”

Following Spelce’s lecture, LBJ Museum Board of Directors President Wayne Kraemer thanked him for speaking during Wednesday’s event.

“Thank you for this conversation and this wonderful insight,” Kraemer said. “You can read all the books, you can see all the documentaries but to hear these stories from somebody who experienced them … thank you very much.”