Texas' Political and Military Leaders

Boston hails the National Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Audie Murphy, honored as the hero of the VFW conclave, coinciding with the New England premiere of the film recreating his exploits as America's most-decorated combat soldier of World War II, To Hell and Back. Half a million witnessed the VFW parade and premiere, and hailed the man of the day.

[MARCHING BAND MUSIC]

The occasion saw several citations and honors conferred on the war hero and movie star, including the creation of an Audie Murphy platoon, honoring a soldier who went to hell and back for his country.

The very last public appearance he made was at a civil rights symposium in Austin at the Lyndon B Johnson Library Museum, where he said, we've made so much progress but we have so far still to go. So did he find some peace in his last years on the ranch? I think so. From what we hear of what Lucy and Linda-- the two daughters-- tell us, they say that daddy did enjoy his last years here. But he was a driven man. And had he probably seen an end to Vietnam, and had his health been better, he probably would have run for a second term. Win? Who knows. But he said, when he went in 1964, he gathered his cabinet around him and his advisors and he says, OK. We right now are at the top of our popularity and we plan on spending those credits right on down. And he drove through so much of that legislation. And a lot of that happened under those big oaks. You'll see in the Texas White House, although it's a big house, there's lots of small rooms so there's no place to hold big meetings. So those big live oaks, those huge, stately, beautiful trees in the front yard, became the shade for the picnic tables and the little folding lawn chairs of the '60s for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and members of Congress, and world leaders to talk about the issues of the time. What do you hope people will get from a visit here? Coming here is an eye opening experience, I think. You know, I was alive when LBJ died, but I was very young. And so I didn't really know a lot about him other than he was the 36th President. And, of course, I remember he was the Vietnam president. But what you hear so often when you engage visitors in this park is, I had no idea he did so much. Because with everything we're bombarded with, information-wise, we categorize people really quickly and that's kind of how we hold them in our file cabinets in our brain. So LBJ-- Vietnam. Not LBJ-- education, and environment, and Civil Rights, and voting rights, and those kinds of things. And I think when they learned that, wow. When I pick up a can of green beans in the grocery store and I can turn it around and read what's in it, that's an LBJ law. You know, when you hear of an accident and the National Traffic Safety Board is going to investigate, that's an LBJ law. So many of those little things are so incorporated, like Medicare and Medicaid, into our daily lives, that we lose track of who we give credit to for those things. So visitors to this park discover someone that maybe they thought they knew, but realize there was so much more complexity to the man and his wife.