My Claim to Fame

I didn’t get my picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone but I did get my picture on the cover of Life magazine on the September the 4th 1964 issue.

The cover is above. “But!” you say, as you are looking at the above picture, “You are not on the picture, unless you are Lyndon B. Johnson or one of his daughters.”

“Was too!” I will very cleverly argue back.

“Are Not!” the debate continues.

Actually this cover I got off the net does not show the whole cover. The cover is a fold out cover, that folds out to make a larger picture.

However, studying it more, this picture looks like it was taken inside the Convention Hall. If so, it is not the same picture that was on the cover of Life when it first came out, or it was an alternate cover for another part of the country or something.

The larger picture would show thousands of pin-heads that are all standing on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City and also in view above the Atlantic waters are fireworks that wished LBJ HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

It was Lyndon’s birthday and as a present the Democratic Party nominated him as the party’s candidate for President, which at the time he was already President, serving out the late John Kennedy’s term.

Four of us drove the 40 miles from Lakehurst, New Jersey, to witness whatever there would be to witness.

On the Boardwalk thousands of people were standing around, some with signs. We were outside the Atlantic City Convention Hall.

It was a happy jubilation time… except one group of Viet Nam protesters near us was suddenly attacked, brought down to the boardwalk wood and suddenly many cops materialized and yanked off the attackers and quickly whisked all of them away. It ended and disappeared as quickly as it appeared and happened.

Someone in the crowd with a radio said LBJ was making his acceptance speech. Not too long after that, as I remember, the doors of a balcony in the Convention Hall opened and a band outside started to play Happy Birthday… and everybody around us started singing. LBJ and his family were on the balcony waving at the huge crowd and out on the waters fire works was shot out into the waters and bursting and evidently was a two-framed kind of thing – one lit up a birthday cake and the other one lit up a likeness of LBJ. The crowd went wild and cheered.

And a very good photographer managed to capture it into a single frame almost the whole thing: LBJ & his daughter, us – the cast of thousands with nothing up tiny faces, and the artsy fireworks.

That was 42 years ago.