John Connally III - The Lawyer Statesman

A conversation that reveals the life and accomplishments of the first- born son of iconic Texas Governor John and Nellie Connally.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Rh's SheriffFryar, and this is my heart of
Texas. I first met John B. Connelly as he campaigned for Texas governor
in nineteen sixty two. I wasa girl child in awe of his commanding

(00:33):
presence that would overwhelmingly defeat a threeterm incumbent from his own party. He
instantly became my governor, and thenjust a year later was struck by the
assassin bullets that killed a president,broke camelot, and shattered the innocence of
an entire generation, the child babyboomers. I know how it affected me,

(00:55):
but imagine what it meant to thebaby boomer children of Governor John Nellie
Connolly. On that Texas November day, the Connolly's John then seventeen, Sharon
fourteen, Mark eleven remember for uson the podcast labeled November twenty second,
nineteen sixty three. I hope you'lllisten to that. But in addition,

(01:17):
we're now posting the rest of theirstories. How the three now aging children
of Governor John and Nellie Connolly maturedinto different individuals in their own right,
but with a shared core of familythat has always and always will stand for
Texas. You're in the fish bowl. You know, he was Lynn and

(01:48):
Johnson's national campaign chare in nineteen sixty. You know, you're putting up r
yard signs and other people are takingthem down, and you know you're having
trouble in school. And then hebecomes Navy secretary, and you moved to
Washington. Then everybody knows these Navysecretary, and then he runs for governor
and I moved back, and Ihad trouble with people in high school,

(02:09):
and I had to tell a coupleof people, listen, I'm not going
to mess with you now, butif you don't leave me alone the day
this election's over, I'm gonna findyou. Definitely a son of Texas rough
and tumble politics of the time.But this John Connley, a lawyer like
the dad who's name for, ismore diplomat than politician, with a wealth

(02:29):
of historic knowledge and connection on bothsides of the political aisle. I often
think you hear a lot of politicianschildren complain about the fish bowl and the
life they've had because of the focuson their family. And that's true.
You have things you can't do andso forth. When you're in that kind

(02:50):
of thing, but the truth is, you have extraordinary opportunities when you're in
a family like that. I mean, I've been places and done things that
never were the result of of myown activities. They were resulting my father's
activities and the fact that he hadme with him a lot for some reason,
whatever reason I was around, Iwas in these meetings and in these

(03:10):
discussions. I was with him whenhe briefed Governor Reagan on the entire Middle
East situation after the convention in nineteeneighty, and they weren't but about six
people in that room. And Iwas with him at things like that.
In the eighty campaign, I probablyspoke in thirty different states when he couldn't

(03:32):
go. I was on the stagethat was one of the first times we
had the cattle calls, and soI spoke on the same stage with Bush
Senior, and Howard Baker and BobDole and on other people that were running
for president. Most of them spokeat those things, and Reagan usually sent
the senior governor sendor that was supportinghim, and oftentimes if my dad was

(03:55):
somewhere, he'd send me. SoI was very very active throughout all those
years with him. People used totry to get me to run for things
in Texas, for governor or senator. Both parties talked to me about it
multiple times, and I never feltthat fire to do that, because the
truth is, I'd been in politicsmy whole life. I knew how tough

(04:16):
it was. I knew how difficultit was. I knew the difficulty of
it. Today, it'd be evenworse because today the way politicians are treated
by the Back then, the Americanpress was more independent. They weren't tied
with specific parties, and they weren'tadvocates. They were more reporters and journalists

(04:40):
back then. But they also protectedpoliticians some. I mean, you didn't
hear a lot about President Kennedy's supposedactivities in the White House until after he
was dead, you know. Andback when I was being approached on these
things, it was still not abad time to be in politics, and

(05:01):
people were generally treated well. ButI just had been in politics my whole
life. I was sitting at myoffice one day at Baker and Bots and
it was Good Friday, and mostpeople weren't working on Good Friday, but
lawyers were. And I'm down thereworking in my phone in my office rang
well, I didn't have a secretarythat day. I'm down there working by

(05:23):
myself. My phone rang I justanswered it and this boy said, is
this John Conley? And I justsaid hello, and this boy says,
this John Connley. I said,yes, Governor, is it was Bill
Clements. I recognized his boys.So we started talking and visiting. About
fifteen minutes in the conversation, Isaid, Governor, you didn't call me
on Good Friday just to visit.What do you want he said? He

(05:46):
said, I want you to runwith me on the ticket for lieutenant governor.
And I said, well, Isaid what about George? And I
was talking about George straight from Houston, who had been going around trying to
gather up support to run for lieutenantgovernor. And he said, if you'll
agree to one, you won't haveany opponent. I'll see that you won't
have any opponents. You'll run withme. And so I commenced to tell

(06:10):
him why I couldn't do that anddidn't want to do that, and he
said. I get about halfway throughthat, he said, well, how
about attorney general? And I said, Governor, I don't want to run
for anything right now. So hehad another nice talking. He rang off.
But I had business groups in Dallasand business groups at Uston try to
get me to run. But itdidn't hold any mystery for me, share

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because I'd been too active in themiddle of it and seeing too much of
it. What he's seen is thedevolution of single party Democrat run politics in
Texas, slowly at first, andthen all of a sudden. John then
in his twenties, experienced a closehand his father's closing term as governor in

(06:54):
nineteen sixty eight, the same yearPresident Lyndon Johnson did not seek re election,
returning to his stonewall. The VietnamWar protests were sweeping the country.
Hippy's celebrating the drug culture and freelove. It was the beginning of the
end of conservative Democrats in Texas andthe country, as proved by the raucous
Democrat presidential convention in Chicago that year. Republican Richard Nixon, who had lost

(07:17):
to JFK just eight years before,won election and an overwhelming re election in
nineteen seventy two. The former Texasgovernor Connolly he supported Democrats for Nixon.
Well, if you'll remember, hedidn't switch in sixty eight. He switched
in seventy three, that's right,in nineteen seventy one, when he was

(07:40):
appointed to the Nixon cabinet as TraderSector. He was a Democrat, and
so a lot of those fellows inNixon's cabinet didn't trust him. And there's
a lot of stories about all thattoo, but that's a whole other hour.
But if you'll remember, Ron Reaganwas a Democrat and Kay Hudgson was
a Democrat. Back during the earlyseventies, the National Democrat Party started moving

(08:05):
a strongly to the left. Itwas George McGovern type people in the party,
and so the people in the SouthernStates, Reagan included, had to
make a choice if they wanted tobe interested in national politics. And I
still have people of this day say, well, I'm a John Conolly Democrat.
Somebody said that I am the otherday and she said, well,

(08:26):
there aren't any more young Conley Democrats. They're Republicans in the house. There
are still people that, you know. He was the head of the conservative
wing of the Democrat Party in Texas, and Ralph Yarborough had the liberal wing
of the party, and so thatwas kind of where it was and what
was going on. And you know, in nineteen seventy we had a kind

(08:48):
of a bruising Senate race here andit was interesting because Bush senior forty one,
decided he was going to run forSenate because he figured that Ralph Yarboro
is going to be the Democrat andhe was the head of the liberal wing
of the party. And Bush theorizedthat if he could run as the Republican
and Yarborough would run as a Democrat, that he went a lot of conservative

(09:11):
Democrat votes, and he would have. He would have, in fact,
my father would have voted forty andfor Bush. But what he didn't count
on. My dad wasn't looking atPresident Bush. He was only also looking
at Yarboro and thinking we need tobeat him in the primary. So he
recruited Lloyd Benson to run against Yarboroughthe primary, and of course Benson beat

(09:33):
him. So then you've got asituation where you got George Bush run against
Lloyd Benson, and those two guyslooked exactly the same. They were both
basically conservative politicians, business people,successful business people, ended up running against
each other, and of course Bensonone Benson won. And then that was
in seventy well, late later thatyear. I want to say it's after

(09:54):
the election, but before the endof the year, but I may have
this time and wrong. We're downin Floresville at the ranch, and the
White House calls and it's President Nixon. He gets my dad on the phone.
He said, he said, John, my treasury secretary, David Kennedy's
going to have to resign his wifestill and he's got to go take care

(10:16):
of her. And he said,I'd like you to be my treasury secretary.
And I'm sitting right next to myfather. All this conversation took place,
and he said he said, well, mister Presley said that that's wonderful,
that's very very nice of you.But he said I think that'd be
a mistake for you, which isnot the typical thing that a president hears

(10:39):
when he's asking somebody to be inhis cabinet. And so Nixon said why,
and he said, well, wejust had My father said, well,
we just had a bruising Senate racedown here and I was active in
it and the Democrat won the race. And he said, I think you
need to take care of I thinkif you, if you appointed me,
you've got to do something for yourpeople, and he said, if a

(11:01):
few point meteor, your guy lost, and you need to do something for
him before you put some democrat onyour cabinet. And next he said,
you mean George Bush and my dadsaid yes. He said, I know
if you if you put me,he just lost his center race. He
said, I think you put meon your cabinet right now the Republican Party

(11:22):
in the state of Texas is goingto go crazy. Said I think that's
that's a mistake for you. Andnext to said, well, what would
Bush like to do? And myfather said, well, well, I
don't know. He said, letme call you back. So he calls
back, and I can't remember nowwhether there's the same day or the next
day. It was within twenty fourhours, but and he calls my dad
back and he said, he says, I understand Bush would like to be

(11:43):
UH ambassador the you in Is thatokay with you? And my father said,
well, it's not up to me, I said. He said,
I just think you got to youknow, you got to do something for
him first. And nexton is gettingkind of put out with him. At
this point he said, look,John, he said, if Bush takes
the un row, will you takethe treasury position. And my dad said
yes, so he took it.But of course when he got up there,

(12:07):
there was a great political cartoon thatI think I've got it somewhere.
But it's one of those famous cartoondrawing guys, and it's a picture nexton
you can tell who he is clearly, and he's sitting in this big circle
of elephants. They all got theirbig heads and their big ears, and

(12:28):
he says, gentlemen, I'd liketo introduce you to our new Treasury secretary.
And there's some two donkey ears stickingup in the middle of this group.
And I always thought that was agreat cartoon. Seventy three, I
believe, was when my father actuallyformally switched parties. And of course,

(12:48):
as you know, and he ran. It was Ronald Reagan. People that
came to my father in seventy eightseventy nine, and in fact one of
them was Jim Edwards, who wasthe governor of South Carolina, been Reagan's
you know. Reagan tried to runagainst Ford in seventy six and he lost.
He lost against Gerald Ford and oneof his national co chairs was Gunner

(13:11):
Jim Edwards of South Carolina, andhe's one of the people that approached my
father and said you need to runin eighty And my dad was saying,
well, I thought you were abig Reagan guy, and he said,
I am. I love Reagan,but he said he's got health issues.
And of course no one knew anythingabout his health issues at that time except
just his inside group from California,but apparently Everars did also, I guess,

(13:35):
and so it was actually Reagan people. But you know when my dad
got out early after South Carolina becauseReagan won, and he said, well
the champ beat us, So thenhe started helping a congressman, the Sinners.
But I was all over the countryduring that time. And you know,
when you're the son of the candidate, tons of people are going to
come up to you and tell youhow great they think your dad is.

(13:56):
You have no idea whether to tellthe truth or not. But I had
a lot of people coming to meand say, John, I love your
dad. He's my second choice.But I've been with Ronald Reagan since nineteen
sixty four, he'd been on theradio for sixteen years, and I love
your dad. He'd be my secondchoice, but I got to be for

(14:18):
read when somebody tells you that,you know they're telling you the truth.
You are so interwoven. Was thiscity big enough? Was a state even
big enough for all of these largerthan life political characters, and you were
right at the center of that.Well, of course, when someone's president,
like both Bushes, that's a wholedifferent order of magnitude. I mean,

(14:41):
my dad was a Navy secretary andgovernor and Treasury secretary, but he's
that's not being president of the UnitedStates. Another great statesman that was a
longtime friend of my father's that Iknow well is Jimmy Baker, And of
course Baker has had an extremely distinguishedcareer. He switched over from he moved
over to the Reagan campaign after theconvention, because of course, he was

(15:07):
with Bush all during the campaign untilReagan got the nomination and he picked Bush
as as vice president nacial candidate,and then Baker moved over onto the Reagan
campaign at that that point in time. But then he held a lot of
offices, including the Secretary of State, which is the number one cabinet post,
and Secretary of Treasury, which issome argue is the second second one,

(15:28):
but defense certainly. But anyway,had a very distinguished career, one
of the best operators ever in Washingtonand a great fellow also. But you
know, I knew George W.From we met back in the sixties.
We were actually in the National Guardtogether. And I remember The New York

(15:48):
Times showed up at our door herein Houston, diying and I door rang
the bell trying to get me toget George W in trouble when they had
that story on him where they weretrying to say he wasn't showing up at
the National Guard and he moved overto the Alabama Guard or something and he
wasn't showing up at his post.And I called Jui and Reid, who

(16:11):
was a long time press a guyand a lot of things. As you
well know. You knew Julie well. And I called you and said you
and you got to call the TheTimes is trying to get in touch with
me. They've showed up at thehouse and they've called me several times,
and here's what you need to tellthem. When I was in the headquarters
unit at the Texas Air National Guard, and I would go with the people

(16:34):
to do inspections on the one hundredand forty seventh fighter wing at Ellington in
Houston, and George W was inthat unit, as was Lloyd Benson the
third, And I said, youneed to tell them that if they want
to talk to me and they wantthey want testimony from me, here's what

(16:55):
I'm going to tell them. Everytime I was there, he was there,
and he was right where he wassupposed to be from the get go.
You carried his name as your soncarries his name. If there's a
legacy of John and Nellie the originals, John B. John the second,
are you the living legacy. I'mnot. No, I'm not the legacy

(17:19):
of that. Our whole family istheir legacy. It's Mark and his kids,
and Sharon and her kids, andit's all of our combined family that
creates that legacy. And everybody hastheir own areas of influence. And you
know, there are a lot ofgreat families in Houston, for example,
a lot of great historic families thatgrew out of the early oil booms and

(17:45):
real estate booms, and a lotof important people. And so no,
I don't think. I don't thinkof myself in those terms at all.
I'm just another business guy. I'menjoying my life and our family and friends
and all that, but I don'tI don't view myself as as any particular
political legacy or anything else. You'vegot legacies here, and it's it's the

(18:08):
Bushes, They're the political legacies.It's the Johnson's. I just saw Lucy
Johnson. We gave each other abig hug at the NDI Anderson meeting.
We're on the board, both havebeen for many years on the board of
Indy Anderson. And gave her abig hug and chatted with her. And
the last assassination anniversary, I gota call from Linda telling me she'd just

(18:33):
been thinking about me. I'm stillclose to those girls, and of course
I did call Linda Johnson uncle Lindonuntil the day he became president, and
we spent a lot of time growingup with the Johnson's. But that's a
presidential family, and the Bushes area double presidential family, so so those
are those are very I realized thatmy dad was at a time he governed

(18:57):
at a time when leaders were large, and the press and people allowed leaders
to be large. I remember AnnaRichards, who was a huge personality and
very savvy and well regarded, longtime Democrat operative in Austin and then a
great Democrat governor. Half my friendsare Democrats and half are Republicans, and

(19:18):
I'm not giving up on one ofthem. And she was. I remember
her saying when they were interviewing herduring the time of my dad's burial,
and she said, you know,she said, I'll just tell you she
said, I'm I'm governor of Texas. But she said John Connelly was the
governor, and so he was.He was a large personality at a time

(19:41):
when leaders were allowed to be large, and now it's a different time.
Tell us about your kids, tellus about your kids and your grandchildren.
Well, John B and Nelly areboth lawyers. My kids, Diana's three
boys, two lawyers and one wealthmanager. And we have seven grandkids and

(20:03):
one of them's back here in business, our oldest grandchild, and the next
one was up at TCU, andthen others are scattered around schools here.
My John B and Nellie, mykids both went to Saint John's then here
in Houston, and then Nellie wentto a UVA. When she got a
high school. John B went toVanderbilt and then he came back went to

(20:26):
ut law school. Uh, hewas a number one graduate at Vanderbilt.
He actually got in excess of aperfect four point average up there and got
the Founder's Medal, being the topgraduate in his class, and he did
it in less than four years.I remember the chancellor up there when we
went to his graduation. He sittingup there in front of two thousand people,
said, John B if you everdecided to run for anything, Texas

(20:48):
called me, I'm gonna come downthere and work for you. He's had
an extraordinary legal career. I alwaystell people that my family's clear evidence that
the that the intelligence in the familygeneration skipping my dad was extraordinary, and
my son's extraordinary. And Nellie too. Nellie was a cum Laddie graduate at

(21:10):
Saint John. She was a bigrunner, one all across country and a
mile and two mile races in thewhole Southwest Preparatory conference when she was there.
They're both lawyers, neither of themare married. Both both lawyers doing
well. But Diane's kids Jui andthe oldest one, g and Ftida.
He's got the two boys, ourtwo oldest grandchildren, and then Jason,

(21:33):
the middle son. He's a wealthmanager and he got his own company called
Americana partners and been very successful.He was actually at Lehman Brothers with my
brother Mark. Mark is the oneSharon who convinced Jason to go into the
wealth management business. And when Markwas an area manager at Lehman Brothers,

(21:55):
Jason worked under him. And thenMorgan Stanley hired Jason and away from Lehmon
before the Lehman bankruptcy ever happened.Martin Stanley hired Jason away and then he
was there ten years and then wentout and started his own company, very
successful. Alcohol their kind of partners. And he's got three kids, Ella,
his oldest daughter, and then twotwins, Alexander and Vivian. And

(22:18):
here's a nice footnote about a successfulblended family. When Jason and his wife
Courtney had the twins, they askedmy kids John Ben Nelly to be godparents.
All five of our kids are closeto each other. We just had
Dian's birthday here a couple of weeksago, and they're all there and they're
all partying together. And they've knowneach other since Pooh Corner. They've all

(22:41):
known he shows since preschool. Soanyway, Jason's got three kids and then
Zach, the youngest for Tita,Dane's youngest boy. He's got two.
He's got Angelina who's graduating from EpiscopalHigh School and about to head off to
college. And Zachary who's at theSecond Baptist. So we've had a at
Saint John's, we've had him atthe Second Baptist, we've had him at

(23:03):
at River Oaks Baptists, We've hadhim at Episcopal, We've had them all
over school and they're all doing well. They're all good, good kids there.
They all have good values, andthey all work hard, and we're
very blessed. We really are veryblessed by a great blended family. And
I get great enjoyment out of allof them. And we'll be right back.

(23:45):
This is so much larger than life. You talk of your dad being
a larger than life, but wehave it. Is there another state that
has this this much covering not justpolitics but every aspect of the state.
What is it about this state ofTexas that this is created here. It's

(24:07):
it's unique. It's a powerful thing, even in the new in the new
green world. My my current projectis i'm i'm I'm working on a new
technology company that that can make verylow carbon gasoline literally literally makes it burns
with a third of a carbon intothe environment that the normal gasoline uses out

(24:30):
of our current refineries, and andwe use flared gas, so we take
flaied gas out of the environment,which is a bad thing, and then
make it in a gasoline. ButTexas is a leader and has been there.
There's a great myth of the cowboy, the cowboys and the and the
Indians. But but it wasn't amyth. There were cowboys and Indians,

(24:51):
the great ranches, the King Ranchand and the Four Sixes and and all
these great piers U yeah, PierceRanches, absolutely, and all the great
cattle drives and a good night lovingtrail and all the Texas has a long,
rich history that's exciting people, butalways forward looking, always forward looking,

(25:18):
very positive people, very positive people, and it's a it's a powerful
state economically and politically. I mean, we've had some real power in the
state of Washington over many, many, many years, and it's still very
significant. It's a wonderful state,and it's a great state to be from,

(25:40):
and it's a great state to bein. It definitely is. And
I think the whole premise of myhearted Texas is the fact that first you
got to choose it, then you'vegot to believe in it. Then you've
got to keep on working for it. And it seems to me like you're
one of those who's never going toretire. John Connolly, Well you're not
either, Sheriff rar Thank goodness,hope you don't. The Connelly's have always

(26:17):
answered the calls of country, family, friends, and even reporters like myself.
I'm so grateful that they answered again, and I hope you'll listen to
all four of the podcast we recordedeasily found as My Heart of Texas,
a KTRH dot com or the iHeartRadioapp. Gratitude to newsman Jeff Biggs and
creative producer Jacob dan Tone, whogave up much of their Thanksgiving week to

(26:41):
get this all together. I'm SheriffRyer from My Heart of Texas. Thank
all of you. To man