Doris Kearns Goodwin and her box seat to history
Chapman Museum holds the first of four walking tours beginning Friday
Please consider supporting The Front Page with a paid subscription: HERE
It could have been an AARP (formally the American Association of Retired People) convention.
Their hair was gray, many used canes, some fumbled with the electronic tickets on their phones and it was slow going on the steep staircase leading to the balcony at the restored church in Saratoga Springs.
More than 600 folks turned out Sunday to worship at the alter of history.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian, author and a history rock star, was being interviewed by WAMC host Joe Donahue - Joe may have been the youngest person at Universal Preservation Hall - about her new book.
For those of us who love history, maybe more importantly love hearing Doris Kearns Goodwin talk about history, we were eager to cough up the $35 for the chance to hear the 81-year-old Goodwin tell us about her latest, and perhaps most personal book, An Unfinished Love Story, and her own front seat to history.
There was a lot to cover.
When I told my son how excited I was to see Goodwin speak, he did not recognize her name.
I was taken aback.
My son has a Master's Degree in public history, works at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, but somehow I failed to introduce him to Doris Kearns Goodwin along the way.
For me, she became a stop-what-you-are-doing-and-listen staple on television news shows.
Over the years, she was a regular on Meet the Press, PBS NewsHour and appeared nearly 50 times on the Charlie Rose talk show, but I suspect I first met her when she appeared in Ken Burns' documentary Baseball. She later wrote her own book on growing up in Brooklyn as a fan of the Dodgers.
Along the way she wrote presidential biographies about Lyndon Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
The biography on Franklin and Eleanor, No Ordinary Time won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. Her book Team of Rivals was the basis for Steven Spielberg's movie Lincoln.
The packed house in Saratoga probably knew the least about the Doris Kearns Goodwin who worked in the White House as an assistant for Lyndon Johnson and even less about her husband Dick Goodwin.
While Doris Kearns Goodwin has spent a lifetime researching and chronicling the stories of presidents, it turned out Doris and Dick Goodwin had their own box seats to history in the 1960s.
Dick was a speech writer for both President Kennedy and President Johnson.
Doris worked in the final days of the Johnson White House and later helped him with his memoirs after he retired to his ranch in Texas. That work became Doris' first book in 1975, Lyndon Baines Johnson and the American Presidency.
But after they were married in 1975, those days were relegated to 42 boxes they put in storage.
In it were their papers, their correspondence with presidents, memos, diaries, drafts of important speeches, notes from their time working in the White House. It was important history and a first-hand behind-the-scenes look at one of the most turbulent decades in American history.
One morning 12 years ago, 80-year-old Dick Goodwin came downstairs for breakfast whistling a song from the musical Oklahoma and announced he was ready to open the 42 boxes.
"I'm an old guy. If I have any wisdom to dispense," he told Doris, "I'd better start dispensing."
They hired a research assistant to arrange the contents in chronological order. Dick hoped those boxes might equal a book. He asked for Doris' help in going through each box.
"Jog my memory, ask me questions, see what we can learn from this, find out what we can do with this," Dick said to Doris. They made a deal to try to spend time on the project every weekend.
"Our last great adventure together was about to begin," Doris wrote in the book.
Their goal in going through the boxes together was to experience the contents of the boxes anew, as if it was happening for the first time; as if they did not know how the story turned out.
One night, Dick said they should open a bottle of champagne after dinner and watch the Kennedy-Nixon debates again.
Before starting the old broadcast, he asked Doris, "Who do you think will win?"
After Johnson became president, Dick was coaxed to join Johnson's team as a speech writer.
Doris takes us back to Selma, Alabama and the shocking violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. That was the impetus for President Johnson's decision to address the nation and pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Johnson chose Dick Goodwin to write the speech. He wanted words strong enough to change the course of a nation.
And he had just nine hours to do it.
"I didn't want to think about time passing," Dick tells Doris in the book. "I lit a cigar, looked at my watch, took the watch off my wrist and put it on the desk beside my typewriter. Another puff of my cigar and I took the watch and put it away in my desk drawer."
Johnson wanted no uncertainty about where he stood, Doris wrote in the book. He insisted the bottom line was this: "To deny fellow Americans the right to vote was simply and unequivocally wrong."
It was then, before we 600 witnesses Sunday, that 81-year-old Doris Kearns Goodwin began to speak slowly and eloquently.
"I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy."
They were Dick's words.
They were what the nation heard from Lyndon Johnson that night.
As the speech began that night in 1965, Dick told Doris a hush filled the chamber.
"From the moment the speech began it was not a matter of oratory or theatrical display but intensity, conviction and heart," Dick told Doris.
Then Doris Kearns Goodwin continued without notes and from memory:
At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
There, long suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man - a man of God - was killed. There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight.
For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great Government - the Government of the greatest nation on earth.
Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country - to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.
There was quiet in the old church in Saratoga Springs.
Six-hundred people engaged in collective thought.
There was something magical about Doris Kearns Goodwin reading these passages from history, about the impact those words had on a nation.
Maybe it was something we all needed to hear again.
That night in 1965, President Johnson boldly punctuated the end of the speech with the the words, "AND... WE... SHALL... OVERCOME."
There was an instant of silence as this rallying cry for the Civil Rights movement cascaded over the House chamber.
"Senators and representatives, generals and diplomats, leapt to their feet, delivered a shouting, stomping ovation that Johnson later said he would `never forget as long I live,' was how Dick described it.
Then Doris Kearns Goodwin stared back into the audience, this tiny waif of a woman and told us all assembled: "That was Dick's proudest moment."
Dick Goodwin died in the spring of 2018 after a short bout with cancer. He was 86 years old.
Doris Kearns Goodwin finished writing An Unfinished Love Story earlier this year.
Learn something new
You may think you know everything about Glens Falls and its history, but you probably do not.
Years ago, architect Bob Joy gave tours about the buildings and the unique diversity of architectural style in downtown Glens Falls. He also threw in a bunch of stories about Glens Falls history. It was a great tour.
The Chapman Museum is hosting the first of four downtown tours today at 11 a.m. I'm planning on checking it out. Maybe a few of you can join me. Tours of other parts of downtown are scheduled for the next three Fridays as well.
The tour explores the major historical events and figures that shaped Glens Falls, from the signing of the original land patent to becoming one of the most prosperous cities in New York.
The tour will start at the Chapman Museum. Parking is available in the Chapman parking lot on Bacon Street (next to Stewart's).
There is a $10 fee for the tour and you can register by calling 518 793-2826.
More from Doris
WAMC host Joe Donahue explained he had done a pre-interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin before Sunday's event in Saratoga Springs.
But it was also before the guilty verdict of former President Trump.
So Donahue appeared to call an audible on the historic significance of the guilty verdict.
"I hope 100 years from now, we can say this was an unprecedented act that was never followed," Goodwin said.
She lamented that the Republicans today do not have the character of those in 1974 who told Richard Nixon he had to resign.
Near the end of the interview with Donahue she returned to the current turbulent times and what we should be seeking in a president.
"What matters is the quality and temperament of the person," she said.
"Humility, empathy, resilience, accountability, your word is your bond..." Doris said. "Character is what we need to be looking for."
Four-month anniversary
Four months ago, The Front Page began accepting paid subscriptions while keeping our product free for everyone who wants to read it.
We are happy to report that the newsletter continues to grow.
We hope you continue to share the newsletter with friends and acquaintances and promote it on the social media of your choice.
It means a lot for those of you who have supported our work.
We thank you again.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
I too attended the event and I whole heartedly concur that listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin respond to WAMC’s Joe Donohue’s interview questions ( interspersed with her specific comments and advice about current political events) was spectacular and awe inspiring. For me ( and I think many of the 600 in the audience) when the conversation drifted from the historical reminiscing of the Nixon- Kennedy Presidential Election debate to current events was a high point and Doris Kearns Goodwin was at her best.
Joe Donohue asked “ what should we as voters be looking and listening for concerning the best qualities in each candidate ...as we approach another opportunity to experience an upcoming presidential debate?”
I must paraphrase here but I think I’ve got the gist of her response. Doris Kearns Goodwin replied ... the candidate should be able to provide and inform you of their honesty, their candor, their integrity, their willingness and ability to work with others...and they must be able to demonstrate that they can be a president who can make hard decisions that will serve the common interests of our nation putting aside their own personal or political self interests.
The 600 in the audience roared with applause and approval...but the best was yet to come.
As silence in the great room was restored, Joe Donohue lowered his prepared notes, leaned into his hand held microphone
and said “ Oh F*CK! ....what about the other guy?”
The audience roared with spontaneous and uncontrolled laughter for about a minute.
Way to go Joe.....that’s exactly what I was thinking and the question could not have been more succinctly stated.
What a great event. Thank you to the Northshire Bookstore, WAMC, the Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs and of course Doris Kearns Goodwin and Joe Donohue .
I am so disappointed! How did I miss Joe Donohue's interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin. Long before Heather Cox Richardson.........Goodwin was a marvel. Her books, her language, her speech, her presence added a dimension to American History that was captivating and respectful. I will never forget the night of the Gore-Bush election. I stayed up all night watching Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert, Jon Stewart and Doris Kearns Goodwin. It was the absolute best news cast I had ever seen. They had no idea what was going on, no script, no interviews, no talking heads......just four brilliant individuals who held me captive throughout the night. Television at its best. It was a front row seat, an intimate conversation, with four of my favorite people in my living room. How did I miss this recent event?