Mickey Herskowitz

John Connally

In June 1993, John Connally, a legend in Texas and a powerful figure in national politics for several crucial decades of this turbulent century, died of complications of pulmonary fibrosis, a condition brought on by wounds sustained from an assassin's bullet that fateful day in Dallas - November 22, 1963. In History's Shadow, finished right before Connally's death, is the story of his life in politics, told with an unmistakable Texas twang. It was a life of almost Shakespearean range, marked by great triumphs as well as personal tragedy and heartbreak. He wanted to be President, but that is the only ambition that eluded him. He lived under thirteen Presidents and served under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. He knew American government - and the men who ran it - as intimately as anyone in our time. In History's Shadow is a true epic of the American century. Raised in rural poverty during the Depression in a farm family of seven children, Connally retained a deep-seated love of the hardscrabble Texas land his whole life. "I am part of a dwindling breed shaped by the soil of rural America . . . you don't engage the land, let it punish and feed you, and not understand the cycles of life." He enrolled at the University of Texas at age sixteen, determined to train as a trial lawyer. While still in law school, he worked for the campaign of an aspiring congressman named Lyndon Johnson, and followed him to Washington. Thus began an intimate political friendship that would have a decisive effect on Connally's life and career, as the rough-and-tumble young Texans rose to positions of national and international influence. Yet as closely as he served Johnson, and later President Richard Nixon as Secretary of the Treasury in the early 1970s, it was always events in his home state that gained John Connally his most lasting notoriety. After a brief stint as Secretary of the Navy under John F. Kennedy he ran for governor of Texas, and it was in his first term that he accompanied President Kennedy on a good-will trip in the state that had been essential to Kennedy's narrow victory. The two men were driving through the streets of Dallas, waving to enthusiastic throngs, when a mere six-second interval changed the course of history: "I heard what I thought was a rifle shot. I turned my head in the direction of the sound. . . . In the middle of my turn I felt a thud, as if someone had pounded me on the back with a fist, a blow so hard I doubled over. My eyes were still open. I could see blood drenching my shirt and I knew I had been hit." Nothing in the years of subsequent investigations and myriad conspiracy theories caused Connally to doubt the findings of the Warren Commission - that a deranged Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin. In the turbulent events of later years - his switch from the Democratic to the Republican Party, the scandals of Watergate, his indictment and acquittal on bribery charges, his personal bankruptcy in the late 1980s - John Connally witnessed more history "than any school can teach." He endured to remake his career as an adviser to business and government, and to take stock of the state of America under President Bill Clinton. In History's Shadow is as encompassing, straight-shooting, and larger than life as the man himself.

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