John Connally Between the Acts
He wears homburgs in Texas and stetsons in Zurich; likes coq au vin and cheeseburgers; may be the most skilled politician of the decade; and he wants to be president. Maybe.
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Connally likes to spend time collecting antiques and personally supervising the houses that he builds. When the ranch house, with its eight bathrooms, large library and study, and 44-foot swimming pool, was under construction, Connally flew to Abilene with his architect to choose personally the limestone to be used in his home. He brought back black Brazilian granite flooring from one of his trips to South America for his living room, and he imported 11 handcarved doors, a staircase railing of antique brass and iron, and a marble dining room floor from an 18th-century London mansion. Two of the teakwood doors weighed 360 pounds each.
IN BASTROP THE CONNALLYS FOUND two silver kerosene carriage lamps from the historic Pease mansion in Austin. Crystal chandeliers and furniture were bought at auction, and a large Oriental chandelier was imported from New Orleans. Connally remarked that he and his wife, "hawked auctions. Ninety-five percent of the furniture was bought at auction." Mrs. Connally remarked that her husband was often an overly enthusiastic collector. "I'm the only wife who's had to say, 'No, we don't need that.'"
Connally changed his style somewhat when he moved to Houston and entered the legal firm of Vinson, Elkins, Searls, and Smith, now Vinson, Elkins, Searls, Connally & Smith. He bought a contemporary house in the exclusive Houston residential area of River Oaks, and began furnishing it in a melange of contemporary and antique.
Going "back home to the ranch" became rather commonplace after the Johnson years, and Connally began to look for newer, and more exotic, places to "take his ease." On retiring as Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury, he sighed that, "I've done my part. I've spent a lot of my mature life in public service and I've got a lot of satisfaction out of it. But now I'm tired and I want to do some other things." He mentioned that he was contemplating buying a house in southern Europe, possibly in Italy, where he and Nellie could spent several months of each year. However, Connally finally chose Montego Bay, Jamaica for his vacation hacienda.
At a White House dinner, Dallas millionaire Pollard Simmons, a contributor to Nixon's campaign coffers through Connally, invited Connally to visit his newest venture in Jamaica, the 3000-acre Tryall Golf Club, located 14 miles west of Montego Bay and near Round Hill, where Senator Edward Kennedy vacations. Connally fell in love with the lush and verdant scenery, and Simmons reportedly donated the highest hill as the site for the Connallys to build on. Connally exclaimed to Dallas Morning News correspondent Karen Elliott, who visited the Tryall house, "Isn't this land magnificent?…Anything will grow here—bananas, coconut, mangos. The place has tremendous potential." Part of the long-run potential is a multi-million dollar beef and dairy cattle operation, involving 11,000 acres of grazing land, a $5 million packing plant, and a quarantine station. Simmons, former Delaware lieutenant governor John Rollins, and Connally are cooperating in the venture.
Connally's Jamaican house has caused much comment in newspaper circles and among the Washington press. Women's Wear Daily and Time both list the price of Connally's residence as $250,000, but Connally states that it cost under $100,000. The house is simply constructed with a latticed roof and ceiling fans. Only the Connally's bedroom is air conditioned. Writers for W report that the 15 island laborers who constructed Connally's sprawling house on the hill referred to the former governor as "Boss Man" and that other residents referred to the Connally house as "the winter White House." The Connallys are decorating the house in a style which Nellie refers to as "Nellie and John hodgepodge."
Connally's admiring public follows him even to the golf course, with Tryall golf club pro Caleb Haye reporting that, "People come from all over the states and island and say, 'I want to play on John Connally's course.' They all want to get a closer look at him and they stare but no one bothers him until after the game." Haye also states that one golfer commented, "I guess he won't have much time to come and play when he gets to be president." And Connally undoubtedly puts on a good show for his ever-present audience. The man in the Homburg hat and the conservative business suit has changed his image to trim golf clothes and burnt orange and white patent leather golf shoes, the colors of the University of Texas football uniforms.
It's a far cry from the Tryall Golf Course to the peanut fields of Wilson County, where Connally's father John Bowden Connally Sr. and his wife Lela raised their brood of five children. The family was a close-knit one, where both work and play were shared, and the Christian virtues of hard work and sobriety were stressed. Connally once commented that, "Our small ranch was a living for a large family, and it took long, long hours of work by every member of the family to make ends meet. We plowed behind a mule, got our water from a hand-pump, studied by kerosene light, and learned to appreciate the nice things in life."
Before the nice things in life came along, cotton prices hit rock bottom and John Connally Sr. found that tenant farming would not support his family of seven. He moved his family to San Antonio and formed a partnership with T. L. Perry from Corpus Christi to operate the independent Red Ball bus line between the two cities. The line, the forerunner of major companies such as Greyhound and Continental, later extended from Corpus Christi to Laredo and from Houston to Corpus. Connally Sr. operated the bus line for eight years, until the pressure from the major companies became too great that the two men were forced to sell out.
During the years that the family lived in San Antonio, both the Connallys dreamed of bringing their children back to Floresville to live. Connally Sr . coveted one particular piece of farm and ranch land, and he began saving his money to buy it. Early in the depression years, when land was cheap and many ranches were being turned back to the bank, the Connallys were able to buy the property. "When we left we were tenant farmers," Connally's brother Merrill states, "and when we returned we owned one of the choice pieces of property in the area."
The purchase of the property did not endear the Connallys to the leadership of the community, however. Many of the larger ranches were creating giant spreads through buying up little farms and leasing them out. The so-called town "leaders" had already picked out a new owner for the land, and they were incensed that the Connallys acquired the property. Many of the townspeople still considered the Connallys "poor white trash," remembers Merrill.
John Jr. got his first taste of politics by campaigning for his father, who had joined with several other members of the community to oust the "courthouse crowd" accused of dipping into the county till. John and his sister Carmen were taken to the neighboring community of Stockdale by their father and instructed to knock on doors and tell people to vote for their father for county clerk, on the reform ticket. Carmen remembers that it seemed to impress people that the candidate's children were out working for him. Connally Sr. won the election. "There's a family story," Carmen recalls, "that John didn't talk until he was about three years old. He would just grunt and point to things. But when he finally started talking, he could talk a blue streak."
Connally put his "blue-streak" talking to good use even as far back as his grade school days. He began his interest in dramatics and declamation in Floresville and practiced with a coach in San Antonio. He won speech contests with his rendition of Patrick Henry's "Speech Before the Virginia House of Delegates" and with Joaquin Miller's "The Defense of the Alamo." When he was president of the Curtain Club at the University of Texas, he was invited to deliver the commencement address at Harlandale, his San Antonio high school. His sister Carmen recalls that John's speech was impressive, but quite long, "It just went on, and on, and on. I just wanted to say, 'John, stop right there.'"
Not all young John's public speaking experiences were pleasant ones. Brother Merrill recalls that after the family moved back to Floresville in 1932, John entered a speech contest against one of the city boys, a member of the so-called "elite" families of Floresville. According to Merrill, the "elite" ruled the roost: politics, government, and society.
With the whole community—students and parents as well—assembled in the school auditorium, the two boys gave their declamations. When the judges announced that the city boy had won over Johnnie Connally, the country boy, Merrill recalls that there was a "dead hush" in the auditorium. "Everyone was hesitant to believe that John had not won. Not because of who he was, but because he was by far the better of the two speakers. It was the same old story. The superintendent of schools was beholden to the district judge, who was part and parcel of the county unit. There was nothing we could do. It was a closed corporation."
In his early years Connally was steeped in the Protestant ethic of work and get ahead and in his family's concern with the land they farmed and struggled for. These traditional values, coupled with his sense of being an outsider in the community where he was born and his struggle for acceptance, have colored his sense of himself as a man. Connally seems determined that he will never be an outsider again.
At the same time Connally has often complained of being hemmed in by public office and responsibility that have brought him "inside". He hated the built-in bureaucracy that was entrusted with form and tradition and "denied the opportunity to give play to any creative interests you might have." His obsession with a bondless life could be a rebellion against his early years when, as his brother, Merrill, recalls, their parents instilled in the children the "byword of the time, that you must work hard—in fact to the point, really, to where I think there's a sense of guilt on the part of some members of the family if you own a swimming pool. It's a little bit hard for us to take the time out and enjoy some of what we call luxuries today without some twinge or some pangs of conscience."
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