LBJ Library Virtual Event - October 2021

Join Me for a special Conversation hosted by

FRIENDS OF THE LBJ LIBRARY

OCT 13, 2021

11:30AM - 12:30PM

Watch the Complete Conversation:

From Friends of the LBJ Library:

What if you got a call from Lyndon Johnson to be in Washington, DC, tomorrow to take a trip around the world? If you are 25-year-old broadcast journalist Neal Spelce, you buckle up. A two-week diplomatic dream trip turned into a lifelong rollercoaster ride.

Neal Spelce recounts those memories and more in his new book With the Bark Off: A Journalist’s Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media October 13 at 11:30 a.m.

Mark K. Updegrove

The event will be moderated by Mark Updegrove.

This virtual event is co-hosted by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

About Neal Spelce Neal Spelce’s six-decade career has been distinguished by successes in radio, television, journalism, marketing, advertising, public relations, broadcast program syndication, public speaking, and consulting. He was a legendary news anchor and news director for KTBC-TV in Austin and gained national recognition for his live coverage of the UT Tower Sniper mass murders. Spelce was a close associate of and spokesperson for President and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson. He was also CEO of the company that produced the award-winning syndicated TV news programs “An American Moment™ with Charles Kuralt” and “An American Moment™ with James Earl Jones.”

Named an Outstanding Alumnus of The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Communication, he holds three UT communications degrees in Radio/TV, Journalism and Speech. UT named the Neal Spelce Broadcast Journalism Studio in his honor.

About the Book

Spelce began his career as a part-time journalist in the LBJ family-owned Austin TV station in 1956, which vaulted him into a lifetime of impressive experiences with Johnson and many icons of the 20th century. The Austin-based journalist shares his candid moments with LBJ and five more U.S. presidents, including his rare interview with father and son Presidents George Bush while the three were fishing in a small bass boat on a Texas lake.

During his lengthy media career, Spelce saw Austin grow from a college town to a thriving city. Along the way, he interacted with Texas legends such as Darrell Royal, Willie Nelson, Walter Cronkite, and more, all part of entertaining stories that he tells, as LBJ liked to say, “with the bark off.”

Signed, bookplated copies of With the Bark Off are available for sale from The Store at LBJ. By purchasing your book through The Store at LBJ, you support a local cultural institution. All proceeds from sales support our programming, exhibits, and educational initiatives at the LBJ Presidential Library.

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Link to the LBJ Library Event Page:

https://bit.ly/NS_101321

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The Memorial

August 3, 2021, is two-days-and-five years after UT – finally – dedicated a campus memorial to those killed on campus. This is what I write about the Memorial in my memoir, With The Bark Off, A Journalist’s Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media, due to be published by the UT Briscoe Center for American History in September.

Photo Daily Texan Joshua Guerra

"At the dedication ceremony, fifty years after the bullets had rained down on campus, UT President (Greg) Fenves said, ‘We will never eliminate the memory of the horror that consumed this campus on August 1,1966, nor should we try. But by focusing on the good and the stories of the heroes and the lives of the survivors that are with us this afternoon, we can finally begin to remember and endure our burden of the past.’

"I was enormously happy that my alma mater had finally memorialized the names of the victims. The same ceremony also acknowledged and honored the students and others who’d risked their lives to rescue the wounded, as well as the brave police officers who’d put an end to the violence. Recognition and gratitude were long overdue. It was a great healing day in Austin, Texas

"I walked over and read the names on the granite monument, and I felt a rush of memories and emotions from that day when I’d sweated through my shirt and suit jacket while reporting live on the air from Red Rover. As the memorial ceremony unfolded, I was content to stand quietly in the back of the audience and savor the moment. And to remember my courageous colleagues in the news profession – many of them no longer with us – who had thrown themselves into harm’s way by rushing onto campus that day to cover the story while bullets were flying all around them: Joe Lee, Phil Miller, Gary Pickle, Joe Roddy, David Swope, John Thawley, Charles Ward, Gordon Wilkison.

“I will remember their names and their remarkable fearlessness for as long as I draw breath. Their actions were an inspiration to me and can serve as an inspiration to every journalist who scribbles notes in the line of fire or focuses a camera lens on the face of danger. Every day in this country and around the world, dedicated reporters from a new generation, cut from the same cloth as my old friends and colleagues at KTBC, hunker down in danger zones and halls of power to cover stories we need to hear about. They are all my heroes. They put their lives on the line to ensure that as a nation, we shall know the truth, and the truth shall make us free.”

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The Anniversary of the Tower Shooting

From the Texas Standard

Life was dramatically changed in the USA following an event in Austin, Texas, fifty-five years ago on August 1, 1966. That was when the nation’s first mass school shooting took place from atop the University of Texas Tower. Here’s how I described it while reporting from the UT campus, within range of the sniper’s gunshots:

“Another shot! The sniper fired three quick, successive shots. Apparently in the length of time it takes to cock the weapon and then …. Another shot! He just fired another shot and this time …. Another shot! That’s the fifth shot now in about 20 or 30 seconds.”

Don Carleton, Executive Director of University of Texas’ Briscoe Center for American History, writes this in his preface to my memoir, to be published in September 2021, With the Bark Off, A Journalist’s Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media:

“Neal Spelce’s riveting on-the-scene reporting of a sniper murdering fifteen people and badly injuring thirty-one others was quickly hooked into the national radio and television networks and broadcast across the nation in real time. Neal covered an incident that was, up to that time, the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in American history.”

This, sadly, was a harbinger of things to come across the nation and in other parts of the world. Since then, our lives have changed significantly. Security checkpoints have been set up in public places, video cameras are everywhere, SWAT teams were created to combat similar acts, EMS units were beefed up, and in many cases, created from scratch. One survivor of the UT Tower tragedy told me: “we lost our innocence that dreadful day.”

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