The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1)

by Robert A. Caro

A network had sprung up, a network of men linked by an acquaintance with Lyndon Johnson, who were willing, because of Lyndon Johnson, to help one another. Johnson had few jobs at his disposal; if one of them was vacated by the friend for whom he had obtained it, he wanted it to be passed on to another friend. White Star Deason’s acquiescence to Johnson’s insistence that he not return to Alamo Heights High School meant that a job would be vacant there when school reopened in September, 1934. Deason did not notify the school of his change of heart until the very day that classes began in September. And it had been arranged that at the very moment Deason was telephoning a school official to tell him he needed a new teacher, a new teacher was actually standing in the official’s office, application in hand: White Star Horace Richards, who was quickly hired. “We always passed jobs on this way,” Deason says. Johnson, in fact, had “passed on” his own. Leaving Sam Houston High School to become Kleberg’s secretary, he had persuaded school officials, in somewhat of a quandary because of the suddenness of his departure, to hire Hollis Frazier—college debater and White Star—to replace him as debate coach. Frazier, at Johnson’s suggestion, later passed on the job to White Star Bert Horne; Richards passed on his to White Star Buster Brown.