The Democratic convention in August 1964 fortified Johnson’s worst suspicions. LBJ, the garish Texan, saw a calculated personal slight in my father’s use of a quote from Romeo and Juliet, recommended by Aunt Jackie, to close his tribute to Uncle Jack: “When he shall die, / Take him and cut him out in little stars, / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night, / And pay no worship to the garish sun.” The delegates’ twenty-two-minute ovation for my father only rubbed salt in Johnson’s wounded pride.
