"Not a Usual Man"

THE PRESIDENCY

The clock read 6:15 a.m. when the patient was wheeled into the operating suite. A team of ten masked, green-gowned doctors made final preparations. By 6:50 a.m., the patient was asleep under general anesthesia. Ten minutes later, the chief surgeon murmured "scalpel?" and the operation was under way. There was a swift, sure incision, then a slow, deliberate excision. By 9:15 a.m., the last suture was in place, the operation complete. "It's wonderful," breathed one of the doctors, "just wonderful."

It was a routine familiar to anyone who has ever watched a hospital drama on TV. This time the action was nerve-rackingly real, the patient the President of the U.S. Despite all the advance assurances that there was little danger to Lyndon Johnson's life, a tremor of apprehension rippled around the world from the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. And in fact for four hours and ten minutes, from the moment when the President was anesthetized until he fully wakened at 11 a.m., the awesome powers and responsibilities of his office devolved upon Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

Guarded Secret. Though it was to end as history's most publicized gallbladder operation,* Johnson's ailment was a rigidly guarded secret for almost a month. His troubles began last Sept. 7, the day after Labor Day. In his first-floor bedroom at the LBJ Ranch, he awakened shortly after 6 a.m. with a sharp abdominal pain. His first thought was that it might have been something he ate. Then, perhaps mindful of the pains that accompanied his near-fatal heart attack in 1955, Lyndon woke Lady Bird, talked it over with her, and agreed that he had better summon the White House physician, Vice Admiral George G. Burkley, asleep in the guesthouse 100 strides down the road. Burkley quickly diagnosed a malfunctioning gall bladder.

When X rays in the White House basement clinic confirmed the diagnosis, several doctors recommended that the organ be removed. The question was--when? Rather than detract from Pope Paul VI's historic visit to the U.S., Lyndon decided to wait until after Oct. 4.

His medical advisers approved. For a man about to undergo major surgery, he was clearly overweight. So Lyndon, who fights a constant, losing battle to subdue his passion for pies and chocolate bars, went on a strict diet. Thus the President had seldom seemed in better shape (down from 220 to 202 lbs.) when he flew up to Manhattan the day before the Pope's visit, to sign the new immigration bill in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. Next afternoon, after Pope and President had conferred privately for 46 minutes in a 35th floor suite at the Waldorf Towers, the two leaders faced the TV cameras; again, L.B.J. seemed fit and--for him--relaxed.

Mystery's End. On the press plane back to Washington on Monday, White House aides advised reporters to stick around the next day. As they waited, in late afternoon, Humphrey ducked unnoticed into the Oval Office, where Lyndon handed him the statement announcing his forthcoming operation. Taken aback, the Vice President sank wordlessly into a chair beside the desk. "Hubert," said the President, "you remember the procedures we put in effect earlier. We ought to use those." "Whatever you say, Mr. President," blurted Humphrey, "but I'm sure we won't need them." Said Lyndon: "I think you ought to be here on Friday." The two men thus implemented an agreement they had reached before their January inaugurations, ensuring that "in the event of inability," the Vice President "would serve as Acting President." Identical agreements were concluded by Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, as well as by John F. Kennedy and Johnson.

For the waiting newsmen, the first concrete evidence of big news in the making was the President's announcement that the Cabinet would meet at 4:45 p.m. When the meeting ended, Lyndon finally summoned the press into the Cabinet Room to end the mystery. The President sat alone at the massive table, his face grave but calm.

He began reading from a single sheet of paper, summarizing the past month's diagnoses and decisions. "I will therefore enter Bethesda Naval Hospital Thursday night," said the President, "for surgery Friday." The newsmen stood silent, shocked. Lyndon reassured them: "The doctors expect there will be minimal time during which I will not be conducting business as usual."

Undercoating Job. Within hours, Lyndon's gall bladder was the world's biggest news. The announcement had been skillfully timed: it was early enough for late evening editions, too late for the last-closing U.S. stock exchange. Even greater care was taken to avoid unnecessary alarm. Making it sound like an undercoating job on the family car, White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers described the operation as a bit of "preventive maintenance." Cardiologist J. Willis Hurst, who attended the President after his 1955 coronary, declared that Lyndon was "in the category of risk equal to that of a man who never had a heart attack."

A bevy of medical consultants attested to the "routine" nature of the operation. Thus, by contrast with the "Cardiac Break" that greeted Dwight Eisenhower's 1955 heart attack, prompting a loss on the New York Stock Exchange of 31 points in the Dow-Jones industrial average and of $14 billion in paper values the first day, Wall Street experienced no "GallBladder Break"; by week's end the Dow-Jones industrial average was only 1.3 points under its alltime closing high.

"I Feel Great." In the next two days, Johnson maintained a pace that might have put many a younger man in hospital. He shook hundreds of hands, spoke thousands of words, kept so many appointments that the mimeographed White House schedule of daily activities began to read like the Yellow Pages. Warned one concerned visitor: "Mr. President, you're not going to be in condition for the operation if you keep going like this." Lyndon looked miffed. "I feel great," he said.

The day after his announcement, Johnson filmed a speech for a weekend meeting of the Bricklayers and Plasterers International Union, received a delegation from Appalachia, attended a couple of parties, invited himself to a cartoonists' luncheon at the National Press Club. Up before 7 a.m. next day, he signed a rural water-and sewage-facilities bill, proclaimed White Cane Safety Day in aid of the blind, chatted by phone with an Army sergeant convalescing in San Francisco from wounds suffered in Viet Nam. He greeted "Miss Wool of 1965," signed a proclamation making Oct. 20 a National Day of Prayer, addressed an international water-desalination symposium, conferred with countless aides.

Thursday evening Lyndon staged a "Salute to Congress," his appreciation of the most productive session in its history. As it turned out, the House was too busy producing to adjourn in time, so that the curtain was 1 1/2 hours late, and the State Department auditorium only one-fourth filled--most audibly with fuming congressional wives.

Built around Thomas Wolfe's patriotic prose poem Burning in the Night, the Salute started with an overture by Ferde Grofe, 73, who composed it in seven days, along with background music for the whole show, despite a recent stroke that has paralyzed his right side (he had to write it with the left hand). Interspersed with Actor Hugh O'Brian's reading of the poem were songs by the Bitter End Singers, the Serendipity Singers, Anita Bryant, Mahalia Jackson and the Metropolitan Opera's Robert Merrill, who dressed in buckskins and boots to belt out Oklahoma! and Tumblin' Tumbleweed.

$1.09 a Day. When it was over, the President mounted the stage. "I have a midnight deadline," he said. "They're calling a curfew on me." While the others went on to the White House for a buffet dinner and dancing, Lyndon and Lady Bird whisked off in a Cadillac limousine, made it to Bethesda 20 minutes ahead of the curfew.

Because the President was unhappy with his 17th-floor suite when he was hospitalized for a cold in January (it was too hot, the elevators were too slow, and cooking fumes from an adjoining galley were overpowering), a 20-room complex of classrooms and labs on the third floor had been remodeled. Under Lady Bird's direction, Lyndon's bedsitting room had been decked out with wood paneling, pale green curtains and carpeting. His favorite rocking chair was there, with color photos of his family, autographed pictures of his five predecessors in office, and four paintings of the Southwest. Near the President's bed were a battery of phones, including a direct line to the White House, and a three-screen TV console. The charge for room and medical services to the President, as Commander in Chief (and Navy veteran), is the same as for any Navy man: $1.09 a day--unless he elects, as he did in January, to pay the $42-a-day rate for nonmilitary patients.

Cable to Saigon. After a 17 1/2-hour day, Lyndon was abed by 12:20 a.m. At 5 o'clock, just as his party for Congress was breaking up, the President rose, showered, shaved and read to his nurse some passages from John Bailey's Book of Family Prayer. Press Secretary Moyers arrived at 5:20 for last-minute instructions, and Lyndon had a slew of them, including a request to cable General William C. Westmoreland, U.S. commander in South Viet Nam, right after the operation, "so our men in Viet Nam will know of my progress."

Before the President was wheeled off to the operating room, Moyers--an ordained Baptist minister--led Lyndon, Lady Bird and Daughter Luci in prayers. Then, down corridors guarded by somber marines and Secret Service men, the President was moved to the 40-ft-by-20-ft. operating room, with Moyers trotting alongside. Three Secret Service men in surgical masks and gowns scrutinized the operation. A fourth guarded the door of the operating room, while others were positioned throughout the building. The operation went as smoothly as anyone could have hoped, even to the removal of a ragged 1/4-in. kidney stone,* whose presence doctors had detected, but not announced in advance (see MEDICINE).

As soon as the operation was over, Moyers phoned Humphrey to inform him that all had gone well. It took only seven seconds to put through the call. Then the press secretary mounted the stage of the hospital's movie theater to announce: "The operation was a complete success." By 11 a.m. the President was fully awake. Summoning Moyers, he asked: "Bill, how are you?" Moyers, swathed in a surgical gown, brought good news. His first words to the boss: "The stock market opened strong today, Mr. President."

150 Scalpels. The operation's success brought a wave of relief--and some good-natured jokes. According to one, Lyndon had ordered his surgeon to use 150 scalpels so he could pass them out to Congressmen in lieu of pens. Another averred that, immediately on awakening, Lyndon aimed to telephone Hubert: "Get out of my chair." In fact, Humphrey got nowhere near it. For a few hours, he was on call in the Executive Office Building across the street from the White House, but no call ever came. His unofficial tenure as Acting President was over by lunchtime.

The vital link between Johnson and the world was Bill Moyers, 31, the ulcer-plagued, brilliant man Friday whom Lyndon regards almost as a son. It was Moyers who was to be informed first if anything went wrong. And it was he who would have had to decide whether the President's condition warranted the transfer of power to the Vice President. By noon, as it turned out, Moyers announced: "I believe that the President is able to make the decisions that might be necessary."

Only three hours after he had awakened, Johnson walked a few steps. He complained of "some discomfort," looked pallid and faced the irksome prospect of a lightened work load until mid-November. Some slowdown! The morning after his operation, newsroom teletypes across the U.S. clattered out an Associated Press bulletin: WASHINGTON, OCT. 9 (AP) PRESIDENT JOHNSON WAS UP BEFORE DAWN TODAY AND SIGNED INTO LAW 13 BILLS.

"The President," as Family Physician James C. Cain put it, "is not a usual man."

* Other famous men have been martyrs to gall bladders or kidney stones. Among them: Samuel Pepys, the 17th-century English diarist who suffered most of his life from kidney and bladder stones, finally died of them; Napoleon Bonaparte, who was plagued by agonizing gallstone colic from the age of 30 until his death at 51.

*Johnson still keeps in a box and shows to occasional visitors a kidney stone he had removed by surgery in 1955.

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