October 14, 1964: Walter Jenkins, unofficially the White House Chief of Staff (officially, the office was vacant) to President Lyndon B. Johnson, resigns his post under pressure, following an arrest on what would once have been quaintly called a "morals charge."
He began working for Johnson, then a Congressman from Texas, in 1939, and remained with him through serving in the House of Representatives, the Senate (including LBJ's tenures as Minority Leader and Majority Leader), the Vice Presidency, and finally the Presidency.
He became a close friend to both Johnson and his wife, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson. Another LBJ aide from Texas, Bill Moyers, said, "If Lyndon Johnson owed everything to one human being other than Lady Bird, he owed it to Walter Jenkins."
But on October 7, Jenkins and another man are arrested in the men's room of a YMCA in Washington, for what was officially labeled "disorderly conduct." In spite of Jenkins being a married Catholic with 6 children, this was code for saying that he had been caught in a homosexual act.
It was difficult to keep the story quiet, especially when reporters found out he had previously been arrested on such a charge in 1959. That made it much harder to explain away as the result of overwork or, as one journalist wrote, "combat fatigue."
On October 14, The Washington Star called the White House for comment. His hand forced, LBJ told White House Press Secretary George Reedy to make a statement that the Administration was coming clean about the story -- 20 days before the Presidential election.
Jenkins had to resign, and the Republican Party wanted to make hay out of this. They knew LBJ was soundly beating their nominee for President, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, at the polls. Goldwater, unofficially the leader of the Party, refused to go along with it, and told them to back off. In his memoir, he said, "It was a sad time for Jenkins' wife and children, and I was not about to add to their private sorrow."
Indeed, it was a bad month for Presidents of the United States. The incumbent, Johnson, had lost his most trusted advisor. The day before, former President Harry S Truman, 80 years old, had tripped and fallen at his home in Independence, Missouri, and had to be hospitalized. Those who knew him said that, physically, he never really recovered, although he lived another 8 years.
On October 20, former President Herbert Hoover died at the age of 90. And on October 22, the other living former President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was hospitalized in Washington for acute tracheobronchitis.
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Walter Jenkins had bad luck. But, as a President running what amounted to a re-election campaign, Lyndon Johnson had good luck: The same day that Jenkins' resignation was announced, Nikita Khrushchev was ousted as Soviet leader. Apparently, he had become too liberalizing for the Supreme Soviet. They allowed him to live at his dacha (vacation home) outside Moscow, and he was able to get his memoir smuggled out of the country. But he died in 1971, officially disgraced by the country that, 10 years earlier, he had raised to its greatest height.
He once said, "If you feed the people with slogans, they will be with you today, and they will be with you tomorrow, and they may be with you the day after tomorrow. But the next day, they will say, 'To Hell with you.'"
The day after the Jenkins resignation and the Khrushchev ouster, Britain had a previously-scheduled national election. It changed the party of government: The Labour Party beat the Conservative Party, so Alec Douglas-Home was out as Prime Minister, and Harold Wilson was in. That same day, Game 7 of the World Series was played, which also helped take attention away from the Jenkins scandal.
The next day, October 16, China announced it had The Bomb. Two days after that, Johnson gave a televised Oval Office speech, addressing the world situation; and comedian Jackie Mason appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, fell flat (under the circumstances, "bombed" would be a bad analogy), and was banned from the show by Sullivan, who accused Mason of giving him the middle finger onstage. That became a big story.
And, as I said, two days after that, on October 20, Hoover died, and both Johnson and Goldwater suspended their campaigns until after his funeral, on October 25 -- which both Truman and Eisenhower had wanted to attend, but couldn't due to their infirmities, but Johnson and Goldwater did.
Between the media's reluctance to divulge details of a sex scandal, particularly what would later be called a gay sex scandal, and the preponderance of other news over the next few days, the Jenkins story couldn't gain any traction. Indeed, many people never even knew it had happened. On November 3, LBJ won 44 States.
Jenkins returned to his hometown of Austin, Texas, and worked as an accountant until his death in 1985. Moyers got Jenkins' job, but proved to be less skillful at it, and some historians believe that not having Jenkins to talk to may have hurt LBJ in his full term in office. Indeed, a lack of continuity hurt Johnson. Moyers only filled the job until July 8, 1965, before succeeding Reedy as White House Press Secretary, and, like many other former White House officials, later became a prominent journalist.
Both a fellow Texan, pleasing Johnson, and a Harvard man, which Johnson usually distrusted, Jack Valenti, the White House Appointments Secretary, became the de facto Chief of Staff, but only held the post until June 1, 1966, leaving to accept the Chairmanship of the Motion Picture Association of America, which he held for 38 years, including the implementation of the new movie rating system that replaced the Hays Code in 1968.
Having succeeded Valenti as Appointments Secretary, Marvin Watson, yet another Texan, also succeeded him as Chief of Staff, until April 26, 1968, and served as U.S. Postmaster General for the remainder of the Johnson Administration. And against the Appointments Secretary became the Chief of Staff, James R. Jones, serving until LBJ left office. Jones was later elected to Congress from a District in Oklahoma, and President Bill Clinton appointed him U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.
Valenti died in 2007, Watson in 2017. As of October 14, 2022, Moyers and Jones are still alive. (UPDATE: Moyers died in 2025.)
Times have changed: If something like the Jenkins scandal had stricken a Presidential Administration in an election year from the 1980s onward, the American media would have led every broadcast with it, no matter what other news was going on, at home or abroad.
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October 14, 1964 was a Wednesday. Joe Girardi was born. He was a good catcher, who reached the postseason with the 1989 Cubs and the 1995 Colorado Rockies, and 4 times with the New York Yankees. In 1996, he caught Dwight Gooden's no-hitter, and his triple off Greg Maddux got the Yankees on the scoreboard in Game 6 of the World Series. He mentored Jorge Posada, and while Posada caught David Wells' perfect game in 1998, Girardi caught David Cone's perfect game in 1999.
Joe was named National League Manager of the Year with the 2006 Florida Marlins, but was fired after just 1 year anyway. After a year in the YES Network broadcast studio, the Yankees named him manager. As a Yankee player, he wore Number 25; as manager, he switched to 27, a sign that he was determined to win the Yankees their 27th World Championship. In 2009, he did, joining Billy Martin and Ralph Houk as the only men to win World Series with the Yankees as both player and manager.
He then switched to 28, but he wasn't able to get that 28th World Championship, and, his contract running out after the 2017 season, he was not rehired.
Also on this day, English soccer star Paul Stewart was born. The Manchester native scored in the 1991 FA Cup Final for Tottenham Hotspur -- the last major trophy that "Spurs" have won. He also played for Manchester City, Liverpool and Sunderland, making him one of the few players to play in a Manchester Derby (City vs. United), a North London Derby (Arsenal vs. Tottenham), a Merseyside Derby (Liverpool vs. Everton) and a North-East Derby (Newcastle United vs. Sunderland).
Game 6 of the World Series was played at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle hit home runs on back-to-back pitches from Curt Simmons‚ and Joe Pepitone belted Gordie Richardson for a grand slam. The Yankees won, 8-3, and sent the World Series to a deciding Game 7. With all the home runs that Mickey and Roger hit, this is the only time they hit back-to-back homers in a postseason game.
Football was in midweek. The NBA season began 2 days later. One game was played in the NHL: The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Boston Bruins, 3-0 at the Chicago Stadium.
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