Like many of the visitors to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, Roz and Irwin Spivack didn't realize Friday was the 20th anniversary of the president's death.
"Has it been that long?" asked Spivack, 65, who was visiting with his wife from New York. "My memories of Johnson, especially of that time period, seem like yesterday."Seemingly every American alive in the 1960s can say where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. But Johnson, who inherited the presidency from Kennedy, died quietly in retirement, of a heart attack on Jan. 22, 1973, at his ranch near Johnson City.
He was 64, and earlier in life he had said a bad heart and a love of smoking would probably keep him from seeing 60. His widow, Lady Bird, is 80.
The library marked the 20th anniversary of Johnson's death with a short film of the nation paying its last respects. But it was his life that most museum visitors came to learn about.
Opinions about the LBJ presidency - marked by sweeping "Great Soceity" reforms at home and the buildup of the Vietnam War abroad - still run strong.
"The pity is that he should be remembered for his work in the domestic areas," said Roz Spivack, a lifelong Democrat. "He was a leader in civil-rights reform, he pushed to stop illiteracy and worked to save the environment. But everything he did was colored by Vietnam."
Johnson stunned the nation when, with opposition to Vietnam growing, he announced he wouldn't seek election to a second full term in 1968.
His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, won the Democratic nomination for president but lost to Richard Nixon in November, and many blamed his defeat on Vietnam.
"Walking through the exhibits, I feel the stress that he had to go through with the Vietnam War," Renee Bewley of Austin said of Johnson.
The Johnson library, which opened in 1971, was the most well-attended presidential library in the nation last year with 412,070 visitors.
"We have tried very hard to open all the papers we can," said Harry Middleton, LBJ museum director. "We have followed his guidance, which was that he did not want us to try in any way to preserve his reputation. He said at the time of dedication, `It's all here, the story of our time with the bark off,' and he meant it."