Thomas Wyatt Johnson was a UGA classmate at the Henry Grady College of Journalism in the late ’50s. I was living an extraordinarily good life, writing sports for the Red and Black, serving as a stringer for the Atlanta Journal, and imbibing with the classical and colorful character, Dan Magill.
To tell the truth, I didn’t see how life could be any better. This being the pre-family time in my life, I would have been happy if time and circumstances never changed. It was so good that if I could relive it, I’d sign up for an encore before sundown.
Tom’s career was all set when he enrolled in his first class at UGA. The Macon Telegraph was underwriting the cost of his education, owing to his benefactor, Peyton Anderson. As it turned out, the newspaper paid for his year of graduate study at Harvard.
All he had to do was to graduate, return to Macon and “pay back” his scholarship in service. I sometimes wonder if he had returned to Macon, he might have become publisher and found a way to keep newspapers from folding across the landscape. He was always destined to succeed.
Next thing you know, he is in Washington, D.C., working at the White House with Bill Moyers, who was a boy wonder himself. At the time, I seemed to be making three or four trips to the nation’s capital each year, and on one of those trips Tom invited me to have lunch with him one day in the White House staff dining room.
Then I spent time in the press building with the network news reporters and others. I remember seeing Harry Reasoner of CBS taking a nap, snoring quite audibly. I got up the courage to go over to speak to Merriman Smith, celebrated reporter for United Press International, who was from Savannah.
Tom had stashed me there while he was at a meeting and then took me to lunch, which was followed by a private tour, which included a stop at the Oval Office. Lyndon Johnson was president, and had he been present, Tom would have introduced me.
I was prepared to tell LBJ I had spent time in Maxeys, 24.1 miles east of Athens and the ancestral home of his paternal great grandfather. However, he autographed a photo to me, which is now lost in a filing cabinet somewhere.
These scenes and many others flashed back last weekend when Tom came to Athens and spoke to a small group of mostly UGA faculty and friends, which meets quarterly.
Tom reviewed his book, Driven — published by the University of Georgia press — which is principally his autobiographical recollections of his time in the White House, highlighted by his being the official note keeper of all LBJ conferences and meetings.
He became a favorite of LBJ (“the son LBJ never had,” says Judy Woodruff, who wrote the foreword to Tom’s book), and when the Johnsons left Washington and returned to Texas, Tom knew there was opportunity with LBJ — and it wasn’t roping cattle and baling hay.
After working in the family communications business, he moved on to the Dallas Times Herald as publisher. That led to his next move, which was to LA as publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Then he came home.
In 1990, Ted Turner hired him to become President of CNN, and while there is more ahead for this accomplished UGA graduate and passionate Bulldog, he has always been charity oriented, has openly talked about his brush with depression, and supports causes that deal with mental health.
His wife, Edwina, is from Athens, and she was in our wedding. Therefore, we had the opportunity to enjoy seeing them in all locations where they lived, finding them warm, hospitable, and always interesting—to say nothing of the people they cavorted with in a multifaceted career.
I have always enjoyed seeing anyone with UGA training reach exalted heights, and few have risen as far as Tom Johnson. He has always maintained strong feelings for his alma mater. Perhaps there is another book lying in wait.