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Algernon & Nellie. Eventually, of course, newsmen caught on, but Luci's new steady rated little attention from the press until October. At First Friday Mass, Pat proposed and was accepted. Luci received a ring made from Pat's Alpha Kappa Psi fraternity pin, which she has never worn in public. By the end of the month, headlines predicting their marriage bounced around the world. The President was at the L.B.J. ranch, recuperating from his gall-bladder operation, when Pat and Luci flew there on Oct. 29—presumably to obtain his permission to marry. It was widely surmised in print that the President, in an unusually dour mood, had vetoed their request. The situation evoked memories of Ulysses S. Grant, who brooded for 18 months before al lowing the dashing Algernon Sartoris to marry his Nellie, who was a tender 18 by the time she reached the altar.
Actually, Luci insists that they did not even mention matrimony to Lyndon that weekend. The big confrontation—surely one of the most unnerving encounters in the annals of courtship—occurred a couple of weeks later when the President returned briefly to the White House. As Luci entered the selfservice elevator with her father, Pat high-signed that he would meet her in the solarium. "Where's Pat?" the President demanded. "Well, I want to see him. Go get him." Pat was duly summoned into the presidential bedroom on the second floor. Asked Johnson: "What's all this stuff I've been reading about in the papers?" Pat had his "little speech memorized word for word," Luci says. "I'd heard it a thousand times."
The oration over, they—meaning Lyndon—discussed what Luci called "the pros and cons," while Pat, Luci and Lady Bird listened. Despite Aristotle's advice that "it is fitting for the women to be married at about the age of 18," Luci's age was an issue. "He brought up the fact that I still had school to finish," she recalls, "but then he said that married couples make better grades. He said the chances are that I might not be able to finish college, but then he said that I could go back and take courses later." Having reached an affirmative consensus, the Johnsons announced the engagement Christmas Eve. Lyndon Johnson, who must regret having no sons of his own, told friends: "I really like that boy." Soon he was calling Pat "Son-in-Law."
Union Labels. As for the wedding, the Johnsons insisted at the beginning that it would be a family affair, the guest list restricted to the comparatively near and dear, the number held well below 1,000, which is about S.R.O. capacity at the White House. Though the National Shrine can accommodate 3,500, the Johnsons insisted that all their guests be invited to the reception as well as the ceremony. As the pre-wedding activities escalated, the White House requested that some of the parties, showers and receptions for the bride be canceled because the "wedding was becoming more of a spectacular than Mrs. Johnson and Luci feel it ought to be."