By Seamus McAfee

Mark Updegrove

In his new post as director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum, Mark Updegrove is roaming the same halls as one of his idols. In a space seen by few museum visitors on the top floor, Our Campus talked with Updegrove in the same chairs where the building’s namesake was interviewed by the late UT alumnus and journalistic luminary Walter Cronkite. For Updegrove, who has studied the former president for years, working in his library is a dream.

Updegrove had a diverse career before arriving in Austin as director of the library. Although he majored in economics at the University of Maryland, he has worked mainly in media and marketing. He was publisher of “Newsweek,” president of “Time” magazine’s Canadian edition and political commentator for network news. Most recently he worked for South Carolina marketing firm Rawle Murdy Associates, Inc. Updegrove also wrote two books on the U.S. presidency: “Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House” and “Baptism by Fire: Eight Presidents Who Took Office in Times of Crisis.”

The seedling to become director was planted in Updegrove’s mind more than ten years ago while he was with “Time” magazine. Putting together a program called “‘Time’ and the Presidency,” Updegrove met Sharon Fawcett, the head of the presidential libraries. Fawcett, impressed with his background and knowledge of the subject after his first book published, suggested he think about a career as a presidential library director.

“At that point, I said, that sounds very appealing, but the one job I’d really be interested in is the director of the LBJ Library,” Updegrove said. “I think that this library has always set the standard for leadership among presidential libraries.”

Fawcett recommended him for the job and Updegrove was approved by Adrienne Thomas, the U.S. acting archivist. He officially started in October, filling the gap left by the departure of former-Director Betty Sue Flowers, in May.

While being a lifetime scholar of history makes Updegrove a natural fit for the job, his sales background may also come in handy because the library is yet to be seen by many UT students.

“Part of my responsibilities is ensuring we get the word out about what this library has to offer,” he said. “We live in a town where we have Lady Bird Lake, and LBJ buildings, and KLBJ FM radio, and you have all these things that are branded with LBJ, but I wonder how many students really know who LBJ was and what he accomplished.”

The library chronicles the contributions of the Johnson family to the nation and the city of Austin over the years. As director, Updegrove will oversee the display of thousands of relics from the Johnson era, detailing everything from the segregated South of the ’60s to the Vietnam War. He will also manage a $32 million renovation of the library that will repair the LBJ plaza, add classrooms and an auditorium that seats 1,000 and landscape the area in memoriam of Lady Bird Johnson.

The responsibility of the library director, Updegrove explained, is not to micromanage the staff, but to coordinate the library’s big picture agenda and action. He said the objective is simply to get students inside the library.

“I don’t think I’m needed to run the daily operations of the library—that’s being done,” he said. “What I’d like to do is create and get our staff to rally around a vision of what this library should be in the 21st century.”

Barely settled in, Updegrove is already putting together a high-profile speaker series for the library next year. “My dream would be to see President Obama come to this library for a variety of reasons,” he said. “Not the least of which [is] the man whose name is on the building passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which helped us to have an African-American president in 2008.”

Updegrove said he will focus on the era during which Johnson presided when the library changes its permanent exhibit next year. “I really want to make the ‘60s be a big part of what we do. We shouldn’t only be about Lyndon Johnson … we should also be about the times in which he [was] in the White House, and that’s the 1960s, which I think are the most culturally-relevant times of the 20th century,” Updegrove said.

“I’m in the job I want,” he said. “Not only are you in a place that houses that archive of that administration—which is really exciting to me—but it’s also an opportunity to bring history alive to people that may not appreciate it right now. That’s why I think it’s so important to have folks on the UT campus understand who we are and what we do, and to be a part of it.”

LBJ’s LEGACY

Harry Middleton, a former director of the LBJ presidential library and speechwriter during Johnson’s term as 36th U.S. president, said Johnson has yet to receive all the credit due to him. In January of 2009, Middleton criticized President Obama for allegedly overlooking Johnson’s contributions during his campaign, claiming Obama never mentioned Johnson’s critical role in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which opened voter registration to all Americans and is credited with helping people of all races hold political office.

Much of Updegrove’s interest in Johnson is focused on his post-presidency. Updegrove’s book “Second Acts” focuses on what presidents do after leaving office and is largely inspired by Johnson.  “I saw a photograph of Johnson with long hair, and it contrasted so sharply with the way he looked in office,” Updegrove said. “It occurred to me how much in his post-presidency he looked like the anti-war demonstrators who had helped drive him out of office. I wondered if that was the gesture of a man who desperately wanted to be loved appealing to that same constituency. Because I think he was largely misunderstood by then.”

Meanwhile, Updegrove’s book “Baptism by Fire” was not inspired by Obama, but by the office he acquired. “When I was writing it I did not know that Barack Obama would become president. I did know that the 44th president would inherit an unprecedented crisis—unfinished wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, an economy that was in a state of free fall and so many other situations,” Updegrove said.  “And so I looked at other presidents who themselves came into office during times of unprecedented crisis.”

As a historical author, Updegrove hopes to “lend historical context to contemporary situations.” He believes one of the biggest lessons President Obama can learn from the late LBJ is how to clear one of his biggest hurdles.

“One of the reasons I think it’s important to know about Lyndon Johnson and what he accomplished himself is that he’s the only modern president to have passed meaningful health care reform,” Updegrove said. “There are lessons the Obama administration can learn from LBJ on how to go about doing something where the obstacles are so formidable.”

“These are very meaningful times for Obama, and challenging times can often make great leaders. You see it with Washington, and Jefferson, and Lincoln, and FDR, and Truman,” Updegrove said. “Those are great presidents, partly because they dealt with the most challenging and darkest of hours.”