Part: 12         Session: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536         Page 802803804805806807808809810811812813814815816817818819820821822823824825826827828829830831832833834835836837838839840841842843844845846847848849850851852853854855856857858859860861 of 1143

some of the women asked some very good questions and he gave good answers. Robert Kennedy spoke and was effective. Then the meeting adjourned to the Rose Garden, where the people were received. The Rose Garden has been revamped by Mrs. Paul Mellon and is extremely pretty and well planted. President Kennedy really loved it. He was really very visual-minded and had very good taste, and his friends said he had a marvelous sense of color when he painted. He did a few paintings at one time in his life, and they said that when they painted with him, he had by far, the best color sense of any of the amateurs that were painting. I don't think he painted more than eight pictures altogether.

Did he do this when...

While he was President, I think, or at least certainly while he was in Washington within the last four or five years.

Now, I think the next thing to talk about is how I got to know Johnson.

In 1958 I felt that the Eisenhower Administration was very middle of the road, very without any new ideas, making no new domestic proposals for any advances, and I felt very disspirited about the ideas being proposed in the Congress or by the President. In order to do something in this general area and to prepare for the election in '60, when one could get issues discussed or brought forward, I had hired David Lloyd who had been an administrative assistant to President Truman to do some work for me, and we decided to form an organization called the Research and