Jean Price Lewis: A Democrat’s long life with presidents, politics – Montgomery Advertiser
Montgomery resident Jean Price Lewis, 105, has a world-traveled political mind honed by more years of experience than most of today’s politicians have been alive.
It’s only natural, since she served in administrations for two presidents — John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson — and continued to work as a liaison in politics for years afterwards.
Lewis graduated from Montgomery’s Sidney Lanier High School in 1934 in the middle of the Great Depression. Being a Democrat is something Lewis was raised around, especially among her family. Lewis’ mother was from Tuscaloosa, and her father from Florence. Both were Democrats. The only family Republican she recalled was a great aunt, who served as a postmaster in Tuscaloosa.
“We considered Franklin Roosevelt our savior,” Lewis said, referring to President Roosevelt signing the Home Owners’ Loan Act into law in 1933.
The Montgomery home where she lives is just a bit younger than her. Lewis said her family moved in when she was about four. She spoke to the Advertiser in the room where two of her siblings were born.
Though she lives here regularly now, Montgomery was more of a vacation spot for a while — she’d split her time between here and her other home in Arlington, Va. — where most of her political memorabilia is.
“I don’t have any plans to go back right now any time soon. Who wants to miss August in Montgomery?” she said with a laugh.
Lewis still follows the issues, like the recent debt ceiling compromise. She’s likely the most experienced living die-hard Democrat that Alabama has ever known, and is no fan of a former Republican president who is almost 30 years her junior.
“I’m so anti-Trump,” Lewis said. “I’m so afraid that he might get re-elected.”
Lewis doesn’t dig into Alabama politics much — at least not beyond paying attention to the state’s congressional races.
“It gets very interesting from time to time,” Lewis said. “I really was sorry that (Democratic former U.S. Sen.) Doug Jones was not re-elected.”
She’s still registered to vote in Virginia, and hasn’t considered switching to Alabama.
“I’m not responsible for (Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy) Tuberville,” she said, again with a laugh.
One Republican that Lewis finds tolerable is new U.S. Sen. Katie Britt.
“She seems to have plenty of background experience to be a good senator, even though she’s a Republican,” Lewis said. “She doesn’t upset me.”
Lewis’ path back to a life in D.C.
Lewis said she first went to D.C. as a child on a family trip with her mom.
“I was so impressed by the federal government, I said I wanted to be a civil servant,” Lewis said.
Years later, she would find her way back there, leave, and almost gave up on a chance to return.
She met Willis F. Lewis in Montgomery at Maxwell Air Force Base, and they were married in 1941. From 1946-51, her husband was an Air Attaché in Central America. They lived in Guatemala, where she learned Spanish. After that, they moved to D.C., where from 1950-57 her husband worked at the Pentagon and National War College. When her husband was transferred to Alaska, she didn’t go with him.
Lewis came back to Montgomery, got a divorce, and found a new path through her friend Ed E. Reid, executive director in the Alabama League of Municipalities, working as Reid’s secretary. She’d worked with Reid in years past.
It was a fairly short return to Montgomery. On Reid’s recommendation, then-Sen. Kennedy’s chief legislative aid Ted Sorensen made an offer to hire Lewis “sight unseen” to come work for Kennedy’s office. But after hearing about the long hours and having to work on Saturdays, Lewis turned him down.
“I said I had two young children and couldn’t keep that kind of a schedule,” Lewis said. At the time, her son Ralph was 8, and daughter Barbara was 16.
Kennedy didn’t want to take no for an answer, and wrote Lewis a letter that urged her to reconsider.
“I was so flattered,” she said.
She took the job, thinking she’d only be working as a correspondent secretary for the summer while her children were visiting their grandparents.
“By fall, I was hooked,” Lewis said.
Lewis handled non-massachusetts correspondence, wrote notes to people interested in Kennedy’s positions and thank you notes to people who had assisted Kennedy in his travels.
Reid, writing for the Advertiser in 1958, said, “Sen. Kennedy told me the other day that she is doing a terrific job of handling his political correspondence — most of which she composes and handles without direction from the senator — and looking after news stories, editorials and other matters that concern his political welfare. She will no doubt be a vital part of is campaign machine…”
Her hard work, which she said she loved every minute of, was noticed by Stephen Edward Smith, the political advisor and finance chairman for Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Lewis became part of the campaign office and before long was in charge of logistics for major events. She was appointed to set up Kennedy’s Los Angeles campaign office, and worked at the 1960 Democratic National Convention — over the objection of the senator’s brother, Bobby Kennedy.
“(Bobby) thought maybe I wasn’t liberal enough for the California Democratic group that I was to liaison with,” Lewis said. “Steve Smith insisted that I go out and represent the Kennedy faction at the convention.”
She helped win over delegates to get Kennedy the Democratic nomination.
The night of the election, Lewis and other staff were with Kennedy and his family at their compound in Hyannis Port, Mass. “We didn’t realize we were going to be going, until we went,” she said.
Because of that, Lewis said she wasn’t able to vote in Virginia, where she was registered. She couldn’t vote absentee either.
“So I wound up not voting for Kennedy, after knocking myself out to try to get him elected,” she said.
Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon anyway.
Highs and lows of working for presidents, and life beyond
As Lewis continued to work for Kennedy, even as someone personally recruited by the president, there were inequities. Because she was a woman, she wasn’t allowed to eat in the White House dining hall. Instead, she ate from a machine in the basement.
The one time she paid the White House dining hall to eat was when she wasn’t even in the building, or on the ground. Lewis was flying on Air Force One and ate breakfast on board.
“We got a bill for it from the mess hall,” she said. “I’ve got that bill somewhere.”
She juggled childcare with work. One precious memory is when her son wanted to know if Kennedy ever asked about him. So Kennedy decided to write Ralph a note on a White House memo pad.
“I said, ‘Mr. President, I’ve got a daughter. She’s going to want a note too,’” Lewis said. So he wrote another note to Barbara.
Lewis also recalled that Barbara looked and styled herself a lot like Jacqueline Kennedy, and may have even had onlookers believing she was the first lady when she’d enter the White House.
Lewis recalled where she was in 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. At the time, she was in D.C. at a store getting food for her son to take to Boy Scout camp that night.
“I heard it on the radio while I was across the street from the White House,” she said.
At Johnson’s request, she and others continued to work. Lewis would go with Johnson to meet the government’s top liaisons, and continued to work for him until 1967.
“He was a marvel at getting things through Congress,” Lewis said. “It was a pleasure to work for him.”
Her political life continued in other ways after the the White House:
- Dec. 15, 1967, Lewis joined U.S. Agency for International Development to do the “fun congressional liaison stuff, like go up on the Hill and try to round up votes for foreign aid,” she said. She was a congressional liaison officer for Latin America.
- She continued working with USAID through the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. In 1977, President Carter again appointed her as congressional liaison officer for Latin America.
- In 1979, she joined the U.S. Small Business Administration, and became a charter member of the Senior Executive Service. She headed a legislative and congressional office, and for two years was deputy director of the Disaster Assistance Program.
- In the ’80s, Lewis became the associate director of immigration policy for Georgetown University. While there in 1988, she began going to college to earn her BA, and graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1992.
- After that, Lewis retired.
Travel, fun, and advice for today’s voters
Looking back, she wouldn’t change anything that she did, especially the travel. Throughout her life, she went around the world — including Latin America, Paris, Athens, all over Africa — and lived in Central America.
“I enjoyed everything,” she said. “I felt like I was extremely lucky to have had the opportunity and the luck to be where I was at these times when interesting things were going on. I’ve enjoyed myself a lot:”
Besides saying “Vote Democratic,” she urged voters to educate themselves on issues and remember to register. Beyond that, she hopes Democrats and Republicans could have a reasonable exchange of information.
“It’s the vote that makes all the difference in the lives of all Americans,” Lewis said. “If you want to see a great America, vote.”
Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Shannon Heupel at sheupel@gannett.com.
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