Family and her role in the war in 1963, and you graduate in 2003. Why would you be interested in madame nhu . Who wouldnt be interested in madame nhu . She, from an early age, just captivated me. Everything i had come to know about vietnam, i was born in 1976, so after the war had ended. And my father anywhere narrowly missed being drafted into the war, and my memory is books and things associated with vietnam, and nothing what a beautiful and interesting country was. It was defined to me as the war. So to see madame nhus picture jump out, and she was called the face of evil or something. I had to know more. Well, before we get to her, there is a narrative that runs parallel in the book, which is your own relationship with her and your search for madame nhu, and if think as a journalist who has been working for 20 years, the investigative part is what i find really intriguing, because you didnt know her address and here you are in paris, searching for her, from sort of very loose pieces of information that you have seen. Tell the audience about this. Sure. If my husband was here he would tell you im very persuasive, and i really was determined to find madame nhu. In my research i expected to find an obituary, and there was nothing there. So everything i could sort of getter what that madame nhu was still alive and living in rome. I spoke to a journalist from the New York Times and he said, as far as i know she is still living in rome. So a few people ive talked to i talked to a few people how i tried to study vietnamese and humbly admit i didnt do a very good job keeping up with it. But for a while practicing, and part of my practicing i would go online and pull these vietnamese language articles and try to translate them. One of this articles was written by a vietnamese man living in the United States, who claimed he had interviewed madame nhu. I never heard of this guy. Never heard of his journal. It was a catholic vietnamese web site. And but all of a sudden all of these light bulbs went off in my head, and when he was talking about interviewing her, he talked about seeing the eiffel tower from her kitchen window, and i knew there was an parent she went to after she left saigon, an apartment in paris, at the foot of the eiffel tower so i thought, maybe its not so crazy, marsh she is become there. So i looked around paris for any Tall Buildings i could find around the eiffel tower, and there arent that many. So i started knocking on doors very persistently, spoked to a concierge, she said, no, shes not here. Shes next door. But that was not the end of it. Of course i mean in some way, in the book, she is portrayed a little bit like marlene deitrick. Wont talk to or see anyone, and youre story is about finding her, meeting her, and also trying to capture who she is. So, it was a long process of being in touch with her,. Almost lake courtship. I tried to at first i tried to impress her and seem very business like and smart, but she just put me in my place immediately because i was young and what could i possibly know. This on the phone. All on the phone, exactly. So, the first time madame nhu called me, i wasnt expecting her to call. Id been writing her letters for months. I had knocked on her door that day. I had done everything except for see her, and she called me out of the blue. So, she dictated very early on the terms of our relationship. When she would call. Who she would leave messages with. How i should address her. Very specific things. And in fact in the first conversation we had, she was really curious about not so much me but why was i interested in her . Who in your family works for the cia . Who is the government agent. Im like, no one. Im just curious. So, slowly i part of it was the the first day she called me, my husband and i had been trying to get pregnant, and it had been a long process. That morning i had taken a pregnancy test and found out i was pregnant. So i was overjoyed, and before i could wake up my husband to tell him. Madame nhu is calling me on the phone. So im like but so part of this i think making her getting her humanity out was, i told her early on, you know, that this happened, and this sort of coincidence, and right away she was like, oh, its not coincidence, its a sign from god, right . This is members is meant to be. And it developed into a very ma ternal maternal thing, and she breast fed her children for at least six months and was very previous size about all of those things i wouldnt imagine the dragon lady to be. Before we get to the dragon lady narrative, im just curious, how many people in the audience actually know who she is . Madame nhu . Oh, my. Thats quite a lot. Thats not your typical readers, i dont think, these days, but who knows. So, can you tell in few short sentences a framework who she is and why she is important in the vietnam history . Sure. Well, madame nhu was the first lady of South Vietnam from 1954 to 1963. First lady on a bit of a technicality. Her brotherinlaw was the president. And diem was a very moral, very catholic, married to his country, really, so he never took a wife. So instead it was madame nhu was his younger brothers wife, and his younger brother did all the politicking diem couldnt or wouldnt do. All of this unsavory business of running a country with an iron fist. So everything from running the secret police, to recruiting youth and running the political party, and madame nhu was the fails of the regime, because she was beautiful, the hostess, smart, wellspoken, and so i think initially the media was charmed by her. She was so young. When she became first lady, she was 30 years old. But in some ways she i hate to put it this way her career went up in flames, pun intended. Literally. Because of the what she actually said and this is about that some way unfortunately is what she is remembered by. Absolutely. So, in 1963 is when she got the most press. She was on the cover of the saturday evening post, newsweek, life magazine and it wasnt for anything good. It was as andrew was saying in the summer of 1963 there was a buddhist crisis in vietnam, and the buddhists were speaking out against the diem regime, and the regime was not responding in a way that was very good p. R. , madame nhu said, a month is selfimmolating, well have a barbecue. She was like a Marie Antoinette and came across as cruel, and all of americans knew vietnam in this loose way, oh, yeah, were helping these people, saving them from communism and doing this good thing, and here was suddenly a very ugly, dark side to the regime that the americans were helping. One thing i didnt know was that she actually was not raised catholic. And in fact converted when she married monin nhu. I always thought being french, as she was, a french citizen she was a french citizen her father was. That they naturally should have converting to catholicism but in fact they were buddhists and is interesting. A lot of vietnamese families are split and the religious divide is part of it. My father, for instance, was raised catholic, and my mom was raised buddhist, and theres a lot of family that is split along that line, but to see her being so procatholic and supportive of a regime that creaked down on buddhism was shocking for somebody that was raises buddhist. Can you talk about the religious divisions in vietnam during that time . A little bit. Yes, madame nhu was raised in hanoi for most of her life. Born in hanoi. Went way down to the southern very tip of southern vietnam, and then went back to hanoi, and i hadnt known until i was researching the book, she was actually north vietnamese by birth and heritage, because the regime that was the South Vietnamese regime, but the religion she condition verted at her marriage, which was in 1943, and madame nhus mother was a devout buddhist, and didnt there was a lot of tension between mother and daughter, and the fact that madame nhu married a catholic exher mother looked a little bit down at her for that, and i think that madame nhu was, now i can start fresh and not have to worry about that parental judgment all the time. Nhu always teased his wife and called her his little heathen because she was knew to catholicism. Baptized on the day before her the night before her wedding was her baptism show, liked to tease her, but later in life, i think for madame nhu, that was her defining characteristic, how she really made sense of her life, was by putting it into this religious framework. But she was also involved in writing law during the part of that has to do with her own insecurity. You discuss that in the book. Its interesting because she actually had her own sister incarcerated because of part of the reason has to do with her sister wanting a divorce. Yes. So this is sort of the scuttle but in saigon, was that so, madame nhu was elected to the senate. She was a member of the legislature, but of course no one would say no to her. She came up with a law, people were quick to pass it. And madame nhu had some very good points. I dont think all of her laws were totally reactionary. She saw the communist were making great gains by taking women seriously, and until madame nhu changed the law, women in South Vietnam were not able to own property or have their own bank account. So ma damn new made progression in that she saw a section of the population being excluded. She also saw that the communists were doing a good job of taking the war seriously. So as more and more foreigners, americans, came into South Vietnam, madame nhu didnt want it to seem like it was a party city. She wanted people to be like, hey, were at war, lets take this seriously. So she banned prostitution, she wanted gambling, banned dancing, banned underwire bras, all sorts of stuff, and the one sort of big thing was she banned divorce. And the theory was at the time that she was trying to prevent her sister, her older sister, from getting a divorce. And the rumor was, madame nhu would never acknowledge this the rumor was that when madame nhu wouldnt grant her outright divorce in the country, meant couldnt get a divorce. She slit her wrists and went running through the palace and madame nhu had her imprisoned in the hospital. Which is interesting. Because vietnam is full of rumors and theres a lot of this sort of narrative that goes around. And part of that had to do with the fact that theres no way to validate certain things. But how would you characterize you mention in your book about her own feeling of being isolated, and her husband was a fill fill he actually had a girlfriend. I think we all could be guilty of rewriting our own history in our heads. I remember what i did yesterday in a very positive light, but the guy whose seat i stole on the bus might not feel the same way. By the time madame nhu was in her 80s, she remembered her life very specifically and it was a devoted wife and everything i did was for my husband. But the diary i found that she wrote that was my next question. Go ahead. I tell you about this diary. In this diary she all of that kind of rosecolored glass re reflection is gone and talked about how hard it was to be married to somebody who was trying to build this new political philosophy, also apparently did have someone else on the side, someone that madame nhu thought was below him and certainly below her. So, these little accusations came out in the journal. Yes. Theres a lot of tidbits that i find titillating because theres so much sex going on in the book. Its not a surprise but the fact that there is some recording of it or some observation of it. Its interesting, including this conservative family that madame nhu came from, which is the parents her parents who are really upstanding from this really respectful and the mother is from royal family, but in fact the mother is having sex with a bunch of different people, which is like, wow. That was great. The french are very good at this. Of course the french are. When i was in the archives in france, i would find references to madame nhus mother having slept with the right frenchman at the right time, and then when the japanese were coming in, having slept with the right japanese men at the right time, and taking japanese lessons and going to din with the japanese. So its very possible that the french man who was writing it down was had his advanced suspended and was bitter and so decided that would be her legacy. But this came from several sources and she used what she had to save her family. Sex in all kind of royal courts, down to presidency, is the norm, but the fact that the french are going these parties and recording it is shocking. And thats my other question. Since youre half french and youre viewing vietnam through the french lens as much as an american one, what is it that the french know about vietnam that the Americans Still dont . Oh, good question. Im not sure that that question is still true today. I think that theres a lot of know stall nostalgia in france my mother was born in 1946. So for her growing up, she grew up learning that indochina was part of france, and feeling quite a bit of pride in that empire. And to think that im born in 76 so 30 years later, and thats totally bewillerring to me some could have assumed that. Im not sure the question today, what did the french know or not know, its misplaced colonial nostalgia. Lets get back to the role of powerful women in the world. Politics of the 60s. She seemed such an anomaly in a world of men, and even jackie onassis, jacqueline kennedy, looked down at her for being involved in politics, it was not ladylike, and certainly among first ladies of asia during that time, the idea of this woman with a gun and speak her mind regardless of what the men were saying, and even tell the president to shut up, was something really shocking, not just to asian but the world in a way, and yet there she was, sort of blabbering her ideas without any sense of inhibition. Before madame nhu there was madame shanclek. She was wellopinion and had a feeling for what americans and americans were looking for in a first lady, and madame nhu didnt have that. I think madame nhu would have looked for her place in the world but there was no role model no shoes for her to step into. So she had to blunder her way through it, and the dynamic with the Kennedy Family and the nor family in saying gone is fascinating. Two catholic families, family regimes, jfk and his family, and diem and his family, and then madame nhu, this first lady and Jackie Kennedy in the white house. And in these interviews, jackie is asked about madame nhu, she says, oh, shes horrible. She is everything that jack found just ugly because she wasnt sub submissive, and wasnt quiet, and jackie described her own marriage as an asian marriage, what that means. She was subservients to her husband. When diem was murdered, kennedy was murdered not very long after, and theres this letter that madame nhu sent to her because she felt betrayed by the americans. Talk about the all right and about the letter and the bitterness. Goodness. Where do i start . First i guess for those of you that dont know, kennedy gave the ok for a coup in vietnam, for a regime change in vietnam, and there were several falls talls false starts and the coup didnt happen until november. She was in the United States at the time and no official would meet with her. The only publish official was the director of police in new york city because he had to guarantee her safety. People were throwing things at her. So, she felt really slighted, that here she was first lady and no one was paying any attention or sort of giving her her proper due, and she knew a regime change in vietnam could not have happened without the ok by the kennedy administration. So she felled betrayed and made theirs eerie proclamation as she is leaving the country, im paraphrasing, something like, i predict that the story with vietnam is only at its beginning. America will have this long history with vietnam. And she was right. We were there another decade. Where is the irony which is she is vilified in a lot of ways in the media, and yet she was right about the future and americas relationship with vietnam. Yes. And she said things that were hard to say at the time. She accused the buddhists, who were rise can against the diem regime, of being loosely organized and ripe for communist infiltration, which the americans would find out later, at least in 66 and 68 that would come to be the case. The just called it early and inappropriately. She also accused the American Press of being infiltrated by the communists. Actually ill use her favorite word. Intoxicated. Everybody was intoxicated by the communists. And in that case, too, she actually wasnt so wrong. There were informers working for the americans that were part of the communist system. Very famous one, who actually stanley tarnow. Yes. I was thinking of her this morning, and then saw lady gaga video, and i thought, in a strange way, she was the lady gaga of politics of the 60s because of the things she is saying that is so shocking. Barbecue monks. And that sort of thing shocked the world, but people are no longer shocked by lady gaga so i was thinking of, had she had good Public Relation and in a different context, maybe the courses of events in vietnam might have even changed . She influenced so much of the public opinion. Can you talk about the context of this now in relationship to her being a woman back then. With madame nhu have tweeted . 140 characters. It would have gotten her in a lot of trouble or saved her in some sense. Maybe not lady gaga, maybe like lindsay lohan. Madame nhu was this first kind of paparazzi not first but definitely one of the few political people that the media was so fascinated with her, just kind of daily what was she wearing, saying, that kind of thing. Lets get back to your relationship with her. Because i find it really interesting that in the end you actually never really met her in person. How does one write a book about someone who has spent countless amount of hours dreaming and thinking and obsessing with that person and actually never met her before she died. And then how is that relationship and how does that inform your writing . Well, i think i always thought i would meet madame nhu, and when i started this book, and finally Start Talking to her, we would seat up elaborate meeting plans, and all on her terms. I know this church around the corner and its dark and meet by the st. Joseph statue. Theres a park, really discreet. No one will see us. These cloak and dagger things and she would ask me to bring my children, and i did, sort of thinking that would make me seem sweet and naive and like i wasnt going to hurt her, because i real ya was curious. But she stood me up at each of these things, and i she always said, im really sorry. There was always a reason. And really, i had no power in this relationship. She was dictating the terms, and so if i wanted to continue to talk to her, i knew it would be on her terms there was a time when madame nhu stopped accepting my phone calls and stopped speaking to me. That was because of i tack bat it in the book. I asked her something she thought was inappropriate or in fact i tooled her that something was i told her something that was inappropriate and she hung up on me and we didnt talk between for a year. So right before she died she died in easter sunday, 2011. Its so perfect for her. Because she really like i said she was so catholic, and believed in the resurrection, and for thor pass away on easter was just perfect for her. Before she died she new the end was coming and sent me her memoirs, and she had written three volumes, each of them several hundred pages, and they were all about sort of the mystery of life and it was totally dense with biblical reference and things i couldnt really understand. But then peppered in there were these narratives of her life as a child. So at the end i feel like i kind of got what i wanted from her, which was in her own words, recollection of her life, and the meaning of her life, which even though i didnt necessarily understand it, she believed very strongly that she was predestined to have led this life. Her life is quite tragic in many ways because not only did she lose a country but she lost a husband, and then her children died from accidents two of the four. A lot of vietnamese talk about her being cursed for the role she played during the war. But what do you mak of that . What does she make of her open tragedy . Back to the kennedy thing. Its like people talk about the kennedy curse. Theres the nhu family curse. Certainly madame nhu had a very tragic life, so first in 63 she was disopenned by her parents who she wasnt getting along with anyways. Then her husband is killed in a coup. A couple years later her oldest beloved daughter dies in a car crash. And things keep getting worse in 1986 her parents lived in georgetown and were murdered by her brother. So, and then only just last year, in 2012, her youngest daughter, the daughter she would dress her up in these little paratrooper outfits and dress her up like a little soldier, and she passed away as well in an auto accident in italy. So took a really bad chain of events. Would you like to read passage, perhaps something about your own relationship and your struggle to connect with center. Sure. Yeah. Id be happy to. I do want to say that this book was it was hard to figure out the structure of the book because i wanted to be as candid as i could about madame nhu and how she played me, and how she was this unreliable narrator but the first person i could talk to about her life. So i tell madame news story, tell my story of finding her, and i hope i tell a story also of those years of the vietnam war that are confusing to those of my generation. This is a section about when i thought we might meet. We should meet, madame nhu said on the phone after tommys birth. The first time she expressed any willingness to meet my face to face. She must he around i cooperate be conspiring to hurt her if i was with a baby so the insisted i bring tommy. Paris be all right . I was going to visit my relatives and a stop in paris would be on the way. I didnt tell her i was visiting the French Colonial archives in the south of france to see what other history i could pull up. I knew how firmly she believed her version of the truth should be adequate and report unchallengedded when with obvious cracks. Our meeting was to take place in a Catholic Church not far from her apartment. We would meet in the nave in front of st. Joseph statue at 10 00 a. M. Then we can go to the park across the street to talk. It will be very discreet. When i got inside the church the doors closed, shut ought the bright sun. I thought i should be worried. I reminded myself i was just introducing tommy to a little old lady. She had been the dragon lady but has also been a mother four times over. I forced myself to focus on that aspect but i was ill at ease. I told myself i was nervous about making a good impression, and then she stands me up when we poke next she didnt actually apologize but her voice surrounded contrite enough and i forgave her. The next time we would meet in their apartment. I believed her. I waited in the lobby but she didnt let me up the elevator. She told me she wasnt sure she could trust anyone again. I would have to prove myself. The dragon lady was keeping herself tantalizingly out of reach. In your discovery of madame nhu you also discover vietnam. And for someone who was born in 1976, after the war ended, vietnam for most people of your generation really ills not that clear or as extensive as your research. What do you think americans dont understand about vietnam still after all these years and after your research, what do you feel like you discovered most about vietnam and its history . Great question. I think that for i can only speak for people of my generation, and i cant speak for everybody, but i will try to speak for myself and what i see, is that the war was so massive, and so tragic, that to boil it down into the distinct parts of what we were trying to accomplish, why we were there, who were we helping, who were we whose side was on whose side. So confusing that i think its better to just say, vietnam, and sort of leave it. So what i really tried to do in my book was to find one narrative, one story to get in and give a little clarity about what was going on in this womans life and how perhaps a person of my generation can relate to that in whatever way. I can tell you from reading the book, it really helped my thinking about vietnam in some ways. A lot of this rumor, this gossip, goes on within my own family as the years roll down and i become completely american, but when i go home to my parents, the old ruling class of vietnam, the frenchspeaking people, this kind of narrative still goes on at the dining table, but it goes on as private conversations. And i never thought one day they actually find a way out into the limelight as a mainstream conversation in american households. So i find that really intriguing. I thought, wow, writing about it, maybe people are interested, even going back further. But then my last question before we open up, is that are you done with vietnam or are you still interested in, and if so, whats next for you . This book was really a labor of love. I started shortly every graduated from harvard in 2003, and it took me a while to meet her and then it took me a while to woo her, and then i had to figure out how to write the book. So im kind of just going to promote my book for pa while and talk about madame nhu because i put a lot of of time into it. So i want a lot of people to know her story. And then well see. I would really like to bring my kids to vietnam. That for me would be just sort of the next step. But as i was telling andrew before, im not sure how the book will be received in vietnam. Theres a chance that it may not go over well so im really very curious to see if im allowed back. Well have to wait and see. All right. I can guarantee you that it would be pirated and sold right flexion to the lonely planet. Just like my book. So thats one claim to fame. Lets open up for questions. [applause] we have a question on the right. Three questions. First of all, how old was she . Perhaps when she died . And second question is, did they ever do an audit of her estate when she died, and the third question is, do the french media ever do an interview of her . Ok. The first question was how old she was when she died. She was born number 1924 and died before her birthday in 2011, so she was 86. The second one was the audit of her. Im sorry . [inaudible] which is just across the street from the most posh neighborhood, the seventh. She lived in a apartment that she was very cagey about how she came to have the apartment. She said it was gift, and the way she kind it, it made it sound like she thought the cia or the americans or someone had bought it for her and some small consolation prize for everything. There does seem to be conclusive evidence that the family in genoas not corrupt. They were not stealing money out of the country no swiss bank accounts. They had put money into buy some land outside of rome, for some sort of religious retreat they envisioned they would bring vietnamese monks from vietnam to rome, so it wasnt like it wasnt like there were stacks of gold somewhere, and now i have forgotten the third question. [inaudible] they did but nothing after 1986. Madam news memoirs are coming out in french, though. This november. Theyre being published by her children and family friend, and theyre im sorry. Im blank only the name of the publishing house, but coming out in french in november. First of all, you mentioned four children. Took care of two of them. What happened to the other two . And then second question is, has your book been translated into vietnamese to be published in vietnam . First question, about the children. So she has two sons that are left living, and the oldest, chuck, lives, i believe, still on the italian property. Theres some question of Property Rights and boundaries, and i think he this defender of the estate, and the younger son, he went to Business School and he worked for proctor and gamble in belgium for several years, and so he is very, i guess, cosmopolitan, european, and living a life over there. Translated book. As i said im not sure if my book is going to be wellreceived in vietnam. I come down hard on everyone. I come down hard on the South Vietnamese family, the americans, the french, the communists nos. One gets off easy. But im not sure that it will be liked enough to be translated, official live translated. I was fascinated to hear that you were in the archives in france. My first question, were they receptive, and did they clue you that there might be stuff that they wont release until, like our American National archives, we have sensitive records that are only released every so often through a committee. So im kind of curious if youre monitoring that to see if any new stuff is coming out. So, my French Research took place in two main archives. One is at the not very nicely titled the shat archivesand its outside of paris and those are the army archives, and then theres the colonial archives which has all of the as much as they could get out of vietnam before 1954. They know that a lot was lost through the cracks. And in fact, its all sort of so suspicious still. When i went to go look for madame nhus husbands dossier, i found it and did the the french bureaucracy, it is just mind boggling. Much easier to do research in American Archives than france. The next year i went back because i had been approved and they found the file and i got to france and it was officially missing, and as far as i know its still missing. So, [inaudible] are any members of madame nhus extended family still in vietnam . And in fact, did any of them during the war support the other side . I dont know the answer to that question. I know that the noh family there were ten brothers and sisters or something so im sure there are descendents of them, and in fact one of diems nephews became pretty high up in the Catholic Church, and im so embarrassed im not up to speed enough on my catholic hierarchy but he came a really wellknown bishop, i think, but a big deal. So he was definitely still in vietnam. Question in the back. When the association was in hanoi for years ago, our ambassador told us america has no better friend in asia than vietnam, and i wondered how you felt received there you told me earlier you werent allowed as a trial, and how did you feel you were received in recent times . Well, the vietnamese people i met in vietnam were never anything but wonderful to me. There was my first trip to vietnam was in 1997, and at that time there was a lot of resentment towards russians, but not so much towards americans. So, i think perhaps this is very much just my interpretation, but i think because they were successful in the war and because i studied in hanoi there was perhaps an easier forgiveness in some sense in hanoi towards americans than there is in america towards vietnam, because they sort of got what they were looking for, which was a unified country under communist rule. Defender of womens rights for a woman so i am not sure she would have used that word to describe yourself but in my interpretation yes she was. In your conversations with her, did she ever have an opinion on what she thought about the modernization of vietnam and how things are going in the country now and a chip or express a longing to return home . No, she did not express a longing to ever go back to vietnam as it is now. She expressed sadness that she would never see your house again in the place where she had grown up but the path that vietnam had taken was the path to hell. She was convinced there was going to be another war or the apocalypse. Are there any other questions . Andrew do you have any other queries . I think its great that we we are nearing the 40th anniversary of the end of the war and exploring the complexity of that pass. Past. I wish there were more young people who are intellectually curious about the vietnam war because we need this kind of sort of intellectual investigation into the past as a way to create new conversation about understanding for not understanding so many boards that we continue to wage. It i agree and i think that the 50th anniversary commemorations start this year so it was 50 years ago that the coup happened in saigon that toppled the regime from power so 50 years ago was the turning point into the vietnam war as we know it. That was the decisive moment when america got really involved so i think that we will see more the department of defense is doing a big hoopla and big hoopla shinkman and i think theres going to be a lot of awareness raising. Nick terse just wrote that powerful book on vietnam so yeah i think there is more to come. Hinchey so much. Nick terse wrote the book this year called and it was her research into the american side into their actions in vietnam. Thank you so much for talking with us and good luck with your book. Thank you. [applause] on behalf of Mechanics Institute and asia society thank you for coming and we look forward to seeing you at our next event. [applause] please come up. On history bookshelf, here from the best American History writers of the last decade. Watched these programs anytime. Visit our website read cspan. Org history. The cspan city tour takes American History on the road, traveling to learn about literary life. We partner with Time Warner Cable to go to waco, texas. We began turning over the gospel music was not widely heard by the white community. But the flipside would be heard even last. But we discovered was how many were related to the civil rights movement. There are few databases. We didnt know the sheer number of songs that had very old nogs, there aint segregation and heaven. It was a dangerous thing to possess in the deep south. Singing that sort of song out loud is a risk. Quietly texas ranger hall of the was set up in 1976 for 175th anniversary of the rangers. It honors 30 rangers who made the service oro gave their lives under heroic circumstances. We have paintings or portraits of those rangers. We begin with stephen f austin. He was successful with his rangers. The fought not only to make area reasonable for indian raids but when the texas walker independence broke out, the rangers played a role in texas gaining independence by staving off the mexican army long enough to allow the colonists to build their own army and develop a strategy. As a result texas became its own independent nation. Lets watch all of our events from waco throughout the day. Next, a conversation about gerald fords constitutional legacy. And Michael Gearhart discussed the 38th president s decision to pardon former president Richard Nixon and his relationship with attorney general edward leaving edward levy. You. Ank good morning