Sarah Hughes Administered Oath on Air Force One : Judge Who Swore In Johnson Dies at 88

U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes, who swore in Lyndon B. Johnson aboard Air Force One as President after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, has died at the age of 88.

Hughes, who had been appointed to the bench by Kennedy, died about 11 p.m. Tuesday at Presbyterian Hospital, said the jurist’s aide, Lois Swan Jones.

She had suffered a massive stroke three years ago and had been in a nursing home since. She was hospitalized again in February.

Hughes was a women’s rights activist whose best argument was her own success at law and politics. Impudent lawyers, double-talking witnesses and political opponents learned to fear and respect her.

She stood 5-foot-1 and weighed just over 100 pounds, but she was a stern jurist who ran a no-nonsense courtroom, often silencing men twice her size and half her age.

Good Friends

The late President Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, were her personal friends, and when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, Johnson called for her to give him the oath of office.

The hastily assembled ceremony took place at Dallas’ Love Field aboard Air Force One as Jacqueline Kennedy, in a blood-splattered dress, stood beside Johnson.

Hughes was an outspoken Democrat and a controversial figure in Dallas, where her rulings were widely criticized by local officials as being too liberal.

Born in Baltimore, she met her husband, George Hughes of Palestine, Tex., while they were at George Washington University Law School. She had worked her way through law school by working as a police officer in Washington. They were married and moved to Texas in 1922.

When they arrived in Texas she sought a job with a local law firm.

“I offered my services to every law firm in Dallas. I didn’t know there was any discrimination against women,” she said later. She became a staunch women’s rights activist, and wrote the bill that later allowed women to serve on juries in Texas.