Dean Saadallah, THAT is the problem. When I open these files in 2006 LT they have all of my text, when I open them in 2009 LT some text is gone. Not on an off layer, not exploded, nothing...just gone?! I completely uninstalled and then reinstalled autocad LT 2009 (as Autodesk recommended) but this didn't fix the issue either. I sent this file to a friend of mine who has Autocad 2008 LT and he also cannot see this text.
Very hard to believe that with the other posts I've seen here with similar issues that this is something so tough to solve!
Thanks for your help Dean, I appreciate any peer-to-peer help I can get!