Lady Bird Johnson dies at 94

[thedrifter]

Lady Bird Johnson dies at 94

Quiet strength drove efforts for beautification, racial equality

07:22 AM CDT on Thursday, July 12, 2007
By JOE SIMNACHER / The Dallas Morning News
jsimnacher@dallasnews.com

Lady Bird Johnson was a demure East Texas girl whose hunger for adventure teamed her with the tornadic personality of an aspiring politician.

The successful chemistry between her and Lyndon B. Johnson carried them to the White House, where she subtly transformed the role of first lady and left an indelible imprint on Texas and the nation.

"Mrs. Johnson is every bit as complex a character as Lyndon Johnson," said her biographer, Jan Jarboe Russell of San Antonio. "Future historians will find her to be a treasure house" once her unedited diaries and tapes are made public.

Mrs. Johnson died of natural causes at 4:18 p.m. in her Austin home, surrounded by family and friends, while a Catholic priest and family friend, the Rev. Bob Scott, was giving her last rites.

At 94, she was the oldest living former first lady.

President Bush and the first lady offered their condolences.

"Laura and I mourn the passing of our good friend and a warm and gracious woman," the president's statement read. "Those who were blessed to know her remember Mrs. Johnson's lively and charming personality, and our nation will always remember her with affection."

Among the calls from well-wishers before she died were Billy Graham and former first lady Rosalynn Carter.

As both a contrast and a complement to her husband, Mrs. Johnson used the mostly social position of first lady as a meaningful vehicle for change, embracing leadership roles to beautify America, win acceptance of racial equality in her native South and nurture children's early learning through the Head Start program.

"She's really a breakaway first lady ... she's a precursor to feminism," said Ms. Russell, who spent four years on her 1999 book, Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson. "She was a strong and persistent American woman who helped us say goodbye to the '50s."

Mrs. Johnson inhabited the White House gracefully during some of the most turbulent years of the 20th century. There was the Vietnam War, racial unrest in urban centers, tremendous social change and the healing needed after the Kennedy assassination.

Not since Eleanor Roosevelt had the nation seen a first lady take such an active role, said historian and political scientist Melissa Line.

"She survived it all, and she influenced it all, very subtly in profound ways," Ms. Line said. "In terms of the evolution of the first lady, she is as important a figure in her own right as Eleanor Roosevelt because she ... stands at a crossroads."

Many credit Mrs. Johnson as a pioneer in the environmental movement. Her legacy began with plantings along streets in Washington, D.C., which she followed with her support for the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. That law, which spurred legions of wildflowers along U.S. highways, made history as the first time a first lady worked on legislative strategy with a president, said University of Texas at Austin history professor emeritus Lewis Gould.

In 1982, on her 70th birthday, she donated 60 acres and $125,000 to help create the National Wildflower Research Center. It was renamed the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in 1997 and today encompasses 279 acres southwest of Austin.

During her White House years, known collectively as LBJ's Great Society, Mrs. Johnson helped her husband promote Medicare, Medicaid, the Job Corps, Federal Aid to Education and voting rights legislation. Together, they also started food stamp programs; initiated federal aid for the arts; and reinvigorated conservation of public land programs and consumer protection legislation.

Perhaps even more striking than Mrs. Johnson's accomplishments was her trusting style.

"So many things impress me about her, but I think the thing that impresses me the very most is her genuineness," said Harry Middleton, former director of the LBJ Library and Museum in Austin and a speechwriter for the 36th president. "I have known her all these years, and I have yet to see an artificial stroke in her."

Three decades after she left the White House, Mrs. Johnson still received 800 to 900 pieces of mail each month. When she was hospitalized in June, she received a torrent of get-well wishes in the mail, her staff said. One young student's letter called her "Mother Nature."

"She's the most trusted Texan and in some ways the most trusted American," said Liz Carpenter, Mrs. Johnson's former press secretary and a friend for more than 60 years. "At times of troubles in this country, beginning with Watergate, Lady Bird gets a burst of mail from people who want to take her hand or cling to her skirt."

Although much of her political influence was behind the scenes, Mrs. Johnson was her husband's right hand, said George Christian, LBJ's press secretary from 1966 to 1969, who has since died.

She monitored and graded her husband's news conferences, for example, offering him advice on how to best present and express himself, Mr. Christian said.

The morning after he lost the 1960 presidential nomination, he specifically sought her counsel during a strategy session, Ms. Russell said in her biography.

Mrs. Johnson countered the advice of legendary Texas congressman Sam Rayburn and told her husband to deal directly with John F. Kennedy and not his brother.

"Lady Bird's judgment proved to be decisive," Ms. Russell wrote, clearing the way for LBJ to become vice president.

Retired Gen. Hugh Robinson of Dallas said Mrs. Johnson's presence had a soothing effect on the White House.

"I don't know how she could remain so calm through all kinds of circumstances," said Gen. Robinson, a member of the LBJ Foundation, which supports programs at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, both in Austin.

During the Johnson administration, Gen. Robinson was an Army major whose duties included delivering a daily report with a body count from Vietnam. Mrs. Johnson's presence always made the task less difficult, he said.

"She would always smile and grin and say, 'Good morning, Major. Are you OK this morning?' "

East Texas roots


Mrs. Johnson was born Claudia Alta Taylor in Karnack, which is near Marshall and about 10 miles from the Louisiana border. When she was 2, a nursemaid proclaimed her to be "purty as a lady bird," a reference to the ladybird beetle, also known as a ladybug. Despite Mrs. Johnson's best efforts, the name stuck.

"It was a hell of a serviceable name," Ms. Carpenter said. "Like Ike, Lady Bird got in the headline, and people knew who you were talking about."

After the death of her mother, Mrs. Johnson and her two older brothers, Tommy and Tony, were reared by an aunt, Effie Pattillo. While she had no clue about the right clothes or putting a girl in the "right society," as Mrs. Johnson called it, Miss Pattillo did instill in her niece a love of nature.

In a 1965 speech in the Tetons in Wyoming, Mrs. Johnson said: "Each of our actions sprang from what nurtures us, and what nurtured me was walking through the piney woods in my own deep East Texas."

At Marshall High School, Mrs. Johnson was painfully shy, said longtime friend Dorris Powell, who has since died. Mrs. Johnson let certain grades slip to avoid making the valedictorian speech in 1928. She graduated third in her class at age 15.

Mrs. Johnson attended summer school at the University of Alabama but insisted on going to St. Mary's Episcopal School for Girls in Dallas to be with friends. Two years later, she enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin and graduated cum laude.

Opposites attract


Not long after graduation, she was swept off her feet.

Mrs. Johnson was in Austin to consult with an architect on remodeling her birthplace home, the Brick House in Karnack. A mutual friend introduced her to Mr. Johnson, then secretary to U.S. Rep. Richard Kleberg, an heir to the King Ranch in South Texas.

The next day changed her life.

"My intentions that morning were to seek the architect who officed next door to the Driskill" Hotel, Mrs. Johnson later recalled. "But there was Lyndon, sitting in the dining room behind a big plate-glass window I was walking past. He looked up and flagged me down."

During what would be their first date – breakfast followed by a tour in a Ford roadster convertible of the nearby countryside on Sept. 1, 1934 – he proposed.

"He came on strong, and he was very direct and dynamic," Mrs. Johnson recalled. "I didn't know quite what to make of him. ... I thought he was out of his mind. I'm a slow, considered person generally. Certainly not given to quick conclusions or rash behavior."

The brash young man offered her "a vehicle for her own denied ambition," Ms. Russell said. "A woman coming to age in the '30s didn't have any natural right to an ambition."

The idea that two young Texans could change the world was real in 1934, Ms. Russell said. "She saw in Lyndon Johnson that very same energy and was drawn to it, as she told me, 'like a moth to a flame.' "

Despite repeated long-distance telephone calls and letters, Mr. Johnson used to joke that Mrs. Johnson never did say yes. On Nov. 17, 1934, he gave her an ultimatum: "We either do it now, or we never will."

LBJ ordered a friend and campaign supporter to hastily make arrangements for a San Antonio wedding that day. He used political favors to obtain a marriage license and line up an Episcopal priest.

As the 8 p.m. ceremony approached, the friend ran to a Sears store that was open late to fetch a ring. From the assortment offered, the bride-to-be chose the one that fit, a $2.50 chip-diamond ring.

The priest who married them feared the match wouldn't last, given its rushed beginnings. Others noted the couple's striking contrasts.

"He was Western to the core," Ms. Carpenter said. "He was a big rawboned man who came from a part of the state that was raw. ... She was from the gentler, dogwood lacing through the pine trees of East Texas, Old South country, a gentler country."

The unlikely couple benefited from the contrast. Her gentle touch helped his political efforts, while his sharp edges heightened her natural appeal.

"They were a team of two strong individuals," Dr. Gould wrote in his 1988 book, Lady Bird Johnson and the Environment.

Financing the future


In April 1937, Mrs. Johnson persuaded her father – who didn't like politics – to lend her $10,000 against her future inheritance from her mother's estate to finance Mr. Johnson's first bid for political office. It would be the first in a series of good investments she would make.

Mr. Johnson won a special election against nine others to fill the 10th District congressional seat vacated by the death of James P. Buchanan. He was re-elected in 1938. When the United States declared war in December 1941, the Navy reservist asked to be put on active duty.

Mrs. Johnson filled the wartime void for constituents. Holding down the district gave her firsthand appreciation for her husband's work. The task also gave her a new much-needed confidence.

"This was Lyndon's life," she said in explaining her efforts to battle her shyness. "If we'd committed to it for the next several decades, win or lose, it behooved me to learn to operate in that venue to some usefulness."

Mrs. Johnson never became comfortable with public speaking, said Martha Tiller of Dallas, who worked for the Johnsons when they returned to Texas after leaving the White House.

"It was a struggle," Mrs. Johnson said in 1995. "I'd almost rather plow."

Her talents became an asset during her husband's decade in the U.S. House and 12 years in the U.S. Senate.

She also proved to be astute in business. In January 1943, she bought KTBC, a small, debt-ridden Austin radio station, for $17,500, thinking it could be the security they needed to offset the gamble of her husband's political career. She took over day-to-day operations. Six months later, the station turned an $18 profit.

In one of his books, Dr. Gould quoted business associates who described Mrs. Johnson as "any man's equal; she reads a balance sheet like most women examine a piece of cloth."

She and her husband purchased several other radio stations and – at Mrs. Johnson's urging – branched into television in the 1950s. Some alleged that Mr. Johnson's influence won them rapid federal approval to purchase additional properties and protect them from competition by denying other licenses. Others charged that corporations purchased advertising in hopes of gaining political favor. No wrongdoing was ever proved.

Mrs. Johnson relinquished control of her broadcasting businesses to a trust when she moved into the White House. In March 2003, the family's share was sold for about $105 million.

Because of her business finesse, Mrs. Johnson was the first wife of a president to become a millionaire in her own right, according to Ms. Russell.

In those early years, Mrs. Johnson's personal struggles centered around her family. After several miscarriages, she gave birth to Lynda Bird in 1944. Lucy Baines was born in 1947 and later changed the spelling to Luci.

Although the first lady was known for her openness, she refused to address repeated allegations of LBJ's infidelity.

A dozen years later, Mrs. Johnson had evolved into the quintessential political wife and mother. In 1960, she set up a women's organization for his presidential bid. After he lost the Democratic nomination to the young senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Johnson accepted the vice presidential nomination.

Mrs. Johnson traveled 35,000 miles campaigning, and the Kennedy administration took office in January 1961.

"Lady Bird carried Texas for us," said Robert Kennedy, who was named attorney general by his brother.

While Mrs. Johnson may have grown accustomed to the limelight, the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963 was a quantum leap in visibility. The Johnsons were in the third car of the Dallas motorcade behind Mr. Kennedy when he was shot. In A White House Diary , Mrs. Johnson said fate whisked her and her husband into the highest office in the land. She reluctantly accepted the role.

"I feel like I am suddenly on stage for a part I never rehearsed," she told Texas first lady Nellie Connally at the time.

Aboard Air Force One at Dallas Love Field, Mrs. Johnson tried to express her feelings. "I said, 'Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, you know we never even wanted to be vice president, and now, dear God, it's come to this.' "

Months later, as her husband sought the presidency in his own right, she was the star of a 1,682-mile whistle-stop tour through the South to garner votes lost when her husband signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As a businesswoman, Mrs. Johnson thought the South would go under economically unless it put an end to segregation, Ms. Russell said.

"It represents this enormous leap in one woman's thinking and a leap that the rest of the South took," the biographer said.

Mrs. Johnson instinctively turned to her Southern charm, recruiting governors and senators to help mend bridges with those who felt betrayed by the administration's stance on equal rights for blacks. Because of numerous bomb threats, a separate train traveled ahead of the first lady's train, dubbed the Lady Bird Special. On the trip, she often had to quiet angry protesters to be heard.

One news account called it the "most remarkable joint campaign effort in American political history."

"Perhaps they had changed some votes; perhaps they had altered none. But they had given it everything they had," said one newspaper account of the trip.

A month later, on election night, the Johnsons returned to the Driskill Hotel, where they first met, to await results. It was there they learned that LBJ had handily won the presidency over Barry Goldwater.

Mrs. Johnson held the Bible at her husband's swearing-in, a precedent followed by her successors.

She is credited with taking an active role in her husband's War on Poverty efforts. She was honorary chairwoman of the national Head Start program that prepared underprivileged preschoolers for public education. Since its inception in 1965, the program has served more than 24 million children.

She took the media on tours of homes and schools of the poor who would benefit from LBJ's programs. "This was a marvelous service to LBJ to show the War on Poverty through Lady Bird's eyes," Ms. Carpenter said.

Three decades later, as the prevailing political winds turned against the Great Society programs that she and her husband had worked to build, Mrs. Johnson steadfastly defended their efforts.

"It will speak for itself and survive," she said in 1995. "We were too hopeful sometimes. Maybe we expected too much of human nature. But the spirit of the Great Society is opportunity, not handouts."

LBJ declined to run for another term, and the Johnsons retired to the LBJ Ranch near Stonewall, Texas, in January 1969. In December 1972, the couple donated the ranch as a national historic site.

Mrs. Johnson took the lead in beautifying the hike-and-bike trail and park along Town Lake in Austin but declined the city's offer to name the park in her honor.

After her husband died of a heart attack in January 1973, Mrs. Johnson remained active with the University of Texas Board of Regents and the LBJ Library and Museum in Austin.

The library is now in the process of building the Lady Bird Johnson Center, which will include classrooms and outdoor landscaping.

An avid reader, Mrs. Johnson switched to books on tape when her eyesight declined because of macular degeneration. Friends read her newspapers and magazines. She compensated for her near-blindness by looking at her beloved wildflowers with a magnifying glass.

She also loved history, did a lot of traveling and enjoyed time with her children and grandchildren. She maintained a home in West Lake Hills, a western suburb of Austin.

She was a member of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Fredericksburg.

Mrs. Johnson suffered strokes in 1993 and 2002 and was hospitalized for various ailments in the past decade, most recently in June.

"She went home from the hospital a few weeks ago, and ... it seems as though her house has been a magnet for those who love and respect her," said family spokesman Neal Spelce. "Her last moments on this earth may be the best possible time that anyone could spend in their final moments, at the end of a remarkable life."

He said she hasn't been able to speak since her last stroke but continued to communicate "greatly with people around her – alert, responsive, and laughing, through her facial expressions, hugging, patting people's hands." Mr. Spelce said.

She is survived by her daughters, Lynda Bird Johnson Robb of Virginia and Luci Baines Johnson of Austin; seven grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.

On her first night back in Texas after leaving the White House, Mrs. Johnson couldn't get a verse of poetry out of her head.

"'I seek, to celebrate my glad release, the Tents of Silence and the Camp of Peace,' " she wrote in her diary. "And yet it's not quite the right exit line for me because I have loved almost every day of these five years."

The same could be said for her 94 years of life.

Staff writer Karen Brooks in Austin contributed to this report.

Follow link to see more stories, pix's, and video's

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...663b1dc9.html#

RIP

Ellie

[OLE SARG]

I still say she knew who killed President Kennedy along with ole LBJ of course!!

SEMPER FI,

[rsta]

I was surprised to see of her passing; I thought she had died years ago. She was a good woman, I think. I always kind of liked her.