Lady Bird Johnson

First Lady of the United States

• Born: December 22, 1912
• Birthplace: Karnack, Texas
• Died: July 11, 2007
• Place of death: West Lake Hills, near Austin, Texas

Johnson was unexpectedly thrust into the role of First Lady of the United States after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Following the popular and glamorous Jacqueline Kennedy in the job as First Lady, Johnson soon became confident and determined in her new role, helping President Johnson as an adviser and spokesperson for his administration. She also promoted the Keep America Beautiful program and led the way toward the passage of the Highway Beautification Act.

Early Life

Lady Bird Johnson was born Claudia Alta Taylor in her family home, the Brick House, in Karnack, Texas. She was the only daughter and third child of Thomas Jefferson Taylor and Minnie Pattillo Taylor. There are conflicting reports as to how she received the name Lady Bird. One story relates that at Johnson’s birth, her African American nurse reportedly said that Johnson looked like a beautiful lady bird, referring to a popular beetle in the Karnack area. However, Johnson’s cousin James Cato Pattillo claimed that Johnson’s father quoted a poem popular for milestone events when he heard of her birth. The poem read, in part, “Lady-bird, Lady-bird, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children will burn.” At any rate, the name stuck and Lady Bird made her peace with it growing up.

Johnson’s mother died in the summer of 1918 from complications of a miscarriage, and her aunt, Effie Pattillo, moved from Alabama to care for her niece. She was educated in the one-room schoolhouse in Karnack and then attended school in Alabama until the seventh grade. After attending school in Jefferson, Texas, for two years, she graduated from the high school in Marshall at the age of fifteen.

Believing she was too young to leave home for college, Johnson’s father sent her to St. Mary’s Episcopal School for Girls in Dallas, where she was fortunate enough to room with a high school friend. After two years at St. Mary’s she decided to attend the University of Texas, Austin. She fell in love with Austin the moment her plane landed, particularly after seeing the beautiful fields of wildflowers.

Johnson graduated cum laude in May, 1933, with a bachelor of arts degree and stayed another year to earn a journalism degree, pursuing her lifelong ambition of being a drama critic for a major newspaper. After spending the summer in Karnack, she returned to Austin in August, 1934, where she met a young congressional aide, Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ). Upon meeting Lady Bird, LBJ asked her to have breakfast with him the next morning. After spending the day together, LBJ proposed marriage. Lady Bird was hesitant to answer, and the couple spent the rest of that fall staying in touch through phone calls and letters, in which LBJ repeated his proposal time and time again. He drove to Karnack in November and finally convinced her to marry him. The couple was wed in a small ceremony in San Antonio, Texas, on November 17, 1934. The Johnsons had two children, Lynda Bird, born on March 19, 1944, and Luci Baines, born on July 2, 1947.

Life’s Work

Johnson was quickly immersed in the political world when she returned to Washington, D.C., with her husband as he assumed his duties in Congress. LBJ had won a congressional seat in 1937. Before his return to Washington, he served for two years as state director of the National Youth Administration, an organization that, among other things, helped develop and landscape roadside parks. Johnson aided her husband in this role, and she soon determined to devote herself to enhancing the country’s natural beauty. Her dedication continued most significantly during LBJ’s presidency, as she supported and promoted the movement to beautify the capital and then the country.

Johnson went to Washington, D.C., with her husband and helped him with his congressional duties by taking constituents on tours of the capital, calling on other political wives, and keeping in touch with people in the district. LBJ joined the U.S. Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and he turned over the management of his congressional office to his wife. Aside from just giving tours, Johnson also answered mail and helped citizens with any problems they would bring to her attention. LBJ returned from active duty in May, 1942. Soon thereafter, Johnson purchased KTBC, an Austin radio station. She would go on to make it a television station, found the Texas Broadcasting System, and turn her $17,500 investment into a $9 million business by the time she was First Lady. This made her the first presidential wife to make a living in her own right.

LBJ became a senator in 1948 and worked his way up to Senate majority leader by 1955. When then-senator John F. Kennedy received the 1960 Democratic nomination for president, he asked LBJ to be his running mate, seeking southern support for the ticket. Johnson’s name paid off in the South, and the Johnsons gained another promotion. With her husband as vice president, Johnson found herself filling in for First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy at public appearances. She and her husband were with the Kennedys in Dallas on November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated. Johnson stood by her husband as he took the oath of office aboard the presidential plane, Air Force One, while it was still on the runway in Dallas. LBJ was the new president, and Johnson the new First Lady, of the United States.

Johnson would soon grow into her new role, carrying on Jacqueline Kennedy’s efforts to restore the White House to the condition it was when first occupied in 1800. Johnson’s first major effort was working in the 1964 presidential campaign to help her husband get elected in his own right. Lady Bird made a train trip aboard the Lady Bird Special through the South from October 6 to 9, campaigning for her husband and speaking out in support of the recently signed Civil Rights Act of 1964. She attracted larger and larger crowds as the trip moved on. Her husband went on to win the election in a landslide, and she herself went on to blaze a new trail for First Ladies: She became the first to hire her own press secretary and to have a staff in the East Wing of the White House.

As First Lady, Johnson lent her name to the Head Start Program for preschool children by doing public service announcements and allowing her picture to be used on program posters. Her most popular effort was supporting the Keep America Beautiful program, encouraging citizens to brighten the environment by planting trees and flowers and creating or renovating city parks. Johnson also led a committee to beautify Washington, D.C., as an example to other cites. She also oversaw the White House Conference on Natural Beauty in May, 1965, and encouraged her husband to introduce legislation to regulate the use of billboards along America’s scenic highways and roads. She worked closely on the bill with the president’s staff and kept track of and lobbied for its progress in Congress. The legislation was signed into law on October 22, 1965, and became the Highway Beautification Act. Johnson kept close watch as the Commerce Department enforced the law. During her time as First Lady, she also led the press on trips to various national parks to encourage citizens to visit the parks and appreciate the natural beauty of the country.

After her husband left office on January 20, 1969, Johnson moved back to Texas with him and helped him oversee the building of his presidential library and museum. She was appointed to the board of regents at the University of Texas in 1970. It was at a regents meeting on January 22, 1973, that she learned her husband had passed away. Thirty-four years later, on July 11, 2007, Johnson died at her home in Austin. Daughter Luci Johnson said that her mother “found worth in every human being.”

Significance

Johnson’s legacy as First Lady includes carrying on her mission to educate the country about the environment. She founded the National Wildflower Research Center in Austin in 1983 later renamed the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Medal of Freedom in 1988 for her public service and environmental efforts. Even into her nineties, she helped managed LBJ’s presidential library in Austin.

Johnson was a widely respected and admired First Lady. Her example has helped the movement to educate Americans about the environment and to preserve natural resources and the scenic beauty of the country. She was the oldest living First Lady at the time of her death in 2007, and she was protected by the U.S. Secret Service longer than any person, including presidents, in the history of the agency. A sign along her funeral procession had the following tribute: “As long as flowers bloom, Lady Bird will live.”

Bibliography

Carpenter, Liz. Ruffles and Flourishes. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993. An entertaining and easy-to-read memoir of Lady Bird’s White House press secretary, Liz Carpenter, describing what it was like working with Johnson. Provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the inner workings of the White House.

Gould, Lewis L. Lady Bird Johnson: Our Environmental First Lady. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. A biography of Lady Bird Johnson detailing her environmental activism. Examines her role in the legislation enacting the Highway Beautification Act.

Johnson, Lady Bird. A White House Diary. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. Excerpts from Johnson’s diary, kept while she was First Lady. Provides an interesting and revealing insight into her thoughts while in the White House.

Murphy, David. Texas Bluebonnet: Lady Bird Johnson. New York: Nova History, 2006. A readable biography of Johnson, covering her life from her birth to the early twenty-first century. Focuses on her tenure as First Lady.

Rothman, Hal. LBJ’s Texas White House. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001. An informative work on how the Johnsons acquired their Texas ranch and made it a center of political and cultural activity while LBJ held office.