The First Ladies: Claudia (Lady Bird) Johnson
When I think about Lady Bird Johnson, I think about all the beautiful flowers at the LBJ museum and how she promoted a highway beautification project by the planting of flowers. It's strange how a woman who injected so much beauty into the world was married to someone who had such a dark, mean side.
She was born Claudia Alta Taylor on December 22, 1912 in Karnack, Texas, but she was known as "Lady Bird" since childhood, when her nursemaid Alice Tittle commented that she was "as purdy as a lady bird." Her father was named after a president. He was Thomas Jefferson Taylor II, a general store owner and cotton planter. He owned twelve thousand acres of cotton. Her mother was Minnie Pattillo Taylor. She was the youngest of three children. She had two older brothers: Thomas Jefferson Taylor III and Antonio "Tony" Taylor. Small of stature, she had brown hair and brown eyes. Baptized at age five in the Methodist faith, she later became Episcopalian.
Lady Bird attended Marshall Public High School where she graduated at age fifteen, third in her class. She later attended the University of Texas at Austin, obtaining a bachelor's degree in history, graduating with honors and a bachelor of journalism degree, also graduating with honors. She expressed an interest in pursuing a career in writing or journalism, but ten weeks after graduating, she met Lyndon Baines Johnson on August 31, 1934. They began a whirlwind courtship that resulted in their marriage less than three months later on November 17, 1934 at Saint Mark's Episcopal Church in San Antonio, Texas. LBJ gave Lady Bird Taylor a $2.50 wedding ring bought at Sears. The couple honeymooned in Mexico and then made their home in Washington, D.C. during most of the year, with visits home to Texas.
The couple had two daughters: Lynda Bird Johnson (Robb), born March 19, 1944 and Luci Baines Johnson (Nugent Turpin), born July 2, 1947. Lynda Johnson was married in the White House in December of 1967 to Marine Charles S. Robb, who later served as Governor and U.S. Senator from Virginia. Luci Johnson was married in a the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to Patrick Nugent in August of 1966, with a wedding reception that followed, in the White House. They divorced in 1979.
Lyndon Johnson made his first run for Congress in 1937 following a campaign which was partially funded by ten thousand dollars Lady Bird Johnson had inherited from her mother. Her father donated twenty thousand dollars. As a congressional spouse during the Great Depression, she met Eleanor Roosevelt at a Congressional Club Luncheon that was held to raise funds to purchase a wheelchair for a disabled child. As Mrs. Roosevelt arrived at the event, Mrs. Johnson took silent color-film home movies of her. She came to know many of the political figures of the era, befriending House Speaker Sam Rayburn, from Texas, and Congressional spouses, including Pat Nixon and Betty Ford.
In 1943, she invested an inheritance of $17,000 from her final settlement of her mother's estate in the purchase of KTBC, a small Austin, Texas radio station. KTBC had limited broadcast hours and was in considerable debt. She hired new on-air talent, found commercial sponsors, kept all the financial accounts, and even cleaned up the old facility. She would serve as manager, and then as chairman of what later came to be known as KLBJ for some four decades. By the time the family sold the enterprise in the 1980's it was a media conglomerate that had provided them with substantial earnings.
After six terms in Congress, (1937-1949) LBJ was elected to the United States Senate (1949-1961), where he was eventually elected Majority Leader. When Senator Johnson suffered a heart attack, Lady Bird Johnson insisted that his recovery must take precedent over his public duties. She stayed in a room at the Bethesda Naval Hospital where he was recovering to be at his side. Despite his commanding presence and personality, she was one of the few people who could temper him.
In 1960, Majority Leader Johnson ran in the primaries for the Democratic presidential nomination. At the convention, held in Los Angeles, Lady Bird Johnson was openly disappointed that the nomination went to fellow U.S. Senator, John F. Kennedy. The next morning, Kennedy called the Johnson suite. Lady Bird Johnson answered the phone, then told her husband who was calling and that she felt certain Kennedy was going to ask LBJ to run as vice president with him. She implored him not to accept. After consultation with Mrs. Johnson and Sam Rayburn, LBJ accepted. Lady Bird Johnson took a substantive and publicly active role in the 1960 campaign. Robert F. Kennedy told Time magazine that she helped to carry Texas for the ticket.
Mrs. Johnson made a concerted effort to keep the South part of the Democratic voting bloc. She insisted that her receptions be racially integrated. On one occasion, she and her husband were spat upon by racists as they crossed the street to attend a campaign luncheon in Dallas, Texas. At one Montgomery, Alabama event, Mrs. Johnson recognized several cousins in the audience and called them to the podium, winning the crowd's sympathies.
When President Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963, seated next to his wife in a Dallas, Texas motorcade, Mrs. Johnson was in a car behind them with her husband. She was preparing to host the Kennedys as guests at the Johnson ranch in Stonewall, Texas. Instead she was thrust into the role of First Lady.
Lady Bird Johnson was involved in numerous aspects of her husband's run for president in 1964 for a full term of his own. She drafted a nine-page memo outlining what she saw as the reasons why he must run. In the midst of the race, LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Mrs. Johnson sat in the front row as he took pen to paper, the only woman present. The traditionally pro-segregationist Democratic South was wary of the direction the Johnsons were taking the party. In response, she emphasized how racial integration would benefit southerners of all races in a "new South." During the campaign she traveled on a train (the "Lady Bird Special") that led women supporters and press through eight southern states for four days, delivering stump speeches from the caboose. Before the trip, she telephoned political leaders of the states she was visiting. Many were pro-segregation but nevertheless felt it would be rude not to greet her at a depot in their districts. While there were threats made against the First Lady's life and some picket signs protested the message of her speeches, Mrs. Johnson remained politely steadfast in her message. LBJ won in a landslide.
Lady Bird Johnson broke a new precedent during the January 20, 1965 Inaugural ceremony when she held the bible on which her husband placed his hand while repeating the presidential oath of office. Every First Lady since then has followed the custom.
What marked Lady Bird Johnson as unique among her predecessors was her own interest and study of the First Ladies. She had become familiar with many of their biographies through her numerous visits since the 1930's to the Smithsonian Institution exhibit of their gowns. She also would visit several presidential homes during her tenure and show as much interest in the objects associated with First Ladies as she did with those of Presidents. Mrs. Johnson also had the assistance of her press secretary and staff director Liz Carpenter, a professional journalist. The First Lady and her press secretary put considerable effort into Lady Bird's public speeches. This was a first in terms of public communications of a First Lady.
A strong and vocal advocate of women seeking higher education, she was the recipient of honorary degrees from Middlebury College, the University of Texas, Austin (Doctor of Letters), Texas Women's University (Doctor of Laws), Williams College (Doctor of Humane Letters) and Southwestern University (Doctor of Humanities). She hosted a series of sixteen "Women Do-er" luncheons from 1965 to 1969. Over an afternoon meal, she would ask a female leader on a contemporary social issue to address a group of other women who worked in the same or inter-related fields, and then prompt a cross-audience dialogue. She also insisted that ordinary women who were not professionals in that given field be invited, to have their perspective included. The speakers ranged from Dr. Mary Bunting, the first woman on the Atomic Energy Commission to Judge Marjorie Lawson of the D.C. Juvenile Court.
Inspired by her husband's "war on poverty", she became National Chair of Project Head Start, a program which has proved extremely successful and has remained in place for over forty years, now administered by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The one project most closely associated with Lady Bird Johnson's White House years is "Beautification," an umbrella title for a wide variety of efforts, legislation and public campaigns that were a combination of rural and urban environmentalism, national parks conservation, anti-pollution measures, water and air reclamation, landscaping and urban renewal. A speech at the University of Michigan by President Johnson in May of 1964, prompted her to focus on this issue. She formally launched "Beautification" on 4 February, 1965, two weeks and one day after the Inauguration. Her initial effort was the creation of a Committee for a More Beautiful Capital, bringing together wealthy philanthropists, local civic leaders and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall whose department oversaw the National Park Service. Some two million daffodil and tulip bulbs, 83,000 flowering plants, 50,000 shrubs, 137,000 annuals and 25,000 trees were planted around or near the public buildings, "masses of flowers were the masses pass." She took a further interest in the development of the national mall where the various Smithsonian museums were located, coaxing modern art collector Joseph Hirshhorn to donate his collection to the institution which would later create a museum bearing his name located there. She encouraged the Job Corps to expand the professional skills it taught to include landscaping; She further gave impetus to the continuance of a Pennsylvania Avenue redevelopment, an idea begun by President Kennedy. Lady Bird Johnson created the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden and the Children's Garden on the White House South Lawn.
The First Lady next took her committee into the low-income areas of the city in preparation for the work they would conduct there: the cleaning, refurbishment and maintenance of city schools, the installation of recreation areas, massive housing project trash cleanups, and the implementation of a summer "Projects Pride" program employing college and high school students in neighborhood tree plantings and conservation, pest control, sanitation and renovation of decaying public buildings. Much of the work was funded by the subsequently-created Society for a More Beautiful Capital, which raised private monies. About one hundred projects resulted.
Stressing that beautification was good for business, she met with some success in the private sector. The National Coal Association supported her opposition to strip-mining. Shell Oil found financial benefit in her urging of improved gas stations. She convinced some utility companies to run their overhead electric lines underground. The United Auto Workers supported her in pressing for more state and local efforts. The Keep America Beautiful, Inc. sent out thousands of information packets to state and local officials urging community efforts against "Litter Bugs". A postage stamp urging Americans to "Plant for a More Beautiful America" was issued. Public reaction was overwhelmingly enthusiastic although one veterans group protested the planting of yellow flowers at a monument, considering it the color of cowardice, and the pork industry protested "Keep America Beautiful, Inc.'s" use of the word "pigs" to describe those who littered.
She was the push behind the Highway Beautification Act. It essentially called for severe limitations of roadside billboard advertising. Under the initially proposed act, twenty percent of federal highway grants would be refused to states which did not clear junkyards and remove or reduce billboards from interstate and major highways. It was soon realized that junkyard regulations already existed, but were not being enforced. President Johnson made it a personal mission to get the bill passed in honor of his wife and was willing to expend his political capital to do so. Criticism was aimed directly at Mrs. Johnson in some cases. Congressman Bob Dole sarcastically quipped that "Lady Bird" be substituted every time the title "secretary of commerce" appeared in the bill. One cartoon lampooned the First Lady as a "typical woman driver" who hit and knocked down a series of billboards. A Montana billboard proposed: "Impeach Lady Bird." The bill passed on 7 October, 1965. When LBJ signed the legislation, he handed the pen to his wife. Enforcement funds were adamantly denied by Congress, however, and over time the lack of authority to hold states responsible corroded. Undaunted, the First Lady appealed to the private sector to at least enhance the highways, with landscaping using wildflowers that were indigenous to the region.
Lady Bird Johnson had the pleasure of living with her two daughters in the White House, seeing them both married during their time there. However both of her sons-in-law were sent to Vietnam to fight in the escalating war. The first signs of anti-war sentiment that the First Lady encountered came during her hosting of a unique White House Festival of the Arts. Poet Robert Lowell publicly withdrew his initial acceptance to read his poetry because of his opposition to the war. Other writers then signed an open letter of war protest that was published in national newspapers. During an afternoon reading, author John Hersey went through with his threat to read his anti-war poem "Hiroshima," frequently glaring at the First Lady. Although she knew Hersey had been intending to read the poem and made it clear that she did not want him to do so, she did not withdraw the invitation. In 1967, her events were increasingly overshadowed by anti-war protestors carrying picket signs and chanting slogans.
When she spoke at new Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College, she was met by an army of students in white armbands, mourning those killed in Vietnam. As she was introduced, many students walked out. As she was leaving the event, she heard students repeating, "Shame, shame." At Yale, she was greeted with harshly-worded picket signs and a university president who sympathized with the protesting students. The most dramatic confrontation posed to the First Lady over the Vietnam War occurred in the White House itself, at a January 18, 1968 "Women Do-Er" luncheons. One of her guests, actress-singer and social activist Eartha Kitt stood up and sharply confronted the First Lady about the effects of the Vietnam War on juvenile delinquency. Lady Bird Johnson calmly responded that as horrible as the war was, it did not serve as justification for violence or the prevention of constructive efforts in other aspects of national life. Kitt's remarks shocked the public: no such previous type of incident had occurred in the White House, let alone intended for a First Lady who had no direct responsibility for the policy being questioned.
Publicly, Lady Bird Johnson strongly supported her husband but she privately questioned the actual results of the frequent bombings urged by LBJ's military advisors. In 1987, she stated that the Vietnam War was "long" and "undeclared," and that if ever a similar situation arose, "it had sure better be preceded by an Alamo or a Pearl Harbor so that there is a clear-cut declaration and coalescing of the American people." However personally painful the anti-war movement could be to her family, Lady Bird Johnson wrote in a 1967 entry in her diary that she did "not want to live only in the White House, insulated against life. I want to know what is going on…"
The war had also taken a visible toll on LBJ's health. Conscious not only of how he limited his hours of rest but his previous near-fatal heart attack, Lady Bird Johnson began to sense that his seeking re-election would be a mistake. She felt this way not only in terms of his personal health, but also his decreased ability to lead a united nation. She firmly made her views known in another lengthy memo. When he decided not to seek the Democratic nomination for another term, it was the First Lady who insisted that he add the phrase "I will not accept" to prevent any possibility of another term.
In 1968 former President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a series of heart attacks and began what would be a permanent hospitalization until his death a year later. When Lady Bird Johnson visited him in the Washington area Walter Reed Hospital, his wife Mamie Eisenhower spoke privately with her. In the atmosphere of assassination, the former First Lady expressed her fear about having to eventually live alone as a widow. Mrs. Johnson spoke about the concerns to LBJ and he signed legislation providing for lifetime Secret Service protection for presidential widows.
Upon their retirement, the Johnsons returned to Texas, living in their ranch house in Stonewall, not far from Austin. There Lady Bird led the Town Lake Beautification Project, a local effort to create long trails for residents who wanted to walk, hike and bicycle along the Colorado River there, and to plant flowering trees along the path. She encouraged similar activity around the state, establishing the Texas Highway Beautification Awards. She not only hosted the annual award ceremony but handed out checks from her personal account to the winners. She met with architects as she took the lead in the planning of what would become the Johnson Presidential Library and Museum. She decided to have the library affiliated with the university. It was the first presidential library to do so. Mrs. Johnson went on to serve a six-year term as a regent of the University of Texas from 1971 to 1977, and later served on the university's centennial commission. Her support for higher education continued, and she was the recipient of honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from the University of Alabama, Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Washington College in Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, the State University of New York, Southern Methodist University, St. Edwards University and Boston University. George Washington University awarded her an honorary doctorate of Public Service.
She published her memoirs, A White House Diary (1971), drawn from the hundreds of hours of her daily taped recollections as First Lady. In December 1972, the Johnsons deeded their ranch house and property to the National Park Service. As other presidential couples had also arranged for, they maintained the right to live there for life. Ironically, Lyndon Johnson died of a sudden heart attack just a month later.
It was two Republican Presidents who awarded the former First Lady with some of the highest awards given to civilians: the Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford in 1977, and the Congressional Gold Medal from Ronald Reagan in 1988. Lady Bird Johnson consistently maintained warm relationships with presidential families of both parties. She continued her friendship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, visiting her in the summer of 1993 when both were vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, and then attending her funeral nine months later. She corresponded with Pat Nixon and spent some time with her while both attended the dedication of the Reagan Library in 1991, along with the Carters, Reagans, Fords and Bushes. Following the White House ceremony hosted by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter where the Panama Canal was officially turned over to the nation of Panama, Mrs. Johnson accepted their invitation to spend a night in her former home. As a fellow Texan, she had established relationships with both Barbara Bush and Laura Bush and despite their differing political allegiances, there were frequent expressions of mutual admiration. She was an early and vigorous supporter of Bill Clinton for President, and often commiserated with Hillary Clinton as she endured criticism for her activism. She shocked many political observers by joining Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter in unison on stage at the 1977 Houston Conference on Women, a gathering vigorously opposed by conservative women. She also joined Betty Ford on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1983 at a rally pushing for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Prompted by her concern that native plants and indigenous wildflowers were rapidly disappearing from the American landscape, on her 70th birthday in 1982, Lady Bird Johnson together with Helen Hayes created the nonprofit National Wildflower Research Center. She made a personal donation of sixty acres of land near Austin, and $125,000; matching gifts flooded in, establishing a $700,000 endowment and the center opened the following year. She served as chairman of the board of directors. In 1988, Lady Bird Johnson co-authored with Carlton Lees the book, Wildflowers across America, donating all proceeds to the center. In 1992, to mark her 80th birthday, the LBJ Foundation Board of Directors created the Lady Bird Johnson Conservation Award. In 1995 the center expanded into a new forty-two-acre facility. In 1998, the center's board unanimously decided to rename it the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
Claudia (Lady Bird) Johnson died on July 11, 2007, in her Austin home. At 94, she lived longer than any other First Lady except Bess Truman. She is buried on the grounds of the LBJ Ranch, in Stonewall, Texas.
She was born Claudia Alta Taylor on December 22, 1912 in Karnack, Texas, but she was known as "Lady Bird" since childhood, when her nursemaid Alice Tittle commented that she was "as purdy as a lady bird." Her father was named after a president. He was Thomas Jefferson Taylor II, a general store owner and cotton planter. He owned twelve thousand acres of cotton. Her mother was Minnie Pattillo Taylor. She was the youngest of three children. She had two older brothers: Thomas Jefferson Taylor III and Antonio "Tony" Taylor. Small of stature, she had brown hair and brown eyes. Baptized at age five in the Methodist faith, she later became Episcopalian.
Lady Bird attended Marshall Public High School where she graduated at age fifteen, third in her class. She later attended the University of Texas at Austin, obtaining a bachelor's degree in history, graduating with honors and a bachelor of journalism degree, also graduating with honors. She expressed an interest in pursuing a career in writing or journalism, but ten weeks after graduating, she met Lyndon Baines Johnson on August 31, 1934. They began a whirlwind courtship that resulted in their marriage less than three months later on November 17, 1934 at Saint Mark's Episcopal Church in San Antonio, Texas. LBJ gave Lady Bird Taylor a $2.50 wedding ring bought at Sears. The couple honeymooned in Mexico and then made their home in Washington, D.C. during most of the year, with visits home to Texas.
The couple had two daughters: Lynda Bird Johnson (Robb), born March 19, 1944 and Luci Baines Johnson (Nugent Turpin), born July 2, 1947. Lynda Johnson was married in the White House in December of 1967 to Marine Charles S. Robb, who later served as Governor and U.S. Senator from Virginia. Luci Johnson was married in a the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to Patrick Nugent in August of 1966, with a wedding reception that followed, in the White House. They divorced in 1979.
Lyndon Johnson made his first run for Congress in 1937 following a campaign which was partially funded by ten thousand dollars Lady Bird Johnson had inherited from her mother. Her father donated twenty thousand dollars. As a congressional spouse during the Great Depression, she met Eleanor Roosevelt at a Congressional Club Luncheon that was held to raise funds to purchase a wheelchair for a disabled child. As Mrs. Roosevelt arrived at the event, Mrs. Johnson took silent color-film home movies of her. She came to know many of the political figures of the era, befriending House Speaker Sam Rayburn, from Texas, and Congressional spouses, including Pat Nixon and Betty Ford.
In 1943, she invested an inheritance of $17,000 from her final settlement of her mother's estate in the purchase of KTBC, a small Austin, Texas radio station. KTBC had limited broadcast hours and was in considerable debt. She hired new on-air talent, found commercial sponsors, kept all the financial accounts, and even cleaned up the old facility. She would serve as manager, and then as chairman of what later came to be known as KLBJ for some four decades. By the time the family sold the enterprise in the 1980's it was a media conglomerate that had provided them with substantial earnings.
After six terms in Congress, (1937-1949) LBJ was elected to the United States Senate (1949-1961), where he was eventually elected Majority Leader. When Senator Johnson suffered a heart attack, Lady Bird Johnson insisted that his recovery must take precedent over his public duties. She stayed in a room at the Bethesda Naval Hospital where he was recovering to be at his side. Despite his commanding presence and personality, she was one of the few people who could temper him.
In 1960, Majority Leader Johnson ran in the primaries for the Democratic presidential nomination. At the convention, held in Los Angeles, Lady Bird Johnson was openly disappointed that the nomination went to fellow U.S. Senator, John F. Kennedy. The next morning, Kennedy called the Johnson suite. Lady Bird Johnson answered the phone, then told her husband who was calling and that she felt certain Kennedy was going to ask LBJ to run as vice president with him. She implored him not to accept. After consultation with Mrs. Johnson and Sam Rayburn, LBJ accepted. Lady Bird Johnson took a substantive and publicly active role in the 1960 campaign. Robert F. Kennedy told Time magazine that she helped to carry Texas for the ticket.
Mrs. Johnson made a concerted effort to keep the South part of the Democratic voting bloc. She insisted that her receptions be racially integrated. On one occasion, she and her husband were spat upon by racists as they crossed the street to attend a campaign luncheon in Dallas, Texas. At one Montgomery, Alabama event, Mrs. Johnson recognized several cousins in the audience and called them to the podium, winning the crowd's sympathies.
When President Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963, seated next to his wife in a Dallas, Texas motorcade, Mrs. Johnson was in a car behind them with her husband. She was preparing to host the Kennedys as guests at the Johnson ranch in Stonewall, Texas. Instead she was thrust into the role of First Lady.
Lady Bird Johnson was involved in numerous aspects of her husband's run for president in 1964 for a full term of his own. She drafted a nine-page memo outlining what she saw as the reasons why he must run. In the midst of the race, LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Mrs. Johnson sat in the front row as he took pen to paper, the only woman present. The traditionally pro-segregationist Democratic South was wary of the direction the Johnsons were taking the party. In response, she emphasized how racial integration would benefit southerners of all races in a "new South." During the campaign she traveled on a train (the "Lady Bird Special") that led women supporters and press through eight southern states for four days, delivering stump speeches from the caboose. Before the trip, she telephoned political leaders of the states she was visiting. Many were pro-segregation but nevertheless felt it would be rude not to greet her at a depot in their districts. While there were threats made against the First Lady's life and some picket signs protested the message of her speeches, Mrs. Johnson remained politely steadfast in her message. LBJ won in a landslide.
Lady Bird Johnson broke a new precedent during the January 20, 1965 Inaugural ceremony when she held the bible on which her husband placed his hand while repeating the presidential oath of office. Every First Lady since then has followed the custom.
What marked Lady Bird Johnson as unique among her predecessors was her own interest and study of the First Ladies. She had become familiar with many of their biographies through her numerous visits since the 1930's to the Smithsonian Institution exhibit of their gowns. She also would visit several presidential homes during her tenure and show as much interest in the objects associated with First Ladies as she did with those of Presidents. Mrs. Johnson also had the assistance of her press secretary and staff director Liz Carpenter, a professional journalist. The First Lady and her press secretary put considerable effort into Lady Bird's public speeches. This was a first in terms of public communications of a First Lady.
A strong and vocal advocate of women seeking higher education, she was the recipient of honorary degrees from Middlebury College, the University of Texas, Austin (Doctor of Letters), Texas Women's University (Doctor of Laws), Williams College (Doctor of Humane Letters) and Southwestern University (Doctor of Humanities). She hosted a series of sixteen "Women Do-er" luncheons from 1965 to 1969. Over an afternoon meal, she would ask a female leader on a contemporary social issue to address a group of other women who worked in the same or inter-related fields, and then prompt a cross-audience dialogue. She also insisted that ordinary women who were not professionals in that given field be invited, to have their perspective included. The speakers ranged from Dr. Mary Bunting, the first woman on the Atomic Energy Commission to Judge Marjorie Lawson of the D.C. Juvenile Court.
Inspired by her husband's "war on poverty", she became National Chair of Project Head Start, a program which has proved extremely successful and has remained in place for over forty years, now administered by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The one project most closely associated with Lady Bird Johnson's White House years is "Beautification," an umbrella title for a wide variety of efforts, legislation and public campaigns that were a combination of rural and urban environmentalism, national parks conservation, anti-pollution measures, water and air reclamation, landscaping and urban renewal. A speech at the University of Michigan by President Johnson in May of 1964, prompted her to focus on this issue. She formally launched "Beautification" on 4 February, 1965, two weeks and one day after the Inauguration. Her initial effort was the creation of a Committee for a More Beautiful Capital, bringing together wealthy philanthropists, local civic leaders and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall whose department oversaw the National Park Service. Some two million daffodil and tulip bulbs, 83,000 flowering plants, 50,000 shrubs, 137,000 annuals and 25,000 trees were planted around or near the public buildings, "masses of flowers were the masses pass." She took a further interest in the development of the national mall where the various Smithsonian museums were located, coaxing modern art collector Joseph Hirshhorn to donate his collection to the institution which would later create a museum bearing his name located there. She encouraged the Job Corps to expand the professional skills it taught to include landscaping; She further gave impetus to the continuance of a Pennsylvania Avenue redevelopment, an idea begun by President Kennedy. Lady Bird Johnson created the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden and the Children's Garden on the White House South Lawn.
The First Lady next took her committee into the low-income areas of the city in preparation for the work they would conduct there: the cleaning, refurbishment and maintenance of city schools, the installation of recreation areas, massive housing project trash cleanups, and the implementation of a summer "Projects Pride" program employing college and high school students in neighborhood tree plantings and conservation, pest control, sanitation and renovation of decaying public buildings. Much of the work was funded by the subsequently-created Society for a More Beautiful Capital, which raised private monies. About one hundred projects resulted.
Stressing that beautification was good for business, she met with some success in the private sector. The National Coal Association supported her opposition to strip-mining. Shell Oil found financial benefit in her urging of improved gas stations. She convinced some utility companies to run their overhead electric lines underground. The United Auto Workers supported her in pressing for more state and local efforts. The Keep America Beautiful, Inc. sent out thousands of information packets to state and local officials urging community efforts against "Litter Bugs". A postage stamp urging Americans to "Plant for a More Beautiful America" was issued. Public reaction was overwhelmingly enthusiastic although one veterans group protested the planting of yellow flowers at a monument, considering it the color of cowardice, and the pork industry protested "Keep America Beautiful, Inc.'s" use of the word "pigs" to describe those who littered.
She was the push behind the Highway Beautification Act. It essentially called for severe limitations of roadside billboard advertising. Under the initially proposed act, twenty percent of federal highway grants would be refused to states which did not clear junkyards and remove or reduce billboards from interstate and major highways. It was soon realized that junkyard regulations already existed, but were not being enforced. President Johnson made it a personal mission to get the bill passed in honor of his wife and was willing to expend his political capital to do so. Criticism was aimed directly at Mrs. Johnson in some cases. Congressman Bob Dole sarcastically quipped that "Lady Bird" be substituted every time the title "secretary of commerce" appeared in the bill. One cartoon lampooned the First Lady as a "typical woman driver" who hit and knocked down a series of billboards. A Montana billboard proposed: "Impeach Lady Bird." The bill passed on 7 October, 1965. When LBJ signed the legislation, he handed the pen to his wife. Enforcement funds were adamantly denied by Congress, however, and over time the lack of authority to hold states responsible corroded. Undaunted, the First Lady appealed to the private sector to at least enhance the highways, with landscaping using wildflowers that were indigenous to the region.
Lady Bird Johnson had the pleasure of living with her two daughters in the White House, seeing them both married during their time there. However both of her sons-in-law were sent to Vietnam to fight in the escalating war. The first signs of anti-war sentiment that the First Lady encountered came during her hosting of a unique White House Festival of the Arts. Poet Robert Lowell publicly withdrew his initial acceptance to read his poetry because of his opposition to the war. Other writers then signed an open letter of war protest that was published in national newspapers. During an afternoon reading, author John Hersey went through with his threat to read his anti-war poem "Hiroshima," frequently glaring at the First Lady. Although she knew Hersey had been intending to read the poem and made it clear that she did not want him to do so, she did not withdraw the invitation. In 1967, her events were increasingly overshadowed by anti-war protestors carrying picket signs and chanting slogans.
When she spoke at new Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College, she was met by an army of students in white armbands, mourning those killed in Vietnam. As she was introduced, many students walked out. As she was leaving the event, she heard students repeating, "Shame, shame." At Yale, she was greeted with harshly-worded picket signs and a university president who sympathized with the protesting students. The most dramatic confrontation posed to the First Lady over the Vietnam War occurred in the White House itself, at a January 18, 1968 "Women Do-Er" luncheons. One of her guests, actress-singer and social activist Eartha Kitt stood up and sharply confronted the First Lady about the effects of the Vietnam War on juvenile delinquency. Lady Bird Johnson calmly responded that as horrible as the war was, it did not serve as justification for violence or the prevention of constructive efforts in other aspects of national life. Kitt's remarks shocked the public: no such previous type of incident had occurred in the White House, let alone intended for a First Lady who had no direct responsibility for the policy being questioned.
Publicly, Lady Bird Johnson strongly supported her husband but she privately questioned the actual results of the frequent bombings urged by LBJ's military advisors. In 1987, she stated that the Vietnam War was "long" and "undeclared," and that if ever a similar situation arose, "it had sure better be preceded by an Alamo or a Pearl Harbor so that there is a clear-cut declaration and coalescing of the American people." However personally painful the anti-war movement could be to her family, Lady Bird Johnson wrote in a 1967 entry in her diary that she did "not want to live only in the White House, insulated against life. I want to know what is going on…"
The war had also taken a visible toll on LBJ's health. Conscious not only of how he limited his hours of rest but his previous near-fatal heart attack, Lady Bird Johnson began to sense that his seeking re-election would be a mistake. She felt this way not only in terms of his personal health, but also his decreased ability to lead a united nation. She firmly made her views known in another lengthy memo. When he decided not to seek the Democratic nomination for another term, it was the First Lady who insisted that he add the phrase "I will not accept" to prevent any possibility of another term.
In 1968 former President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a series of heart attacks and began what would be a permanent hospitalization until his death a year later. When Lady Bird Johnson visited him in the Washington area Walter Reed Hospital, his wife Mamie Eisenhower spoke privately with her. In the atmosphere of assassination, the former First Lady expressed her fear about having to eventually live alone as a widow. Mrs. Johnson spoke about the concerns to LBJ and he signed legislation providing for lifetime Secret Service protection for presidential widows.
Upon their retirement, the Johnsons returned to Texas, living in their ranch house in Stonewall, not far from Austin. There Lady Bird led the Town Lake Beautification Project, a local effort to create long trails for residents who wanted to walk, hike and bicycle along the Colorado River there, and to plant flowering trees along the path. She encouraged similar activity around the state, establishing the Texas Highway Beautification Awards. She not only hosted the annual award ceremony but handed out checks from her personal account to the winners. She met with architects as she took the lead in the planning of what would become the Johnson Presidential Library and Museum. She decided to have the library affiliated with the university. It was the first presidential library to do so. Mrs. Johnson went on to serve a six-year term as a regent of the University of Texas from 1971 to 1977, and later served on the university's centennial commission. Her support for higher education continued, and she was the recipient of honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from the University of Alabama, Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Washington College in Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, the State University of New York, Southern Methodist University, St. Edwards University and Boston University. George Washington University awarded her an honorary doctorate of Public Service.
She published her memoirs, A White House Diary (1971), drawn from the hundreds of hours of her daily taped recollections as First Lady. In December 1972, the Johnsons deeded their ranch house and property to the National Park Service. As other presidential couples had also arranged for, they maintained the right to live there for life. Ironically, Lyndon Johnson died of a sudden heart attack just a month later.
It was two Republican Presidents who awarded the former First Lady with some of the highest awards given to civilians: the Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford in 1977, and the Congressional Gold Medal from Ronald Reagan in 1988. Lady Bird Johnson consistently maintained warm relationships with presidential families of both parties. She continued her friendship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, visiting her in the summer of 1993 when both were vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, and then attending her funeral nine months later. She corresponded with Pat Nixon and spent some time with her while both attended the dedication of the Reagan Library in 1991, along with the Carters, Reagans, Fords and Bushes. Following the White House ceremony hosted by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter where the Panama Canal was officially turned over to the nation of Panama, Mrs. Johnson accepted their invitation to spend a night in her former home. As a fellow Texan, she had established relationships with both Barbara Bush and Laura Bush and despite their differing political allegiances, there were frequent expressions of mutual admiration. She was an early and vigorous supporter of Bill Clinton for President, and often commiserated with Hillary Clinton as she endured criticism for her activism. She shocked many political observers by joining Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter in unison on stage at the 1977 Houston Conference on Women, a gathering vigorously opposed by conservative women. She also joined Betty Ford on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1983 at a rally pushing for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Prompted by her concern that native plants and indigenous wildflowers were rapidly disappearing from the American landscape, on her 70th birthday in 1982, Lady Bird Johnson together with Helen Hayes created the nonprofit National Wildflower Research Center. She made a personal donation of sixty acres of land near Austin, and $125,000; matching gifts flooded in, establishing a $700,000 endowment and the center opened the following year. She served as chairman of the board of directors. In 1988, Lady Bird Johnson co-authored with Carlton Lees the book, Wildflowers across America, donating all proceeds to the center. In 1992, to mark her 80th birthday, the LBJ Foundation Board of Directors created the Lady Bird Johnson Conservation Award. In 1995 the center expanded into a new forty-two-acre facility. In 1998, the center's board unanimously decided to rename it the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
Claudia (Lady Bird) Johnson died on July 11, 2007, in her Austin home. At 94, she lived longer than any other First Lady except Bess Truman. She is buried on the grounds of the LBJ Ranch, in Stonewall, Texas.