LADY BIRD AND FAMILY IN THE LBJ WHITE HOUSE (Cheri)

We also visited the LBJ Presidential Library last week.

Mark will be covering the rest of the Library; I have Lady Bird and family.

If you like pictures better than narrative, hold on . . . some good ones at the end of this post.

Why "Lady Bird"?  The first explanation here is sweet, but I have to think "Doodlebug" and "Stuff" were responsible:

The beautiful picture at the top was a candid taken during an early Johnson campaign and I'm guessing the photographer's name is lost to time.

She was born in Karnack, Texas, which is not incorporated even now. 

When I saw that these towns are all near our friends Ross and Judy, I texted them, and they told me that they had been able to talk with the person who now owns this old building.

Seventh-Day Adventist and other vegetarian friends will be interested in this:

This excerpt of a letter that was in the exhibit has absolutely no historical value, but it made me laugh out loud, and appreciate Gene Boehringer, the college friend who sent the letter while Lady Bird was on a break from college:

Lady Bird was very popular in college; one exhibit showed her calendar, marked all over with dates with various boys.  I liked this very modern-seeming approach to vetting dates . . . almost like social media!

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Nothwithstanding her popularity, when Gene Boehringer introduced Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird, the other guys didn't stand a chance.

Evidently the attraction endured:

As I was preparing this post, I ran across an interview with Jade Emerson who hosted a podcast series about Lady Bird Johnson.  Emerson well described the difference between the "flowers" that Lady Bird is remembered for and the full range of her influence:

[T]his was in the 1960s when the environmental movement was just beginning to pick up.
And she was a part of this really big change that now we see. But yeah, beautification
– it was kind of painted as this very frilly thing, not a lot of substance there.  . . .
[T]here is the wildflower part of it, which is a part that I love, but there’s also
the part of it that is serious environmental legislation that’s
creating habitable places for people to live.

This Lady Bird quote goes there, too, with an unexpected punch:

I wish you could see this picture below at the size it hung in the museum:  maybe six feet high.

After you read this caption, you'll want to slide back up to see the picture again.

I was unaware just how young the Johnson daughters were when their father became President.  Luci was just 16 when Jack Kennedy was assassinated, and was barely 19 when she married Pat Nugent in a White House ceremony.

Clearly Johnson found solace in his family:

I was also unaware that both of Johnson's sons-in-law served in Vietnam, and that one of them may have been the target of a kidnapping attempt while there:

From the first moment of the video that loops at the front of the LBJ Library, it is apparent that Johnson was a man of great energy, basically unable to tear himself away from his great love of the political.  This picture of him at his ranch, with a grandson, makes that clear:

And this photo is clearly a favorite, exhibited at great size in the museum and its store, and available as postcards:

Is it possible to see this without howling a little "awooooo" yourself?!

7/6/23 Addendum:  I made some bread this morning - we have a great, affordable bread machine - and wanted some company.  With Mark out golfing, the house was dead quiet.

I organized my podcast episodes so that the most recent was on top and found that it was a "bonus" episode of Lady Bird, about the early love letters between LBJ and Lady Bird.

Fun!  The host read bits of the letters to their granddaughter Catherine Robb and they discussed them.  I might have enjoyed it a bit more if they weren't both fairly young women and one didn't say "you know" constantly, but experiencing the Johnsons' two strong personalities, and the taking back to a time when communication was so delayed, was truly enjoyable.

I won't describe just how similar the beginning of their romance was to Mark's and mine - an inside joke from when we were teenagers - but I had to laugh at how impulsive and enthusiastic LBJ was, and how measured, considered Lady Bird was.

To listen to the episode, head over here.