Lady Bird Johnson is best remembered for her crusade for wildflowers, and for her initiative to seed highway medians all over the country with them. Why wildflowers? "Just joy," she once said, "and joy is a component of life, or should be."
Less well known is that Lady Bird kept an audio diary of the Johnsons' years in the White House, starting with the day that LBJ rose to the Presidency. Her diary says, "Mrs. Kennedy's dress was stained with blood. One leg was almost entirely covered with it. And her right glove was caked – that immaculate woman – it was caked with blood, her husband's blood."
After listening to all 123 hours of the recorded diary, Julia Sweig wrote "Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight," a book that is available as an audiobook for all of us who want to hear Lady Bird's native Texas twang. She was born in Karnack. To get there, go eastward from Dallas to Shreveport, Louisiana, and stop about 80% of the way.
The musical name "Lady Bird," coined by a nanny, stood in for the real name "Claudia."
In 1964 President Johnson wasn't sure whether to run the following November. He asked Lady Bird to write out the pros and cons. She responded with a seven page, hand-written memo. "On balance, you should run and you'll win ... And then in February or March of 1968, you can announce that you will not run again." That's what happened.
And here we all thought that LBJ was just worn out by the war and the protestors. We stand corrected.
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