Politics, Entertainment, News, Gossip, Sports, Opinion, Perspectives. Make a comment. Visit our Forum. We want to hear what you think?

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Lady Bird Johnson 1912-2007(continued)

Johnson remained an unabashed liberal despite her national prestige. It is said that during the Reagan adminstration when budget cuts threatened social-welfare programs she once remarked bluntly "rich folks like me" should pay more taxes to ensure the poorest citizens lived with basic needs met. She was most afraid a reduction of education funding would "put our future in peril."

For six years she was a regent at the University of Texas in the 1970s. Johnson loved literature, and art. She was an avid reader. When her sight became so poor she could no longer see to read her family would read to her from her favorite authors as well as new works of history and biographies; this activity was twofold in purpose. It provided her family time, as well. Even into her 80s she swam 32 laps a day in a heated pool on the LBJ ranch.

Lady Bird experienced the tragedy of loss of life with several miscarriages before the birth of her first daughter in 1944. We all know of the tragedy that unfolded in Dallas on November 22, 1963. She described her last meeting in the summer of 1993 with her predecessor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. It was in her words she felt "ineffable sadness," because Onassis' life had seemed to come "to an end", after coming to "this quiet harbor of doing things she wanted to do.…"

Lady Bird loved nature and beauty saying:

"Ugliness is so grim, a little beauty, something that is lovely, I think, can help create harmony, which lessens tensions."

Johnson was a leader in the cause of environmentalism. With her campaign to "plant a tree, a bush, a shrub, or urging us not to throw trash, "don't be a litterbug," she was "green" before it was chic to be so. On her 70th birthday she establisheded the National Wildflower Research Center. It is now called the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center located near Austin.

LadyBird, Claudia Taylor Johns, knew what our leaders today do not seem to know:

"The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest. It is the one thing all of us share. For the bounty of nature is also one of the deep needs of man."




Visit Our Forum: Tell Us What You Think!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home