The First Green First Lady

By Richard Lacayo

She came into the world in 1912 as Claudia Alta Taylor. But by the time she was 2, her nursemaid had declared that she was "pretty as a lady bird." And with that, her name was decided. Her fate, though, wasn't decided until 20 years later. In August 1934, just 10 weeks after she had graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with degrees in history and journalism, she met an ambitious former teacher named Lyndon Johnson. Three months after that, they were married, and she went from studying history to making it.

Lady Bird Johnson was 94 when she died July 11 at the Johnson ranch near Austin, surrounded by family and friends. It was a peaceful end to a life that had had its share of turmoil. Like her husband, she arrived at the White House the hard way, catapulted there by the murder of John F. Kennedy. Just as daunting, her predecessor as First Lady was Jacqueline Kennedy--to put it mildly, a hard act to follow. She couldn't hope to play Jackie, and wisely she didn't try. Her own style was modest, warm and reassuring, which was what a traumatized country needed.

But she also had an agenda, which she pursued under the umbrella term beautification. At a time when environmentalism was a word few had heard, she did more to make Americans aware of the beauty and frailty of their natural surroundings than anyone since Teddy Roosevelt. Before there was an Earth Day, there was Lady Bird, pursuing her campaign to preserve national parks, fight pollution, plant wildflowers and banish billboards from around federal highways. In 1965 Congress passed the $325 million Highway Beautification Bill; everybody called it the Lady Bird Bill.

She adored her husband, who didn't always make it easy for her. L.B.J. had a coarse and roguish side, and throughout their marriage she saw her share of it. But he was devoted to her, and why not? On the campaign trail, she helped reassure suspicious fellow Southerners about her husband's pro-- civil rights stances. She was by his side as the furor over Vietnam overtook his presidency. And for good measure, it was Lady Bird who laid the roots for the Johnson-family wealth. In 1943 she invested $17,000 from her mother's estate in the purchase of KTBC, a small Austin radio station. Over the years it grew into a media conglomerate in which she was actively involved for more than four decades. But it's beautification she will be remembered for the most. And in the end, beauty may not be a bad way to describe what she brought to the role of First Lady.