Lady Bird Johnson

1912-2007

LYNDON B. Johnson once said of his wife that, given the choice, people would probably rather vote for her than for him. LBJ, of course, was not one to offer voters such choices, but he was probably right about Lady Bird Johnson's popular appeal and abilities. She would have made a good leader at the national level, perhaps a great one. She was an extraordinary first lady, public-spirited, principled and steadfast when it came to those causes advanced by her husband that she thought most important -- first and foremost the civil rights legislation that stands as one of the greatest achievements of any American president.

Mrs. Johnson had been away from Washington for nearly 40 years by the time she died yesterday at the age of 94. There are by now many who know her only vaguely as a figure from history, the smiling wife in the president's shadow, with that funny name (a childhood endearment bestowed on Claudia Alta Taylor by a nursemaid). Look around a bit, starting here in our capital city, and you'll see much more. Her most visible legacy is the millions of flowers she caused to be planted all over the city, in tourist spots and bleak neighborhoods, by roads and public buildings, in parks and on other patches of land where nothing had bloomed before and where today it would be unthinkable not to have a bed of flowers. This was her "beautification" program, a cause that she continued to pursue in places all over the country long after she left the White House. The effort went beyond planting flowers in the cities to improving the national parks and alleviating some of the uglier manifestations of commerce and industry: strip mining, overhead power lines, litter. One of her greatest successes -- the one most bitterly fought by business interests -- was federal legislation restricting billboards on federal highways.

Lyndon Johnson stood behind her on that bill and helped push it through to passage. It was a well-deserved tribute to a woman who had been indispensable to him in his rise to power and in much of what he achieved thereafter. She devoted herself entirely to this difficult, driven man and undoubtedly influenced him for the better in many ways. She knew how to temper Lyndon Johnson's rages and assuage the grievances of people he had offended. She brought a gentle and humane sensibility to the White House. Her husband trusted and listened to her, and perhaps he might have benefited had she ventured into foreign affairs -- but for the most part she did not.

She stood squarely with Lyndon Johnson on the great domestic issues of the day, none of which were greater, of course, than civil rights. This genteel Southern woman was reviled and insulted by some and booed at campaign gatherings in the South, but she never wavered in her advocacy of the civil rights legislation that finally, a century after Emancipation, created the foundation for equal treatment of every American under the law.

"Lady Bird brought to the White House dignity and warmth and grace," said President George H.W. Bush at a White House ceremony in 1990. "And she was never on stage, never acting out some part, always the same genuine lady no matter what the setting." It was because of these qualities that her presence at the center of the nation's great battles over voting, public accommodations and other vital issues of the day was so important. She was a first lady who deserves to be remembered, and of course she is and will be every year, when springtime comes around.