Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson by Jan Jarboe Russell

Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson is of course our 36th First Lady of the United States, Ladybird.  She is rather inadequately portrayed in this book, but, this is the biography of Mrs. Johnson that I hastily grabbed from the small Harker Heights library collection so I read it.   I believe there are better books out there and until I read them I will comment only briefly on the general impressions of Ladybird I formed from both this book and the Johnson biography by Woods.

Ladybird, born in 1912 in Karnack in East Texas, would seem to be fairly representative of college educated women of her time and place. She worked for a time but is not described as particularly ambitious, yet neither does she come across as an empty-headed belle awaiting her Prince Charming. 

Indeed, with no particular training or related experience, she executed quite well the demands of being the wife of a high-profile political dynamo who ultimately ended up in the White House. 

A few rather unimportant thoughts remain with me after reading this book.  The first is the matter of how Ladybird handled the alleged adulterous affairs of her husband.  What is it with these men that they seem compelled to have women on the side?  It’s so thoughtless and self-involved. Supposing the accounts of LBJ’s philandering are true, it is said that Ladybird handled the philandering by ignoring it and, obviously, outlasting the “other” women.  I find it hard to believe that Ladybird never once confronted LBJ. She seems too practical and sensible a woman to have taken such treatment without a fight.    

Another thought, perhaps of only slightly more unimportance, is the fact that Ladybird outlived her husband by 34 years!  That’s a long time.  If this book covered how she spent those years, I have to confess that I’ve forgotten what she did. Ladybird’s health did suffer in her later years; she died at age 95 in 2007.

My third and perhaps only significant thought requires an introduction.  The Johnsons donated their ranch, the ‘Texas White House,’ to the National Park Service before LBJ’s death in 1973.  One of the highlights of the year 2015 for me was that Paul and I took a tour of the LBJ ranch.  How truly exciting to be walking through history and entering the rooms of a place I had heard of on the nightly news but could never understand. My 12 year old self couldn't conjure up even the vaguest picture of  what it meant for the President to be heading to the Texas White House.  Texas was miles away both geographically and in my imagination and, anyway,  nobody that I knew had more than one home. 

The ranch setting, in the Hill Country of Texas along the Pedernales River, is bucolic and beautiful.  The house is roomy and comfortable but not at all ostentatious.  Though the tour does not extend to the second floor of the home, it is an intimate tour and includes a walk-through of the President and First Lady’s closets and bedroom.  As part of the dining room and kitchen tour, we were of course reminded that on that fateful day in November of 1963, the Johnson staff was preparing for the upcoming overnight stay of President Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline.  There is an airplane hangar (with exhibits and gift shop) and runway on the ranch and there are other historic sites, including the burial plots of the President and First Lady. 

Contrary to some accounts, the park ranger who conducted our tour said that Mrs. Johnson lived in the house even while it was open to the public.  The fact that, at her advanced age and no longer squarely in the limelight, she would share her privacy by sharing her home brings me to my third thought.  Claudia  “Ladybird” Taylor Johnson rightly saw herself  as a public servant who had a responsibility to the people she and her husband had served.  She saw herself as an individual in her own right who would occupy a place in history.