RIP Lady Bird Johnson

[Penelope]

Thank you, Damien, what joyous laughter!

[Damien]

A friend forwarded this sweet email:

Subject: A tribute to First Lady Lady Bird Johnson

My friend Randy Jones, the cowboy of the Village People, sent me an e-mail describing his meeting Lady Bird Johnson at The Plaza Hotel. I decided that I would then share my favorite Lady Bird story with him. He enjoyed it so much that I decided to share it with all youns:

When I was living in DC from 1983-1988, there was a cruisy area in a park near the Iwo Jima statue. Lady Bird had a lot do do with creating or rehabilitating the park during the Johnson administration & there were these sound boxes around the park where you could push a button & hear her voice describing the foliage & so forth. Well, obviously her speechwriter was "on the team" & the speeches were loaded with hilarious double entendres. She describes the park as a place where "friends & strangers mix & mingle intimately," evokes the view of the "long white shafts" (of DC monuments theoretically), warns against getting "dangerously close to the hard pricks" (of thorny wildflowers) & extols the virtues of the picnic area "where wieners slide easily into buns." My friends & I would picnic in the park, play these little sound bites & laugh hysterically. Someone clearly had gotten over on Lady Bird.

Rest in peace, dear Lady. And beware of those pricks & long shafts wherever you are......

[Mister Tee]

A very decent human being; unlike her husband, she lived long enough to transcend the bitter memories of '67-'69.

There was a really touching moment in the HBO Path to War movie; the actress playing Lady Bird said (as LBJ was lamenting the press's continual comparisons of him to JFK) "I replaced someone, too -- and she's still around".

[Big Magilla]

I always liked Lady Bird even when I didn't like her husband very much. A classy lady and as Damien says, a visionary environmentalist. Most people laughed when she first went to war against highway advertising - what a ridiculous thing to get exercised over when there are so many worse things in the world people said - but in retrospect what a pleasure it is to drive down America's highways without the blight of signs that were cropping up all over the place before the legislation was passed at her urging.

In these days of the vulgar Bushes dominating the world's perception of Texans it's nice to reflect once in a while that Texas also produced White House residents like Lady Bird.

[Damien]

She was wonderful, a perfect First Lady -- and the first I was really cognizant of in more than a passing way. As kids, we used to laugh about her name, she was as fine as fine could be, aand was a visionary environmentalist.

[OscarGuy]

She was the oldest living first lady. I guess that puts Betty Ford at the top.

[Aceisgreat]

Lady Bird Johnson dies at 94

AUSTIN, Texas - Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady who championed conservation and worked tenaciously for the political career of her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday, a family spokeswoman said. She was 94.

Lady Bird Johnson returned home late last month after a week at Seton Medical Center, where she'd been admitted for a low-grade fever. Her husband died in 1973.

She died at her Austin home of natural causes about 4:18 p.m. CDT. Elizabeth Christian, the spokeswoman, said she was surrounded by family and friends.

She was hospitalized with a stroke in 2002 that left her with difficulty speaking. But even after that she continued to make public appearances and in May attended an event at the LBJ Library and Museum featuring historian Robert Dallek.

In March, she listened from Texas through a conference call when President Bush signed legislation naming the Education Department headquarters building in Washington, D.C., after her late husband.