LADY Bird Johnson, the widow of Lyndon B. Johnson, whose tumultuous presidency often overshadowed her considerable achievements as an activist first lady, environmentalist and founder of a multimillion-dollar media business, died Wednesday at her home in Austin. She was 94.
Johnson had been in failing health for several years, weakened by a series of strokes and other ailments, including a low-grade fever that kept her in the hospital for a week last month. A family spokeswoman said the former first lady's daughters, Lynda Johnson Robb and Luci Baines Johnson, were by her side when she died at 2:18 p.m. PDT.
As the wife of the 36th president, Johnson was often portrayed by contemporaries and some historians as a meek woman who silently endured her husband's volcanic outbursts and infidelities. Yet she, perhaps more than any presidential wife since Eleanor Roosevelt, expanded the terrain of the first lady by taking a visible role in her husband's administration, most memorably in her national beautification efforts.
Lady Bird Johnson obituary: The July 12 obituary of Lady Bird Johnson in Section A said President Lyndon B. Johnson withdrew from the 1968 presidential race with the words "I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party...." In fact, he said: "I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party ..."
Although often eclipsed by protests over the Vietnam War and civil rights -- the dominant issues of President Johnson's tenure from 1963 to 1969 -- her effort to replace urban blight with flowers and trees prepared the way for the environmental movement of the 1970s.
"I think there is no legacy she would more treasure than to have helped people recognize the value in preserving and promoting our native land," Luci Baines Johnson said in a statement shortly before her mother's death.
Johnson also broke new ground by campaigning independently of her husband. During the 1964 presidential campaign, she undertook a courageous whistle-stop tour of the South, where his civil rights agenda was widely reviled. Two months later, President Johnson won one of the largest landslides in U.S. history. She held the Bible at his swearing-in, a precedent followed by all her successors.
As her husband's key personal advisor throughout his career, she championed Head Start, the early childhood education program that was a major component of his War on Poverty, and was its first national chair.
- Ex-First Ladies Boost ERA Feb 11, 1988
- Obituaries - On latimes.com Dec 30, 2007
- Lady Bird Johnson Home From Hospital Nov 13, 1999
