The president called his entire Cabinet and top staff together to fight the billboard industry lobby and persuade Congress to pass the Highway Beautification Act. Nicknamed "Lady Bird's Bill," it was the product of the first open political partnership between an American president and first lady.
Her legislative triumph was a bright note in an increasingly grim White House. As American casualties in Vietnam mounted, protesters burned Lyndon Johnson in effigy. Lady Bird found she was rarely out of earshot of the demonstrators, who brought their anger to the White House gates, chanting "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many boys did you kill today?"
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday July 19, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 61 words Type of Material: Correction
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 ..."
At a January 1968 luncheon of 50 influential women invited to a White House forum on street crime, singer Eartha Kitt raged at the first lady. "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," the entertainer said to a stunned audience. "They will take pot, and they will get high. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."
Although prominent leaders, including King, would take Kitt's side in the ensuing controversy, Lady Bird won praise for her response. "I am sorry I cannot understand as much as I should because I have not lived the background you have. Nor can I speak as passionately or as well. But I think we must keep our eyes and our hearts fixed on constructive aims. Violence," she said, "will not help it."
Over the next few months, Lyndon Johnson agonized over whether to run for reelection. Another term meant the prospect of more civil unrest and more American soldiers killed in Vietnam. The answer came to him on March 31, 1968, when his daughter Lynda returned to the White House after saying goodbye to her husband, a Marine officer who was going to Vietnam on a 13-month tour of duty. Lynda, who was pregnant with their first child, looked her father in the eye and asked, "Why do we have to go to Vietnam?"
That night, in a scheduled speech to the nation, the president announced the curtailment of American bombing in most of North Vietnam. In a conclusion that shocked listeners, including many on his own staff, he announced that he would not run again.
After Richard M. Nixon was sworn in as the 37th president, the Johnsons retired to their ranch on the Pedernales River west of Austin. Lady Bird published her diary in 1970 and accepted a seat on the University of Texas' board of regents. She also helped her husband plan the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum, which opened on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin in 1972.
