Lady Bird and Lyndon

by Betty Boyd Caroli

  Bird was as careful about hiring a replacement for Ree as she was about new hires at the office. She favored Texans in both cases and insisted on recommendations from a trustworthy source. For domestic staff, she liked to get referrals from professors at Wiley College, the small African American college in her hometown, and that meant she would have to wait until August, when she planned to drive her current car, a Buick convertible, back to Texas. In Marshall she learned from Wiley College President Matthew Dogan that student Zephyr Black was looking for work. After verifying that Black’s aunt had once worked for T.J., Bird set up an interview with the young niece, and it took only twenty minutes for the two women to come to an agreement. Then the young African American rode with the congressman’s wife in the Buick to Washington, beginning a relationship that would last twenty-seven years.

  • • •

  By the time Zephyr started cooking for the Johnsons in the fall of 1942, Lyndon had shed his Navy uniform and returned full time to his congressional office. During his seven months of active duty, he had been out of the country only about six weeks when he was deployed to the South Pacific. But he was not in Washington, where his office had to deal with major decisions. Since he was up for reelection that year, good publicity was essential, and Lady Bird had to keep newspapers supplied with updates on what Congressman Johnson’s office was doing for constituents. Lyndon suggested that she write a personal note to as many voters as possible—the specific number he had in mind was 1,500—and he chided her that all she had to do to reach that goal was write twenty-five letters every day of the week for two months.

  That was in addition to the responses she had to get out to the dozens of letters that came in every day, some asking for significant help. Requests could be as easy to fulfill as supplying information on a son in the service, or as difficult as obtaining a lucrative government contract for a slaughterhouse, getting a new highway rerouted, or arranging for an ammonia plant to be moved. The hardships of the Great Depression and the exigencies of war had caused Americans to turn to their legislators for help, and the head of the Austin post office noted that people expected a lot. He had asked for help himself and admitted: “I get right ashamed of the many requests we send in.”

  Secretaries Mary Rather and Nellie Connally put in long hours, too, but they lacked entrée to the offices where some of the biggest decisions were hammered out. They knew a congressman’s wife could obtain appointments that underlings could not, and that meant Bird had to approach complete strangers and ask for favors. Her co-workers reported she would sit staring at the phone for a while before mustering the nerve to dial the number. On one occasion, although she counted Jane Ickes, the wife of the secretary of interior, among her friends and went to the Ickes home for dinners, she dreaded the prospect of appealing directly to the grumpy secretary to satisfy a constituent’s request. But she knew it was her job. So she did it. And she must have done it well. By the time she returned to her desk, the message was waiting for her: Secretary Ickes had granted her request. What better boost to her confidence could she want? The next time it would be easier.

  Like Lyndon in his first years with Congressman Kleberg, Bird recognized that doing business in Washington often meant going to the secretaries and assistants, who worked in the background, their roles discounted as insignificant. In wartime Washington, female networks were even more important than usual because so many men were off fighting, leaving women to make decisions and disseminate the crucial information that a congressman’s office needed. As Bird explained in one letter, “We rely on a net-work of friends throughout the various departments [to help solve] the multitudinous problems with which our constituents present us.”

  Even if it meant staying late, after a long day at the desk, and spending extra money on dinners out, Bird knew the value of her female network and she was constantly adding to it. Lyndon, fully aware of her frugal side, was thrilled to see her political skills at work, and he encouraged her to spend whatever she had to for the lunches and outings involved.

  One young female reporter who stopped by Congressman Johnson’s office in early 1942 was eight years younger than Bird, but the two women had so much in common they immediately became friends. Both came from small-town Texas and had graduated from UT where they wrote for the school paper. Although Elizabeth “Liz” Sutherland was far more exuberant and outgoing (she was the first woman elected vice president of UT’s student body) and could easily overshadow the more reserved Bird, the two became solid, loyal allies for life. The married Liz Carpenter would later become Bird’s right-hand aide in the White House.

  Although Bird’s classes at UT had provided the basics of journalism, the congressional office job gave her the chance to develop the skills of a superb press secretary. That meant learning how newspapers operated in the real world. Nobody had to tell her the importance of releasing frequent bulletins to every editor in the 10th District. But if she wanted to be fair and not appear to favor one paper over another, she had to keep up with staff changes on every paper so she could reach the right person in a hurry. Once, when she sent an important news item to a single reporter, who happened to be absent that day, his editor blamed Bird for costing him a huge scoop. She replied that she was “mortified and embarrassed” and she would never repeat the gaffe because she well understood the pain of taking “a licking” from a rival.

  To maximize her husband’s popularity with voters, she organized an effective PR campaign in his absence. She instructed county officials in the 10th District to send her lists of all births and deaths so she could write personal notes of congratulation or condolence. She prodded her friends and relatives to make suggestions, and she appealed to Buck Hood at Austin’s major newspaper: “I wish you’ll drop me a line whenever you think of anything, big or trivial, that Lyndon’s office ought to be doing, whenever you run across any news we ought to know, whenever you have any advice or ideas that will help to do the job.”

  Unlike her husband, Bird insisted on authenticity in her press releases and correspondence. He liked to put a grandiose slant on his naval service, describing it as a “mission for the President.” One staffer picked up the phrase and used it in a letter to a constituent, explaining that Congressman Johnson was not in his office but “serving his country where the President considers he is most needed.” Bird, in checking that letter, circled the phrase about the president and penned in the margin that she didn’t like it and “besides [it’s] untrue.” Indeed, Lyndon’s enlistment had been more his idea than that of his commander-in-chief, and when FDR requested all congressmen to return to their legislative jobs, he did, as did most of the others.

  In her husband’s absence, Bird continued his efforts to funnel federal money to Texas. Even before Pearl Harbor, Congress had allocated $10 billion for defense contracts, and Lyndon immediately started pushing for locating a military base in his district. Austin’s mayor and other city leaders also pressed the case but the competition was fierce in early 1942, and the final decision was looking “a little bit too close.” With people back in Austin eager to get a plum military installation there, Bird went to a key figure, assistant secretary of war for air Robert Lovett, and reiterated the advantages of the 10th District. When she left she wasn’t sure of the outcome but the press secretary side of her asked for another favor. Before the decision was announced, she wanted Lovett to give her advance notice so she could issue the press release and make sure her husband received credit for his efforts. It is impossible to know what weight she carried in the final decision, but in September 1942 a military base, later renamed Bergstrom Air Force Base, opened on three thousand leased acres in Lyndon’s district, and the congressman’s name figured prominently in the announcement.

  Lady Bird Johnson’s role in funneling more money to Texas, to a defense plant hundreds of miles away from Lyndon’s district, is even more intriguing. The federal government, in its rapid conversion to a war economy, had to open up factories all across the n
ation to produce whatever its servicemen needed to fight—ammunition and guns, uniforms, fighter planes. While some factories could retool—to make tanks instead of cars—others had to start from scratch, and countless towns wanted the privilege of starting them. Among the winners was tiny Karnack, Texas, where Lady Bird’s father still lived. Not all of the land for Longhorn Ordnance Works came out of T. J. Taylor’s considerable holdings, but a lot of it did. By mid-1942, he and his then wife, Ruth, were busy buying land from their neighbors and selling it to the government, sometimes for nearly twice what others received for the same acreage. In the month of August alone, T.J. and Ruth Taylor recorded $70,000 in land sales, equivalent to more than $1 million in 2014 dollars.

  There was nothing illegal about the land deals—T.J. had been buying and selling bits of Harrison County for more than forty years. But the rapidity of his acquisitions in 1942, followed by quick resale at inflated prices, does raise the question of whether he had inside information about the location of the new ordnance factory. Since Lady Bird and Lyndon had signed away any claim to her father’s immediate profits, there is no paper trail connecting them to his windfall. But the question remains: Was Bird using her Washington network to gather information that substantially increased her father’s net worth?

  As the summer of 1942 ended, it must have felt a lot like Christmas in T.J.’s big Brick House. Bird had come back for a visit and her two brothers had their own reasons for celebrating. Tony showed up with a new bride, Matianna, and Tommy, who still lived in Texas, had become the proud father of a baby girl. With Longhorn Ordnance set to open, the local economy looked good.

  During the half year that Bird managed Lyndon’s congressional office, she performed so flawlessly that some of his constituents didn’t even know he was gone, and others suggested she could win a House seat on her own if she chose to run. Jake Pickle, who handled the Texas office until he, too, went off to fight, praised the “bang-up job” she was doing. He proposed organizing some extra publicity for her: “I feel we could and should get some good stories and features about her work. It would go over big.” But Lyndon, always a little squeamish when anyone but himself was getting credit, did not push for flattering articles about Bird, and none appeared. As soon as he got out of uniform, in July 1942, he ended her work in his office. This behavior followed a pattern that would be repeated again and again in their marriage: he pushed and prodded her to excel, taunting her that anyone with two degrees from the University of Texas should certainly be able to manage the project he had in mind. But when she delivered—making a useful contact or solving a thorny problem—he could turn petulant, not liking to be upstaged.

  The woman who exited Lyndon’s office in the summer of 1942 was fully aware and justly proud of what she had accomplished in those few months. They had provided her the equivalent of a graduate degree in business management, and she had learned more about how government worked, she wrote, than in all those years at the University of Texas. She had gained confidence in her financial skills and boasted that she could “hold down a job” and make a living for herself if she had to.

  Armed with this elevated self-assurance, Bird initiated some important changes in her life, starting with buying a house. Fed up with those rented apartments she had been using since her marriage, she wanted a place of her own. Nothing fancy or even as grand as her family home in Karnack, but a house she could come back to after every sojourn in Texas. While Lyndon was away on active duty, she had used some of her precious, rationed gasoline to drive other wives around Washington in search of a “dream house” to buy, and she had stored up real estate tips. Now that he was back, she had more time for house hunting, and she found a place that seemed just right. Aunt Effie, in one of her generous moments, had offered to supplement Bird’s own savings to meet the down payment, and all Bird had to do was convince Lyndon that this was the right move. He had always objected to owning a home in Washington because he thought it sent a cocky message to constituents, making the congressman look overly confident of reelection.

  Bird was too astute politically not to understand that reluctance, but she was so excited about her most recent property find that she broke into her husband’s meeting with John Connally to describe the modest house, with a perfect floor plan and a charming garden, on a quiet, dead-end street. When she finished, Lyndon ignored her completely, as if she had not spoken. He wouldn’t even look at her. That made her so furious that she unleashed a torrent of uncharacteristic anger: “I want that house. I have no place of my own, no children. All I have to look forward to is the next election.” It was extraordinary for this normally self-controlled woman to explode like that, and, according to Connally, Lyndon was nonplussed. He turned to Connally to ask what he should do. When Connally advised, “Buy the damned house,” Lyndon finally gave his okay.

  The Johnsons moved to 4921 30th Place in Northwest Washington in early 1943, and to Bird’s amusement Lyndon soon became even more enthusiastic about the house than she. He started purchasing outsized furniture for it, and she heard him pontificating to incoming congressmen about the importance of owning a home in the capital. He did insist on showing his populist side by listing his residential phone number in the city directory, where it remained until he became vice president. Anyone with access to a phone could dial a number and reach Lyndon Johnson—or more likely his wife.

  Bird turned the house into an income-producing investment. Before she drove back to Texas at the end of each congressional session, she made sure she had rented the house out, fully furnished, for the time she would be gone. Other legislators’ wives might object to strangers using their cutlery and sleeping in their beds, but not Bird. As for why she never had a problem with her temporary tenants, she explained: “I’m not much of a housekeeper, and I always went over inventory with the renters very carefully before I left.” And the subletting continued long after she had become a wealthy woman.

  At the very same time Lady Bird Johnson was negotiating for her dream house, she was initiating another, far more significant investment—in a radio station. She and Lyndon had talked of owning a newspaper as a way to supplement his income, but they decided they couldn’t afford one. So they turned to broadcasting. In late 1942, they found KTBC, an Austin radio station with a low price tag to match its poor prospects. In four years of operation, it had never produced a profit, and according to its most recent balance sheet it had spent about 25 percent more than the paltry $26,795 it took in the previous year.

  Although bad management might appear the likeliest explanation for such pitiful performance, the station’s owners were neither naive nor poorly connected. One of them, Robert B. Anderson, was about the same age as Bird, but he had already, at age thirty-two, served as Texas’s assistant attorney general and then its tax commissioner. (He would go on to hold three different positions in President Dwight Eisenhower’s cabinet, including secretary of the treasury, before ending up a convicted criminal for bank fraud.) His success in the radio business had been stymied by the refusal of the FCC to grant his station more broadcasting power. Limited to a tiny 250 watt band to be shared with Texas A&M University, KTBC could air programs for only a few hours a day, not enough to attract sufficient advertising revenue.

  After hearing that KTBC was up for sale (more than one person later took credit for steering the Johnsons to Anderson), Bird (signing herself Claudia T. Johnson) made an offer. Hardly a backroom deal since all such purchases require approval from the FCC, her application put her personal worth at $64,332, equivalent to nearly a million dollars in 2014. As management experience, she listed her time running Lyndon’s congressional office. None of this would have come as news to Clifford Durr, a commissioner on the FCC. Bird had already approached him as a friend and asked for his advice on the deal, and not until he assured her that KTBC looked promising did she proceed with the acquisition.

  What happened next shows the enormous error of seeing Lady Bird Johnson as a woman unacquainted with th
e business world. She left Lyndon in Washington in the spring of 1943 and moved to Austin, where she worked full-time to put her radio station on its feet. With a confidence to match T.J.’s, she examined the balance sheets, evaluated staff, and assessed the programs transmitted. She even pitched in on cleaning. Donning a blue housedress that she designated especially for this task, and toting a mop and bucket, she started washing windows. Grime weighed down staff morale, she explained, and spic-and-span windows and hallways would lift employees’ spirits and her profits.

  Unlike KTBC’s previous owners, the congressman’s wife received almost immediate FCC approval to expand and thus make more money. Chaired by Texan James Lawrence Fly, the commission quickly granted KTBC a much larger broadcast band all its own, allowing it to remain on the air twenty-four hours and offer advertisers a more enticing market. With a higher audience potential, it needed additional programming, and since a fledgling station could not assemble all the content needed, it had to look elsewhere.

  Networks to supply programming to radio stations had been slowly taking shape over the preceding fifteen years, but only a handful had achieved national visibility. Edward R. Murrow’s throaty tones had helped raise the profile of CBS, causing NBC and the smaller networks to scramble for turf. The Johnsons approached NBC first but that network had already aligned with a San Antonio station that did not want competition for the territory between it and Austin. So the next stop was CBS.