Lady Bird and Lyndon

by Betty Boyd Caroli

  Anyone well acquainted with the Johnsons knew how much he depended on her. Those who had worked with him very long were accustomed to hearing, when a difficult matter had to be settled, “Ask Lady Bird.” Or, when Lyndon was frazzled or tired, “Call Bird in here.” Even when things were going well, he craved her company. His aide Joseph Califano Jr. reported how that dependence was demonstrated one night when he was finishing up the day’s work with the president in his bedroom, during his rubdown. Drowsy from the late hour and the massage, Lyndon soon waved Califano out and called Lady Bird in. He “relished [her] pillow talk,” according to Califano, “and was lonely when she was not there.” If she had to be away overnight, he would invite an employee to sleep in her room, with instructions to leave the door open in case he called out for help.

  • • •

  As with most of his speeches, Lady Bird had had a hand in shaping the short but rousing inaugural speech, and at the end she rushed over to kiss him on the cheek and whisper in his ear that he had been “wonderful.” Then she lost no time telling reporters which part “went straight to my heart.” It was the phrase “always trying” from the president’s description of the American spirit as one that never gave up: “always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting and trying again—but always trying and always gaining.”

  Unfortunately, the high spirits of that day soon dissipated and Lyndon would require a much larger dose of Bird’s cheerleading. After seeing the last out-of-town guests on their way and entertaining new vice president Hubert Humphrey and his wife, Muriel, at a cozy White House dinner on Thursday, Bird headed off to Camp David for some time with Lynda on Friday. Mother and daughter could finally enjoy a quiet dinner and a movie together. But not long after they went to bed, they were wakened by a phone call from Washington, telling them that the president had been rushed to Bethesda Hospital with influenza and a fever. The White House physician insisted there was no cause for alarm, and Bird, realizing how her middle-of-the-night rush back to her husband might raise fears that Lyndon was seriously ill, took a sleeping pill and went back to bed. But before noon the next day she was at her husband’s side, and she checked into a hospital room near his. At the time of his heart attack ten years earlier, he had begged her to stay at his side, but they both knew there was no need for that reminder this time. Her calm soothing and competent supervision were essential to his convalescence.

  The weeks before the inauguration had been mostly upbeat, although Bird had been “startled” to find Lyndon covered up with a blanket and asleep in his office on the afternoon of January 9. Deciding that “fatigue” was to blame, she had tempered her New Year’s resolution to get him to shed twenty pounds and lose a few herself. He had sounded energetic and determined at his State of the Union address a few days earlier, when he unleashed a rash of proposals for the months ahead. Bird thought he might have included too much in his to-do list, but that was just the way he was. The Great Society programs he had unveiled the previous May would now take top priority, as he promised to move ahead on legislation that would have huge effects on the nation, drastically changing the playing field in education, civil rights, health insurance, and immigration.

  With his hospitalization, all that would be put on hold, at least for a while. Even after doctors released him three days later, he continued to appear “washed out” and “depressed.” She kept careful watch the following week as his lethargy and gloom continued to immobilize him. No one knew better than she, after so many years beside him, that Lyndon thrived on high activity. Getting him busy would provide the best medicine, but with a sick man, “How to fight it?”

  His dejection reminded her of William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Valley of the Black Pig,” an apocalyptic account of doom and dread. Realizing what might lie ahead, she went out and bought funeral attire, which for a woman who hated to shop and had borrowed clothes for the official mourning period for President Kennedy was a huge step. Then, trying to put her deepest anxieties aside, she concentrated on Lyndon’s physical comfort and recuperation. He would sometimes sweat through two or three sets of pajamas in a single night, and she made sure he always had a fresh supply.

  When Lyndon was able to return to the office, for at least a few hours a day, Bird monitored his eating and rest. In her own version of Meals-on-Wheels for him, she would call one of his secretaries to check if he had eaten lunch, and then send Lynda with soup if he had not. When he stayed at his desk late into the evening, Bird phoned, sometimes more than once, to remind him that dinner was waiting. If that failed to move him, she walked over to the Oval Office and sat near his desk until he agreed to accompany her back to the residence for a meal.

  In spite of everything she did, Bird observed an alarming lethargy in her husband’s attitude and activity level in the early spring of 1965. He would start the day late, take long naps in the afternoon, and repeatedly call for his dogs to cheer him up. At the March 4 reception for members of Congress, he looked tired and confessed to his guests that the “Vietnam thing” was “wearing [him] down.” His wife couldn’t obliterate the worries of his job but she could try to boost his spirits by keeping his surroundings carefree and inviting his favorite people, like the Valentis or Bill and June White, as often as possible. When she had to be away, she made sure one of her daughters was available for “Daddy duty”—to provide company at mealtime and keep her posted on how he was doing.

  When Mrs. Johnson recognized she was making little progress, she called for help from the two physicians she still trusted most. Dr. George Burkley, the White House staff doctor, had already examined the president multiple times, but she wanted the opinions of the two specialists who knew his medical history: cardiologist Willis Hurst and internist James Cain. They were the ones who had assured her Lyndon had sufficient stamina to endure the presidency, and now she wanted to hear what they had to say about periods in which he appeared unable to cope.

  The president’s official daily diary describes his appointment with the two doctors on March 13 as a “routine physical checkup,” but their diagnosis was hardly routine—it was alarming. Although they found all his organs “sound,” they warned the first lady that the presidency was putting a “heavy load of tension” on him, resulting in “this fog of depression.” In the 1960s understanding of depression, before the role of body chemistry played much part, stress and grief were deemed the major culprits for initiating low moods, and healthy living was the usual prescription for recovery. Following the examination, the doctors counseled the cook on nutritional diets and emphasized to Lyndon the importance of exercise. But Bird had already been pushing both remedies, and nothing had helped. What else could she do?

  Suddenly, his mood changed. Lyndon was in “great form . . . intensely active . . . loosed from the bonds of depression,” Bird recorded in her diary. She didn’t have a clue as to what caused the quick turnaround, or “quite what sprung him.” A week later, as he continued to exhibit high energy, she speculated that he must have “given himself . . . a shot of adrenalin.”

  Lyndon continued to have exuberant periods, when he seemed pleased with himself and the legislation he ushered through Congress. He chose Hollywood settings for signing the most noteworthy measures into law, and Bird was usually there beside him to applaud. In early April, after Congress passed the $1.3 billion Elementary and Secondary Education Act, he could have just remained in the Oval Office to sign it or used a local institution for fitting backdrop. Instead, he returned to the tiny one-room schoolhouse in Texas where he had once sat on Miss Kate Deadrich’s lap for reading lessons. Down the road from the LBJ Ranch and near the small frame house where his parents had started their married life, the small structure could not accommodate the swarm of well-wishers and journalists who turned out that Sunday afternoon. So the president sat outside in the sun, with the seventy-two-year-old Miss Deadrich, now the married Mrs. Loney, at his side. She beamed as television cameras recorded her most famous protégé signing a law providing
a huge injection of money into education. Then he handed the pen to her.

  Busloads of Lyndon’s former students, together with their friends and families, had come all the way from Cotulla and Houston to applaud. Neighbors and relatives cheered the president, one of their own, as he proudly talked about what education had done for him. He was determined that others would have the same chance.

  The Johnsons’ high spirits lingered after the brief ceremony ended, and they hastened to enjoy a few hours together on their own. A short helicopter ride took them to a small boat on the nearby Llano River, where they lay on the deck, caught the red rays of the setting sun, and watched the familiar Packsaddle Mountain’s silhouette sharpen against the sky. It was one of those times, when Lyndon was so upbeat, so lovingly attentive to Bird that she felt purringly content to lie quietly beside him. She spotted bluebonnets, a sure sign of spring, and Lyndon, still pumped up by the day’s events, started talking about leaving politics and returning to teaching. It would be “heaven,” he said with a sigh, to live and work in small-town Texas again.

  Bird had never taken seriously his talk about leaving politics, which generally came in moments of defeat and disappointment. She fully expected him to stay “lashed to the mast until the last gasp of breath.” But now, as he celebrated a major legislative triumph, his eyes sparkled and he talked “joyously” of retirement. Maybe this time he really meant it.

  During the warm evenings that followed, after boating ended for the day and ranch jobs were postponed for the morrow, Lyndon took center stage and regaled his guests with stories full of “earthy and colorful and true and fresh” phrases that made Bird wish she had a tape recorder. She admitted some of his language could get a little rough, with mentions of body parts and toilet functions, but his audience howled in appreciation. This was the jaunty, hilarious Lyndon who delighted her when she first met him. Never one to tell jokes herself, she loved hearing him deliver side-splitters about some recent encounter or future plan. No one could outdo his graphic phrasing or the timing of his punch lines.

  But she soon saw the other side of the relaxed, funny raconteur, as he slumped into hushed melancholy. Back in Washington, Bill Moyers, who worked every day with the president, noted that his often ebullient boss had become “deeply depressed,” and it was an ongoing despair that left him “morose, self pitying, angry . . . tormented.” Although the term “manic depressive” was thrown around a lot at the time, having been included in the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1952, Moyers did not use it.

  Nor did Dr. Willis Hurst use it, either then or later. In 1969, when he was asked outright if his famous patient was manic depressive, Hurst admitted that Lyndon had wide mood swings. He also acted inappropriately at times, according to Hurst, and like most “creative people. . . [tended to] display many emotions, ranging from anger, to humor, to unpredictability.” Whether that constituted “abnormal” behavior, Hurst thought “very debatable,” but he himself was not willing to say that Lyndon acted “outside the normal range.”

  It is important to note that both Moyers and Hurst pointed to Lady Bird as the key contact person on Lyndon’s moods. Moyers went directly to her for an explanation of the president’s dismaying, swift shifts. When he learned that she was way ahead of him, having already called in doctors to assess her husband’s condition, Moyers decided to leave the matter to her. And wait.

  For a portion of most days, Lyndon continued to work, if only to make a few phone calls or confer with an aide. He attended social events in crisp attire, kept appointments with legislators, and greeted foreign dignitaries on schedule. But between appearances, he withdrew, “lying in bed with the covers almost above his head.” Bess Abell, the first lady’s social secretary, told historian Will Swift, “I worked in the residence and I had a chance to see how depressed he became.”

  On good days, the president vigorously pursued his Great Society agenda, and by early May he was ready to highlight one of the linchpins: Project Head Start. Once again, he dramatized the event by choosing a special setting—the Rose Garden on Mother’s Day—to unveil particulars of a program he saw as a major boost to busy mothers. Head Start was designed to help preschool children whose parents had not managed to nourish them in belly or brain. The youngsters lacked communication skills and exposure to the world around them, and many had never visited a zoo or been inside a post office. Head Start would begin that summer to try to narrow the gap between them and more advantaged children.

  Lady Bird saw huge potential in this program and immediately signed on to help. She liked the idea of targeting children at an early age, before they even thought about dropping out or heard themselves labeled as delinquent. By reaching them, Head Start could affect entire families and break the dismal cycle that trapped generation after generation in poverty; it was a cycle, she thought, that bred dependence, anger, and hostility. The program’s director, Sargent Shriver, was one of Bird’s favorites from among the Kennedy crowd, and she labeled him a “superb salesman.” At his invitation, she agreed to serve as Honorary Chair, despite her distaste for the title. Working Chair was more to her liking.

  Throughout the spring and summer of 1965, as the president juggled foreign policy questions and a host of domestic issues, his mood continued to seesaw. On May 21, Bird noted in her diary that his “spirit is lighter and his face less weary.” But three weeks later, on what she dubbed “Black Tuesday,” his “dark countenance was dour and grim.” She put part of the blame on the arts festival, which started as a White House celebration of American accomplishment but ended up making both Johnsons, especially the president, look bad.

  Neither Lady Bird nor Lyndon felt secure in the highbrow art world in which the Kennedys thrived, and she shied away from using the word “culture.” She made no apologies for her lack of expertise in art and music, and she encouraged others to find what “talks” to you rather than “make a fool” of one’s self by “running after art for art’s sake.” But she enjoyed “what people create, if the book or painting says something to me,” and she thought it appropriate to spotlight the nation’s outstanding artists and writers. In early 1965, she happily signed on to help plan a White House Festival of the Arts to celebrate American writers, performers, and visual artists.

  Squabbling started almost immediately about which artists deserved an invitation. Princeton professor Eric F. Goldman, a new addition to the White House staff as intellectual in residence, and Bess Abell, the first lady’s social secretary, expressed heated opinions about the other’s ability to judge such matters: Goldman said Abell talked about culture in a way that made him “wince,” and the well-connected Abell countered that Goldman was clueless about how the capital worked.

  By the time everyone agreed on a tentative guest list, the festival, set for mid-June, was only a month away, and some artists on the A-list, like Edmund Wilson and E. B. White, had made other commitments they did not wish to break. Robert Lowell, the poet, accepted but then changed his mind, fearing that his attendance would imply his approval of the president’s decision to escalate the American military presence in Vietnam. Instead of withdrawing his acceptance quietly, Lowell wrote a letter for publication in The New York Times, explaining that he had declined the White House invitation because he viewed “our present foreign policy with the greatest dismay and distrust.”

  Other invitees began lining up behind Lowell, although not all of them rescinded their acceptances. John Hersey, author of the acclaimed book Hiroshima, decided he would take advantage of his featured place on the program and call attention to the horrors of war by reading from his book about the horrific suffering endured by Hiroshima residents after the atomic bombing of their city in 1945.

  When Bird learned of Hersey’s plan, she made clear to Goldman that neither she nor the president wanted Hersey reading anything about bombs and wars. Goldman warned her that any hint of censorship, when applied to an author of Hersey’s stature,
would generate loud and ugly publicity. But she stood firm. Goldman remained equally committed to his stand—he refused to cancel Hersey’s invitation or issue any directive on what could or could not be read.

  As the date for the arts festival approached, the president and first lady continued to respond to the unpleasant publicity around it in very different ways. He lashed out at journalists for attacking him—for dwelling on Vietnam and for undercutting every move he made there—and he barred offending reporters from covering the festival. As for his own participation, he played hide-and-seek, saying first he would attend and then he wouldn’t. When he did show up, he used his brief remarks to deflate the honorees’ egos. After mumbling some platitudes to a distinguished gathering primed to receive accolades, the president declared that this was not an assembly of the nation’s “greatest artists” although in the minds of some, it might be. Then he stalked out.

  Bird stoically attended the whole program, sitting in determined resignation through John Hersey’s reading. When he punctuated his account of the appalling suffering at Hiroshima by directing meaningful glances at her, she resorted to her famous powers of self-remove to tune out. The “veil” came down, and when Hersey finished and people seated around her began to applaud, she kept her hands neatly folded in her lap and gazed straight ahead.

  The president could be very testy on other fronts during the summer of 1965, grumbling to aides about minor inconveniences or lambasting them for failing to solve problems that were beyond their control. On the July 4 weekend at the ranch, he disgusted his guests at the lunch table. First he ridiculed a Secret Service agent’s appearance and then he went after Bird. One of the lunch guests, Jeanne Murray Vanderbilt, realized others at the table were so embarrassed at the president’s appalling treatment of his wife that they kept their eyes glued to their plates. But Mrs. Vanderbilt could not resist a quick glance, and she saw the first lady was staring straight ahead, as if she hadn’t heard a word: “She didn’t even blink.”