Much of what they said centered on her solo, widowed years: Granddaughter Lucinda Robb Florio described her as “the least needy, quietly confident person” she had ever known; granddaughter Nicole Nugent Covert listed the ways the great-grandchildren remembered and loved her. Bill Moyers, in his eulogy, reached back to her earlier years when, during some of the nation’s most tumultuous times, she remained a beacon of courage and civility. Harry Middleton emphasized she was a “whale of fun,” with a sense of humor that made light of those who had dogged her earlier years. He related how, during the vacations he shared with Mrs. Johnson on Martha’s Vineyard, she kept him busy, rushing from one party to another. One evening, midweek, as they made their way from a cocktail party to a dinner, she turned to him and said, “I don’t know why I’m doing this.” Then, she corrected herself: “Well, I do know. It’s because I didn’t say, ‘Hell, no, I won’t go.’ ”
At that funeral, Lyndon’s name was barely mentioned.
Lady Bird’s father, the tall, commanding T. J. Taylor, became her template for what a man should be. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
At age three, when her mother was still alive, Claudia Taylor wore the latest children’s fashion. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Lady Bird’s childhood home stood out as one of the most elegant houses in Harrison County, Texas. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
At age seven, Lyndon Baines Johnson already showed the confidence of a first-born son, groomed to take charge. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
His four younger siblings—Lucinda, Josefa, and Rebekah on his right and Sam Houston on his left—later complained that Lyndon liked to boss them around. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
The humble Johnson homestead, near Stonewall, Texas, furnished cramped quarters for a growing family. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Bird Taylor, who hated being photographed, made sure to wear a dress that Lyndon liked for this picture she had made for him in October 1934. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Although she came to dislike flying as an adult, Bird Taylor, shown here with neighbor Dorris Powell, found air travel “exciting” in her youth. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Bird initially detected a trait she didn’t like—arrogance—in this 1934 photo of Lyndon. But she revised her judgment, deciding his pose justifiably signaled confidence and pride. (Courtesy of Bachrach Photography)
Although most of his courtship letters to Bird ran on for pages, Lyndon kept this one short, concentrating on how bad he felt and how much he needed her. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Other photos of their honeymoon in Mexico showed such an erotic charge between Lyndon and Bird that she suggested the negatives should be destroyed. But this one survives. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Rather than remain in Texas in 1935, while Lyndon worked in Washington, Bird went with him and became his invaluable, but unpaid, assistant in the capital. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Using the movie camera that Lyndon gave her for Christmas, Bird started documenting his appearances and recording his opponents’ speeches in the 1941 Senate campaign. (Photo by Austin-American Statesman/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Helicopters were still a rarity in 1948, but Lyndon relished the mobility this one gave him and the attention it attracted to his Senate campaign. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
By the end of the grueling run-off primary in 1948, both Bird and Lyndon were exhausted, ready to see more of their young daughters. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Just down the road from Lyndon’s birthplace, the LBJ Ranch became the family’s “heart’s home” in 1952. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Lady Bird thought it sad that Lyndon, as president, had more time for toddler Courtenay Valenti, shown here during a meeting of the National Security Council, than he ever had for his own daughters when they were her age. (Photo by Yoichi Okamoto/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
The birth of Luci’s son, Patrick Lyndon Nugent, just before her father met with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in New Jersey, provided LBJ with the opportunity to greet his guest by announcing he had just become a grandfather. (Photo by Yoichi Okamoto/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Weeks of careful planning preceded Lynda Bird’s marriage to Charles Robb in December 1967, the first White House wedding of a president’s daughter in more than fifty years. (Photo by Yoichi Okamoto/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
As the bride’s parents danced at the Robb wedding, they reminisced about the “awful purple dress” Lady Bird had worn to her own wedding. (Photo by Yoichi Okamoto/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
During her final months in the White House, Lady Bird worked hard to record, in both still and motion pictures, details of her family’s tenure. In the only Christmas they spent there (1968) they hung stockings and opened gifts in the Yellow Oval Room. (Photo by Jack Kightlinger/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
The Lady Bird Special, Mrs. Johnson’s solo campaign train through the South in October 1964, set a standard that spouses of subsequent candidates would struggle to match. (Photo by Frank Muto/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Seasoned journalist Liz Carpenter operated as the first lady’s right-hand aide, scheduling her appearances, handling publicity, and helping her write speeches. (Photo by Frank Muto/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
When the Johnsons were flooded with mail after the assassination of President Kennedy, Lady Bird enlisted her friends to help write the replies. (Photo by Cecil Stoughton/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Walks on the South Lawn of the White House gave the president and first lady time to confer. (Photo by Mike Geissinger/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
When the Senate Ladies Red Cross Unit honored First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy at a lunch, Lady Bird Johnson, a longtime member, accompanied her. (©Bettmann/Corbis)
Lyndon Johnson relied on his wife to extend a warm welcome to all visitors to the ranch and to keep one delegation occupied while he conferred with another. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Although she rarely traveled with her husband outside the United States during his presidency, Mrs. Johnson was pleased to assist at his arrival in Ohakea, New Zealand, in 1966. (Photo by Frank Wolfe/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Shown here meeting with Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson, and President Johnson (back to camera) in 1967, Lady Bird observed that men’s discussions were often more interesting than those of women. (Photo by Yoichi Okamoto/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Lady Bird Johnson noted that her husband liked to have beautiful young women, like Mathilde Krim, around him. (Photo by Mike Geissinger/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
When he signed an important law, President Johnson summoned Lady Bird to participate in the ceremony, and for those victories in which she had played a part, he made sure she received one of the signing pens. (Photo by Yoichi Okamoto/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
President Johnson, shown here with Abe Fortas, was often described as domineering when he towered over lesser men and women, but Bird admired the self-assurance he conveyed. (Photo by Yoichi Okamoto/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
In delicate situations or when he wanted to polish the impression he was making, Lyndon Johnson would enlist Lady Bird to speak for him. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
After Lyndon’s death, Mrs. Johnson was finally able to indulge in private travel without the obligation to make an official appearance. Venice, which she explored with her daughter Luci in 1975, was one city she did not like. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
To make up for the lack of attention she had shown her own daughters when they were young, Lady Bird made a point of planning, financing, and enjoying extravagant trips with her grandchildren. Here she poses with Jennifer and Lucinda Robb in Alaska. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Though classmates at the University of Texas in 1934, Walter Cronkite and Claudia Taylor Johnson did not get acquainted until he was a famous broadcaster and she was the president’s wife. When the widowe
d Lady Bird rented a vacation house on Martha’s Vineyard, Cronkite was one of the neighbors she enjoyed seeing. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Members of the most select sorority in the world, former first ladies rarely criticized one another, and they often crossed party lines to express admiration. Left to right: Nancy Reagan, Lady Bird Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, and Barbara Bush in 1994. (Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
As her husband’s most trusted adviser, Mrs. Johnson knew how to phrase her counsel in ways that would not antagonize or upset him—she called it “infiltration.” (Photo by Yoichi Okamoto/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
Claudia T. Johnson, as she always signed business documents, liked to mull over her options before making a decision. Here she is shown at a board meeting of the LBJ Foundation in 1981. (Photo by Frank Wolfe/Courtesy of the LBJ Library)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DURING THE six years I have worked on this book my debts to family, friends, and complete strangers have piled up. Mentioning some of them here is only token recognition of what I owe them all.
When Lady Bird Johnson began planning for the LBJ Library in 1965, she visited the presidential libraries in operation at the time and then vowed to outdo them all. Half a century later, her resolve still shows in the expertise, dedication, and generosity of everyone who works at the LBJ Library in Austin. While pursuing my research there, funded in part by a Moody grant from the LBJ Foundation, I found the staff extremely helpful. I benefitted especially from the counsel of Claudia Anderson, formerly curator of Mrs. Johnson’s papers, and Barbara Cline, the current curator. Margaret Harman, in AV, guided me through the library’s huge collection of photographs and videos. After I was thousands of miles away, the staff continued to answer my many queries, and both Laura Eggert and Nicole Hadad cheerfully supplied me with oral histories that I could read off-site.
Writing may be a lonely business, but I am fortunate to have the continuing support of dozens of fellow biographers. The Women Writing Women’s Lives seminar and its small offshoot, the Narrative Writing Group (currently consisting of Pat Auspos, Barbara Fisher, Ruth Franklin, Dorothy O. Helly, and Melissa Nathanson), have been central to my writing life for more than two decades. The Gotham Bio Group (Kate Buford, Ina Caro, Gayle Feldman, Anne Heller, Justin Martin, Carl Rollyson, Stacy Schiff, and Will Swift) formed just as I was starting this book, and I have learned a lot from these prolific biographers. Kate Buford and Will Swift, who read the entire manuscript, suggested additional lines of inquiry, and Will turned over to me his own extensive research on the Johnsons. Lewis L. Gould, presidential historian and author of two books on Mrs. Johnson, replied quickly to my every query and gave me a trove of research materials he had ferreted out, including copies of the court records of the divorce of T. J. and Minnie Taylor. Professor Gould then read and commented on an early version of the manuscript. Others who read portions of one draft or another and offered suggestions were: Evelyn Barish, Carol Cavallo, Jane Clancy, Robert E. Gilbert, Myra Gutin, Carol Hebald, Dona Munker, Nancy Kline, and Julie Pycior. Elizabeth Hansen carefully photographed for me Mrs. Johnson’s unpublished diary when it became available just as I was ready to publish. On her own time, Ruth Briggs, a volunteer at the Harrison County Historical Society in Marshall, Texas, sleuthed out information on Mrs. Johnson’s youth, including her high school essays and early photos.
Many people who knew the Johnsons or their milieu were still available for me to interview when I began this book in 2009, and I was able to confer with more than sixty of them. Some of those exchanges were brief telephone conversations; others were face-to-face interviews lasting an entire day. A few consisted entirely of emails. All were valuable. Bess Abell drove over icy roads to pick me up and take me back to her picturesque Merry-Go-Round Farm for lunch and a long talk; Sylvia Bishop interrupted her quilting at the Karnack Baptist Church social center to reminisce about the very young Lady Bird she knew in East Texas. Their firsthand accounts, along with the accounts of those whose names follow, were invaluable in understanding the relationship of Lady Bird and Lyndon Johnson, neither of whom I had the chance to meet: Christina Anderson, Bonnie Angelo, Pace Barnes, Victoria Barr, Gail Beil, Phillip Bobbitt, Ruth Briggs, Mary Acheson Bundy, Michael Bundy, Joseph Califano Jr., Christy Carpenter, Rosalynn Carter, Nash Castro, Patsy Derby Chaney, Ramsey Clark, Sheldon Cohen, Lou Hill Davidson, Thomas Donahue, Bill Fisher, Betty Sue Flowers, Sharon Francis, Michael L. Gillette, Helene Lindow Gordon, Lucianne Goldberg, Ashton Gonella, Libby Cater Halaby, Charles Haar, Coleen Hardin, Harvey Herbst, Olga Hirshhorn, Shirley James, Luci Baines Johnson, Edwina and Tom Johnson, Marjorie G. Jones, James Ketchum, Sally Newcomb MacDonald, Margaret McDermott, Harry McPherson, Marcia Maddox, Jewell Malechek Scott, Larry Temple, Harry Middleton, Betty Monkman, Celia B. Morris, Cokie Roberts, Clarissa Rowe, Jim Rowe, Mary Jane Saunders, Patsy Steves, Larry Temple, Helen Thomas, Betty Tilson, Mary Margaret Valenti, Alfred Vanderbilt, Heidi Vanderbilt, Jeanne Murray Vanderbilt, Cynthia Wilson, Jim Wilson, Mark Young, and two others who preferred to remain off the record.
I started this project with a huge advantage—access to thousands of printed pages in Robert Caro’s four volumes, Robert Dallek’s two volumes, and the books of John Bullion, Randall Woods, and Joseph Califano Jr. I was fortunate to be able to speak or exchange emails with all of these authors.
Susan Rabiner, my agent, has been an enthusiastic supporter and shrewd promoter since we first met more than thirty-five years ago, when she showed me the wisdom of writing about a subject I didn’t want to tackle. She is tough and blunt, but her dedication to her authors is boundless, and she has helped shape this book from the very beginning. She led me to Priscilla Painton, who turned out to be the ideal editor for me at Simon & Schuster because she held back as I found my way through the huge archive on the Johnsons and then, with the expertise of a seasoned editor, kept prodding me and pointing the way to write the best book I could. The entire S&S team has been more supportive than I had any reason to expect. The enthusiasm of Vice President and Publisher Jonathan Karp spread to others. Editorial Assistant Sophia Jimenez carefully ushered Lady Bird and Lyndon through the intricacies of publishing in the digital age, and the thorough and diligent copyeditor, Fred Chase, saved me from many errors.
During my work on this and previous books, my Italian husband, a classical musician, has developed a greater interest in American history than either he or I anticipated. He has become adept at helping me sift through deed records in county courthouses, locate tombstones in overgrown cemeteries, and set up interviews on five continents. For all this and much, much more, I dedicate this book to Livio Caroli, whom I met entirely by chance on a Venice vaporetto a long time ago.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Betty Boyd Caroli is the author of First Ladies: From Martha Washington to Michelle Obama, Inside the White House, and The Roosevelt Women. Caroli frequently appears on national television and the BBC to discuss the role of presidents’ wives in American politics and has been a guest on Today, The O’Reilly Factor, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Al Jazeera, Booknotes with Brian Lamb, and many others. A graduate of Oberlin College, Caroli holds a master’s degree in Mass Communications from the Annenberg School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in American Civilization from New York University. A Fulbright scholar to Italy, she also held fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Hoover Presidential Library, and others. After studying in Salzburg, Austria, and Perugia, Italy, she taught in Palermo and Rome, Italy, and later joined the faculty at the City University of New York. She currently resides in New York City and Venice, Italy.
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NOTES
Abbreviations Used in the Notes
AWHD
Lady Bird Johnson, A White House Diary (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970).
Lady Bird and Lyndon Page 42