Lady Bird and Lyndon

by Betty Boyd Caroli

  “dreadful”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 17, 1934, No. 2.

  “If you don’t love me enough now, you never will”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview V, April 1, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 8. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 58.

  “slow, considered sort of person”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview IV, February 4, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 19. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 51.

  “hate”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, November 8 or 9, 1934. (On Hotel Monteleone stationery, New Orleans.)

  “want”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, November 11, 1934.

  “break” . . . “both mentally and physically”: Ibid.

  “I want to rush on home” . . . “be gay”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, November 13, 1934.

  “beautiful negligee”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview V, April 1, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 11. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 60.

  “Fix everything”: Transcript, Daniel Quill, Oral History Interview, May 10, 1965, by Eric Goldman, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 4.

  “mile a minute”: Transcript, Cecille Harrison Marshall, Oral History Interview I, February 19, 1976, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 14.

  “four or five bottles of sparkling burgundy”: Transcript, Henry Hirshberg, Oral History Interview, October 17, 1968, by Dorothy Pierce, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, pp. 8–9.

  “Lyndon and I committed matrimony last night”: Transcript, Eugenia Boehringer Lasseter, Oral History Interview I, March 10, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 11.

  “Bird Taylor”: Marriage certificate is online with Courtship Letters, LBJ Library.

  “Claudia Bird”: Announcement of marriage, in Reference File of Lady Bird Johnson, folder on Marriage, LBJ Library.

  “as long as our money lasted”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview V, April 1, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 16. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 62.

  “loads of flowers”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview V, April 1, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 18. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 62.

  “protective tariffs” . . . “increasing paternalism of our government” . . . “Do you like to argue”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, October 4, 1934, No. 2.

  “best secretary that a congressman ever had”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview V, April 1, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 5. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 68.

  5: Becoming a Priceless Political Partner

  “go to hell” . . . “Just remember”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview IX, January 24, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 8.

  “ass”: Transcript, Ervin “Red” James, Oral History Interview, February 17, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 39.

  “next to death’s door”: Transcript, W. Sherman Birdwell Jr., Oral History Interview IV, February 15, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 17.

  “Cut out the damn noise”: Transcript, W. Ervin “Red” James, Oral History Interview, February 17, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 16.

  “sheer heaven”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview VI, August 6, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 10. Also in Michael L. Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 69.

  “romantic and charming”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview VI, August 6, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 14. Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 70, has a slightly different version of her description of the house. Here she is quoted as saying that it was “thoroughly romantic, and I was utterly charmed by it.”

  “dull little place”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview VI, August 6, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 42. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 74, where she says they rented it for five years.

  “adviser . . . brain trust”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview VI, August 6, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, pp. 11, 42. CTJ calls Wirtz their “brain trust” on p. 42. First part of quote is also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 74.

  “We have to have ten”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview VI, August 6, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 37. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 75.

  “Mrs. Johnson, you’re going to have to make up your mind”: Transcript, Claude C. Wild Sr., Oral History Interview, October 3, 1968, by David G. McComb, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 6.

  “quite young”: Ibid.

  “did not want women in politics”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview VI, August 6, 1978, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 44.

  “spoke first, last and the loudest”: Dallek, Lone Star Rising, p. 150.

  “with anything you can”: Ibid., p. 161.

  “ask questions”: Bill Moyers’s eulogy at funeral service of Mrs. Johnson, July 14, 2007. Access at www.c-span.org/video/?199909-1/lady-bird-johnson-funeral-service.

  “listened to me”: For her account of how she infiltrated, see Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XIX, February 6–7, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, pp. 47–48. The phrase “listened to me” is in PBS documentary, Lady Bird Johnson, produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and KLRU, Austin, 2001, Transcript, Part 3.

  “nights of elation”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview X, January 25–26, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 1.

  “very stimulating”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XI, January 27–28, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 10.

  “Remember that I am for you”: Dallek, Lone Star Rising, p. 176.

  “free ride”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview IX, January 24, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 8.

  “I never saw anything like it”: Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980), p. 74.

  “few times in my life”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview X, January 25–26, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 15.

  6: Network Builder

  “so enthusiastic and sweet”: WHD, August 1, 1967, Box 5.

  “Things are Happening”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 27, 1934.

  “beyond the provinces” . . . “life with a Capital L”: Courtship Letters, Lady Bird Taylor to Lyndon Johnson, September 20, 1934, and September 27, 1934.

  “go crazy”: Virginia Foster Durr, Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr, ed. Hollinger F. Barnard (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985). A note at the beginning by Studs Terkel quotes Virginia Durr as saying a Southern white woman brought up in good circumstances has three choices: act the genteel lady, go crazy, or rebel and leave.

  “loved . . . trips”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview X, January 25–26, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 2.

  “social-economic bent”: Miller, Lyndon, p. 64.

  “were the people who were going to do it�
�: Ibid.

  “You didn’t bother much about the food”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview X, January 25–26, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 2.

  “I like mules”: Transcript, Clifford and Virginia Durr, Oral History Interview, March 1, 1975, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 9.

  “Father of Social Security”: Wilbur J. Cohen, “E. E. Witte (1887–1960): Father of Social Security,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 14, no. 1 (October 1960), p. 7.

  “Carol, with her cigar”: WHD, January 24, 1964, Box 1.

  “narrow little staircases”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview IX, January 24, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 16. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 91.

  “Dark didn’t catch us”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview VIII, January 23, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 15. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 99.

  “I was happily provincial”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview VIII, January 23, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 21.

  “foggiest notion” . . . “with the kind of energy” . . . “to feed the pigs”: Transcript, Erich Leinsdorf, Oral History Interview, March 18, 1969, by Joe B. Frantz, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 2.

  “fascinating characters of the New Deal”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview X, January 25–26, 1979, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, pp. 1–2.

  “remarkably durable”: AWHD, p. 486.

  “most undeviating liberal voice”. . . “his retirement last week”: Time, November 24, 1975.

  “there’s only 86 pounds of her”: WHD, January 24, 1964, Box 1.

  “I saw a young man”: Robert A. Caro, The Path to Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 477.

  “invented”: Dorothy Lane, “The Alice Glass Story,” in Student Papers of Professor Lewis Gould, LBJ Library. Lane also wrote the entry for Alice Glass Kirkpatrick for The Handbook of Texas, published by the Texas State Historical Association, but there she omitted the reference to Manners but names the other husbands. According to Lane, Glass married Richard J. Kirkpatrick in 1959, and he died in 1974, but she continued to use the name Alice Kirkpatrick until her death in 1976. Accessed August 31, 2013, www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fki55.

  “velvet warmth”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XX, February 20–21, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 16.

  “I just go along with Mr. George”: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, “As I See Our First Lady,” Look, May 19, 1964, p. 105.

  “Pappy O’Daniel”: LBJ Library Video, Lady Bird Johnson’s Home Movies, HM3, Senate Campaign, 1941.

  “living among people”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XIII, September 2–3, 1979, by Michael L. Gillete, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 18. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 118.

  “It was all right we lost”: LBJ Library Video, Lady Bird Johnson’s Home Movies, HM3, Senate Campaign 1941.

  “in the right place at the right time”: Ibid.

  “Lyndon Johnson’s wife”: Jonathan Daniels, White House Witness, 1942–45 (New York: Doubleday, 1975), p. 58.

  7: CEO and Finance Manager

  “It may take everything we have” . . . “Well, it’s your money”: Transcript, Leonard Marks, Oral History Interview I, June 15, 1970, by Joe B. Frantz, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 3.

  “for medicine”: Pre-Presidential Papers of LBJ, Folder on Public Activities—Biographical Information—Navy, January 18, 1942, LBJ Library, Box 74.

  “I am working without pay in the office” . . . “awful bald and ugly” . . . “I’m contributing my time”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XVI, January 29–February 3, 1980, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 3. A slightly different version of her point about her volunteer status appears in Michael L. Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 126.

  “substance [of my life], the real thing”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XVI, January 29–February 3, 1980, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 1.

  “full time job now”: Lady Bird Johnson to Miss Ella Powell, Marshall, Texas, April 13, 1942, Pre-Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJ Library, Box 74.

  “I get right ashamed”: Letter, “Ray [of the Austin Post Office]” to Lyndon Johnson, March 24, 1942, Pre-Presidential Papers of LBJ, House of Representatives, 1937–49, LBJ Library, Box 37.

  “We rely on a net-work of friends”: Lady Bird Johnson to Miss Ella Powell, Marshall, Texas, April 13, 1942, Pre-Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJ Library, Box 74.

  “mortified and embarrassed”: Lady Bird Johnson to Charles Green, editor of the Austin American-Statesman, April 13, 1942, Pre-Presidential Papers of LBJ, House of Representatives, 1937–49, LBJ Library, Box 37.

  “I wish you’d drop me a line”: Lady Bird Johnson to Buck Hood, February 26, 1942, Pre-Presidential Papers of LBJ, House of Representatives, 1937–49, LBJ Library, Box 37.

  “mission for the President”: Lady Bird Johnson to M. H. Reed. March 16, 1942, Pre-Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJ Library, Box 74.

  “serving his country” . . . “besides [it’s] untrue”: Ibid.

  “a little bit too close”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XVI, January 29–February 3, 1980, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 9.

  “bang-up job”: J. J. “Jake” Pickle to Chief [LBJ], May 3, 1942, Pre-Presidential Papers of LBJ, House of Representatives, 1937–49, LBJ Library, Box 37.

  “hold down a job”: PBS documentary, Lady Bird Johnson, produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and KLRU, Austin, 2001, Transcript, Part 2.

  “I want that house”: John Connally, In History’s Shadow: An American Odyssey (New York: Hyperion, 1993), p. 71, gives a slightly different version of Bird’s outburst and tells how Connally replied to LBJ.

  “I’m not much of a housekeeper”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XXIII, September 5, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 45.

  “whole crowd”: Mrs. Johnson reminisces about this in her diary entry of November 8, 1967, after attending a party for daughter Lynda and her fiancé, Charles Robb. WHD, Box 5.

  in one of his short appearances: LBJ Library Video, Lady Bird Johnson’s Home Movies, HM12, The Johnson Family 1945–1946.

  “drinks, sandwiches and talk” . . . “How she handled that I don’t know”: John L. Bullion, In the Boat with LBJ (Plano, Texas: Republic of Texas Press, 2001), p. 10.

  “like a Daddy to me”: Dallek, Lone Star Rising, p. 266.

  “This is not a circus, you know”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XIX, February 6–7, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 12. Also in Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, p. 169.

  8: Crucial Campaigner and Marketer

  “errand boy for war-rich contractors”: Dan Briody, The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), p. 128.

  “not a bit timorous”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XXI, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 44.

  “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness”: Caldwell News and Burleson County Ledger, in advertisement that appeared on July 5, 1946, p. 8.

  “with slanderous yellow sheets”: L. Patrick Hughes, “Waging War with the Regulars: Lyndon Johnson’s 1946 Renomination Battle.” Accessed November 22, 2014, www2.austin.cc.tx.us/lpatrick/his2341/Waging_War_With_Regulars.html. Originally published in Locus, 1992.

  “kind of a slur”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” John
son, Oral History Interview XIX, February 6–7, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 42. Also in Michael L. Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 176.

  “His body finally reached the point of exhaustion”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XX, February 20–21, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 10.

  “nervous exhaustion” . . . “bad”: Robert A. Caro, Means of Ascent (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 140.

  “six weeks or two months”: Transcript, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Oral History Interview XX, February 20–21, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 10.

  “semi-valet”: Transcript, Margaret Mayer Ward, Oral History Interview I, March 10, 1977, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 4.

  “Bird, where are you?”: Bill Moyers’s eulogy at funeral service of Mrs. Johnson, July 14, 2007. Access at www.c-span.org/video/?199909-1/lady-bird-johnson-funeral-service.

  “my lover, my friend, my identity”: Jan Jarboe Russell, Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson (New York: Scribner, 1999), p. 185.

  “just a beautiful cloak model”: Sally Denton, The Pink Lady: The Many Lives of Helen Gahagan Douglas (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), p. 80.

  “if the gentleman from Mississippi is addressing me”: Helen Gahagan Douglas, Transcript, Oral History Interview I, November 10, 1969, by Joe B. Frantz, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, p. 38.

  “gentlewoman from California”: Ibid, p. 39.

  “lived together”: Ingrid Winther Scobie, Center Stage: Helen Gahagan Douglas, A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 172.

  “Lyndon Johnson—US Senator”: LBJ Library Video, Lady Bird Johnson’s Home Movies, HM5, LBJ Senate Campaigns 1941 and 1948.

  “Johnson City Windmill”: Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising, p. 304.

  “before you entered the race”: Joe Phipps, Summer Stock: Behind the Scenes with LBJ in ’48 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1992), pp. 236–37.