Lady Bird Johnson, former first lady, dies at 94

Lady Bird Johnson's contributions can be seen in many places.

Bluebonnets and Indian paint brushes brighten the countryside along Texas roads during spring. Cherry trees and dogwoods temper the impersonal look of Washington, D.C. Junkyards and billboards no longer blemish scenic views along U.S. highways.

The former first lady, whose quiet ambition and determination allowed her to play an influential role in President Lyndon Johnson's political career and to carve out her own identity as an advocate for beautifying the national landscape, died Wednesday at her home in Austin, Texas. She was 94.

Mrs. Johnson suffered strokes in 1993 and 2002, lost her ability to speak and was legally blind because of macular degeneration.

Neal Spelce, a family spokesman, said Mrs. Johnson died of respiratory failure.

"She did not have another stroke. She did not have a heart attack. She was simply 94 years old," Spelce said.

Her daughters, Luci Baines and Lynda Bird, were nearby, as were some family friends.

Tributes quickly poured in.

President Bush said he and first lady Laura Bush "mourn the passing of our good friend, and a warm and gracious woman."

Former President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton paid their respects in a statement: "Every American owes her a debt of gratitude because it was her devotion to the environment that brought us the Beautification Act of 1965 ... . " The Clintons also praised her for supporting her husband's "fights for civil rights and against poverty."

Mrs. Johnson was thrust into the role of first lady when the assassin's bullet that felled President Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, elevated her husband to the presidency.

The first wife of a president since Eleanor Roosevelt to pursue the role of an activist, she helped bring the cause of conservation to national attention. A 1982 poll of historians ranked her third among first ladies in influence and importance, behind Roosevelt and Abigail Adams.

From her "bully pulpit" as first lady, Mrs. Johnson also called attention to her husband's legislative programs. She dedicated community colleges and encouraged adult education; visited rural clinics and Head Start classrooms.

"Once you are in that position and you want to serve whatever your husband's efforts are on behalf of the country, you choose those which make your heart sing," she told The Washington Post in 1994.

Some that made her heart ache were not of her choosing. As racial unrest and the Vietnam War increasingly overshadowed Johnson's Great Society agenda, she became drained by what she called the "growing virus of the riots, the rising list of Vietnam casualties." To the end of her life, the conflict's negative effect on her husband's place in history was, in her words, "a sadness."

She saw herself, in some respects, as tougher-minded than the president, which she admitted gave her a different perspective on his policy positions.

"I would express myself," she said, "but I would not argue, no, because I was not the person who was going to implement it if it turned out wrong."

The Highway Beautification Act of 1965 became known as "Lady Bird's Bill."

While the legislative campaign was the first ever launched by a first lady, she shunned comparisons with other first ladies.

"There is not a competitive bone in her body," Liz Carpenter, her former press secretary, once said. "She lives for one thing, and that is to be a joy and a companion to her husband and her daughters. It simplifies all of life if you have one purpose."

Mrs. Johnson's life, however, was not that simple.

She was born Claudia Alta Taylor on Dec. 22, 1912, in Karnack, a small East Texas town. She went through life as "Lady Bird," thanks to a family cook who, when she first saw the baby girl, exclaimed that she was as "purty as a ladybird." (A ladybird is a small, brightly colored beetle.)

Her father, T.J. Taylor, was a tenant farmer and country merchant who dealt in dry goods, cotton and acreage, the latter acquired through frequent debt foreclosures.

When Lady Bird was 5, her mother, Minnie Pattillo Taylor, died from a fall.

Her father summoned a maiden aunt from Alabama to take care of her. The aunt permitted "a free-ranging sort of childhood," in which Lady Bird roamed pastures and forests.

Enduring a nickname that embarrassed her, as well as the Taylor family's trademark hook nose -- "which, at one time, I seriously tried to have bobbed," she said -- she found refuge in scholastic excellence. She was so shy, however, that she deliberately dropped to an academic ranking of third in her class to avoid delivering one of two commencement speeches. Graduating from high school at 15, she studied at an Episcopal girls school in Dallas for two years.

In June 1934, she received two undergraduate degrees at the University of Texas, in history and in journalism. She also earned a teaching certificate.

Later that summer, in Austin, she met Johnson, a brash 26-year-old who was working for Rep. Richard Kleberg, D-Texas.

He asked her to marry him on their first date. After 10 weeks of unrelenting pressure she gave in to a now-or-never ultimatum and said yes. She was a month short of 21.

There were whispers that LBJ simply had married for money, and it was true that his new wife gave him $10,000 for his 1937 House campaign.

But it also was true that he was truly smitten with her heart, her looks and her behavior. She once said: "He would look at me quite seriously, and he would say, 'You don't sell for what you're worth.' He really thought I was better-looking than I was."

Mrs. Johnson ably ran her husband's congressional office in 1942 during his brief stint in the Navy. In 1944, after 10 years of marriage and four miscarriages, the couple had their first child, Lynda Bird. Luci Baines arrived in 1947.

In 1948, Lyndon Johnson was elected to the Senate. He quickly rose in stature and became one of the most powerful majority leaders in history.

He considered running for president in 1960, but Kennedy had worked hard to sew up votes at the Democratic convention. Kennedy offered Johnson the No. 2 spot.

Mrs. Johnson and others thought he should fight out the nomination on the convention floor, but she accepted the decision when Johnson finally took Kennedy's offer.

On the campaign trail, Mrs. Johnson was visible and effective, despite her shyness.

After Johnson ascended to the presidency in November 1963, he threw himself into his Great Society program, at the core of which was the most sweeping civil-rights bill since Reconstruction. White southerners rebelled, and Lady Bird was sent to quell the revolt.

She orchestrated a 1,628-mile train tour through eight states in four days. The schedule was made even more tortuous by angry crowds.

"You may not agree with what I have to say," Mrs. Johnson told them in her soft, firm drawl, "but at least you will understand the way I say it."

Six of the eight states she visited went for LBJ in the 1964 election, but the excitement was short-lived. Vietnam had wrestled away the nation's attention, and Mrs. Johnson worried that the pressures of the office would kill her husband.

When Johnson decided not to run again in 1968, Mrs. Johnson boldly insisted he add a phrase to his announcement. He had written, "I shall not seek" the nomination of my party. She had him add, "and I will not accept."

It was time to come home to Texas. To the wildflowers and the hot summer winds. It was time to enjoy life again.

On Jan. 22, 1973, Mrs. Johnson left the ranch to attend a University of Texas regents meeting. Her husband collapsed with a fatal heart attack that afternoon. After his death, she continued to promote the indigenous beauty of America.

On her 70th birthday in 1982, she helped launch the National Wildflower Center on a 42-acre site in Austin.

The center, now called the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, since has moved to a lush, 179-acre site with more than 400 native plant species. It has blossomed into a respected national research facility and one of the country's leading advocates for native plant conservation.

When Lady Bird began the center, she called it her "last hurrah." Almost 20 years later, she told presidential historian Michael Beschloss that she felt "like a top winding down."

Compiled from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Washington Post and The Associated Press