Claudia Alta Taylor, better known by her nickname, Lady Bird, was an incredible philanthropist and environmentalist. She’s particularly beloved in Texas for being the driving force behind the Highway Beautification Act, which led to the multitude of wildflowers along Texas highways in the Spring and Summer.
Early Life
Lady Bird was born into a well-off Texas family in 1912. When she was little, her nurse, Alice Tittle, said that she was as “purty as a lady bird,” and gave her the nickname she would carry for the rest of her life. After high school, she chose to attend the University of Texas at Austin after seeing the many wildflowers on campus. There she studied journalism and education and, shortly after graduation, met her future husband, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Political Partner
On their first date in October of 1934, Lyndon proposed. Lady Bird would take some convincing, but the two married only a little over a month later. Lady Bird supported her husband’s political ambitions both financially and socially. She was always the soft to her husband’s loud, smoothing the ruffled feathers Lyndon Johnson left in his wake. According to Bill Moyers, who gave the elegy for her funeral in 2007,
Oh, he needed her, alright. You know the famous incident. Once, trying to locate her in a crowded room, he growled aloud: “Where’s Lady Bird?” And she replied: “Right behind you, darling, where I’ve always been.”
If you need further proof of her influence over her husband, consider that the LBJ Presidential Library is at the University of Texas, Lady Bird’s alma mater, rather than Texas State University, LBJ’s alma mater.
Public Domain. Source.
Campaigning
She might have been soft, but that was never mistaken for weakness. When Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act threatened to the lose Johnson the South in the 1964 election, Lady Bird undertook a grueling 4 day, 8 state, 47 city whistlestop tour of the South. When crowds became unruly in Columbia, SC, Liz Carpenter remembers,
And she handled it beautifully. She just put one hand up and said, ‘My friends, this is a country of free speech, and I respect your opinion. But this is my time to speak my mind.’
That was the turning point in the tour. While Johnson would lose the Deep South, he still won the election in a landslide.
Where Flowers Bloom
After Lyndon Johnson passed away, Lady Bird became deeply involved in local beautification movements, believing “where flowers bloom, so does hope.” She would help found the National Wildlife Research Center and was instrumental in the damming of the Colorado River in Austin, Texas to create parks and hike and bike trails through the city. She insisted that neither project bear her name, but after she passed away in 2007, the citizens of Austin decided to honor her with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and Lady Bird Lake.
Interpreting Texas 