Gasp! by Laura Axelrod

Lady Bird Johnson, 1912-2007

“I look at Mrs. Johnson and I think that she is perhaps the only woman who ever lived who could have been married to him for that many years and remained a person.”
---Bess Abell, Assistant to Lady Bird
in "Lyndon, an Oral Biography" by Merle Miller

I have lots of Lyndon and Lady Bird memorabilia from my time in Austin, researching at the LBJ Presidential Library. This issue of Life Magazine is from August 13, 1965.

You can’t spend time at the LBJ without seeing Lady Bird’s influence. The ground floor of the library is a time capsule of Lyndon’s life and events from the 60s. But if you go up to the 8th floor, there’s a replica of Lyndon’s Oval Office and First Lady’s Gallery. Press a red button and Lady Bird will narrate portions of the tour.

The Reading Room was just around the corner from the Oval Office. I used to hear her voice over loudspeakers, just before I’d enter the double doors to the research library. It used to drive me a little crazy, to be honest. Her Texas twang would break my concentration as I headed in for long day of sifting through and photographing government documents.

While I was there in 2005-2006, Lady Bird was still active at the library. I remember one night when the guards and staff were nervous because of her impending arrival. It amazed me that she was still alive. Imagine what she must've lived through and how the world has changed since 1912.

Lady Bird's memories of the President Kennedy's assasination are chilling and emotional. The ground floor of the library has a short recording of her reading from her entries that day.

The following are more links to useful sites about Lady Bird:

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has created a wonderful tribute site.
Lady Bird’s Bio on the Library page
At the bottom of this page, you can see one of Lady Bird's home movies

1968

I became fascinated with 1968 during my third year of college. 1991 was the year of my intellectual awakening. I had already undergone a political transformation. The perspectives of my parents no longer fit my life experience. Class differences between a romantic interest and I figured prominently in my switch to liberal politics.

A course on Emerson, Whitman, Dickenson and Thoreau led to me to Soul on Ice and On the Road. I identified with Kerouac's freedom to express everything. I had never been west of the Mississippi. I wondered what the Plains looked like.

Each book begat another... Kerouac led to Ginsberg, led to Baldwin, led to Thich Nhat Hahn. I devoured books on social change and radical spirituality. At night, I went to Theosophy meetings. Buddhism linked Theosophy to the 60s.

Unlike others who study that period of time, I didn't experience it myself. Nor did I romanticize the drug use. Instead, I embraced the idea of community and social change - the belief that one should act on beliefs.

Before class one day, I bought a copy of the Port Huron Statement. I began to notice the subtle ways that race and class played a part in my daily life. Tracing the Movement from the Civil Rights era to the Weather Underground gave me a feel for what it was like to take responsibility for my beliefs. I read every book I could about the 60s, and I noted the discrepancies.

It became my private obsession. I finally found my family, except I was trapped in another time period.

Over the next decade, I studied the work of historians, scholars and memorists. I collected out-of-print books on 1968 and radical politics. Whenever I needed to escape the present, I read about Dave Dellinger, the Free Speech Movement and the Chicago 7 trial. One of my strongest memories of being battered is of going to the library and taking out armfuls of books on the 1968 riots.

It didn't occur to me to write about it back then. I needed to escape to that world for my own survival. Invisible communities are better than having no community at all.