From the August 4, 1989 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:
When Lady Bird Johnson walks among wildflowers at the home of an Island friend near Watcha Pond, she steps lightly and speaks gently. Indeed, the former First Lady is home on the Vineyard or anywhere in the world among these perennials that have touched her life from childhood days in east Texas to White House years in the nation’s capital. Even today, more than 20 years after Mrs. Johnson’s departure from the White House, she devotes a central part of her busy life to the preservation of wildlife and beauty in America.
“Don’t you love it when they wave in the wind,” she muses in a soft Texan hilt. I really love it when they just drift. And I didn’t step on a one.” She is busy in this seeded patch, examining the successive growth that began with oxeye daisies, now turned black-eyed Susans, the middle stage. “The a purple flower comes,” she explains from beneath a wide brimmed straw had with thick red sash.
She removes her red sunglasses to get a closer look. “All right, little bees,” she calls out. I won’t disturb you but a minute.” Mrs. Johnson studies the golden blossoms with dark centers.
On this hot, cloudless day a white-tailed hawk rides the wind and disappears into scrub oak surrounding the home of Patricia and the late Thornton Bradshaw. Mrs. Johnson, a frequent summer visitor to the Island, revels in the glory of the back-eyed Susans around her. She is relaxed and dresses casually in yellow skirt, floral print jersey and tennis shoes with white anklets.
At the age of 76 Lady Bird Johnson seems even prettier than she was during the White House years from 1963 to 1969, the pinnacle of an adult lifetime spent with late President Lyndon Baines Johnson over his long political career in Washington.
Her soft radiance and modest attire belie her pioneering strength and leadership in the environmental field. She has sailed America’s polluted rivers, alerting municipal and state government across the nation to the urgent need for extensive cleanups. During her husband’s administration, she ignited a beautification program that still leaves the nation’s captal aflame in the natural color of flowers. “We wanted to put masses of flowers where the masses passed,” Mrs. Johnson says over a glass of iced tea.
In recent years her environmental efforts have led to the creation of the National Wildflower Research Center, an organization in Texas that educates and promotes the propagation of indigenous species of wildflowers. With Carlton B. Lees, she wrote the book Wildflowers Across America, which was published by Abbeville Press last year.
Mrs. Johnson carries the title of cochairman of the wildlife research center in Austin, Tex., with actress Helen Hayes.
“I guess what enabled me to finally engage in the wildflower center was that, upon returning from the White House to Texas in January 1969, all those open fields, meadows and broad sweeps, and lovely little hidden places on country roads - I just gasped to see how they had all been filled up with grids of housing, great big sprawling shopping malls on the outskirts of cities, acres of paved parking, spaghetti networks of highways everywhere,” says the former First Lady.
“I returned to Texas, looked and saw what had happened to the world in all the years I’d been gone, though I’d never really lost my roots. But I was so involved in the busy life we led, I really didn’t see what was happening to the physical world I had loved. It had gotten so full of people, and all those things I’ve talked about, there was no room left for the wildflowers I had known and loved in my childhood days and university days.
“Wildflowers were special to me and I just got to thinking, ‘Is my world changing? May these not be here for my grandchildren?’ The only thing we could do was planned was planned landscaping of the country, which finally led me on my birthday in December 1982 to start the wildflower center.”
During her Vineyard stays, Mrs. Johnson has discovered the wildflowers best suited to the Island climate. “I take walks here, not as many as I used to. I come across these lovely little dappled meadows of Queen Anne’s lace, and a good deal of black-eyed Susans and chicory. Chicory everywhere! Not as much butterfly weed as I’d like to see - it just sparkles with its brilliant color - and some fuzzy purple things, I just don’t know what they are.
“Martha’s Vineyard is visually blessed, distinct. It obviously has its history and its own personality,” she says.
Lady Bird Johnson insists she will never again become involved in the heat of political controversy. But the former First Lady has a message for Americans about the future if this country and its environment endangered by oil spills and medical waste. “Just look at how mad everybody is about it,” Mrs. Johnson says.
“An aroused citizenry can get almost anything done.”
Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com
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