Lady Bird....

Lady Bird Johnson has passed away at the age of 94. Lady Bird has seemed like the unofficial grandmother of Texas. She had been around all my adult life in an official or unofficial capacity and a lot of history goes with her. I always thought of Lady Bird as a very decent, compassionate and caring person married to someone who wasn't. I can remember when she went to

Washington with Lyndon for the first time, many adults thought that having someone named "Lady Bird" as the first lady would be an extreme embarrasment to Texans. It didn't work out that way and now all these decades later it's going to be strange not having a "Lady Bird" around.

Whenever you see wildflowers in Texas think of Lady Bird. I've heard that she was more proud of having done so much for the landscape than she was of having been the first lady. I took the picture above of her official portrait just last February while in the White House. GWB has it in a prominent place, more so than any other first lady besides Eleanor Roosevelt.