Claudia Taylor (Lady Bird) Johnson (First Lady)

posted by Scott Andrew Bird

Born in a country mansion near Karnack, Texas, in 1912, Claudia Alta Taylor received the nickname ‘Lady Bird’ as a young child. It is as Lady Bird that she is still known today.

Her mother, Minnie Pattillo Taylor, died when she was five and she was reared by her father, aunt and family servants. Claudia learnt much about the business world from her father, Thomas Jefferson Taylor, and studied at the University of Texas where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in Arts and in Journalism.

In 1934 Claudia met Lyndon Baines Johnson, then a Congressional secretary, and they married in November that same year. For a number of years her life was devoted to her husband’s political career, and it was not until 1944 that she gave birth to their first child, Lynda Bird. Three years later the couple welcomed another child, Luci Baines.

In 1960, and for the decade that followed, Claudia once again became heavily involved in her husband’s political life. The couple moved to the Whitehouse following Kennedy’s murder, and she took highly active roles in both her own projects (such as the First Lady’s Committee for a More Beautiful Capital) and her husbands war-on-poverty initiatives; particularly the Head Start project for pre-school children.

With the end of the Presidential term the couple moved back to Texas, where L.B. Johnson died in 1973. Claudia devoted her life to her husband’s memory, her children and grandchildren; as well as continuing to support the many causes dear to her. In 1982 she founded the National Wildflower Research Centre (www.wildflower.org); she continues to support the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library (www.lbjlib.utexas.edu) and serves on the board of the National Geographic Society (www.ngs.org) as a trustee emeritus.

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