Lady Bird Johnson, 94, Dies; Eased a Path to Power

Lady Bird Johnson, the widow of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was once described by her husband as "the brains and money of this family" and whose business skills cushioned his road to the White House, died yesterday afternoon at her home in Austin, Tex. She was 94.

Lady Bird Johnson in 1967. More Photos »

What is your favorite memory of Lady Bird Johnson?

Lady Bird Johnson at the LBJ Ranch near Stonewall, Tex., in 1991. More Photos >

Mrs. Johnson was hospitalized for a week last month with a low-grade fever. She died of natural causes, surrounded by family, including her two daughters, and friends, said a family spokeswoman, Elizabeth Christian.

Mrs. Johnson was a calm and steadying influence on her often moody and volatile husband as she quietly attended to the demands imposed by his career. Liz Carpenter, her press secretary during her years in the White House, once wrote that "if President Johnson was the long arm, Lady Bird Johnson was the gentle hand."

She softened hurts, mediated quarrels and won over many political opponents. Johnson often said his political ascent would have been inconceivable without his wife's devotion and forbearance. Others shared that belief.

After Johnson became the Democratic nominee for vice president in 1960, James Reston, the Washington columnist of The New York Times, said, "Lyndon could never have made it this far without the help of that woman."

Mrs. Johnson was often compared to Eleanor Roosevelt, a first lady she greatly admired but did not emulate.

"Mrs. Roosevelt was an instigator, an innovator, willing to air a cause without her husband's endorsement," Ms. Carpenter said. "Mrs. Johnson was an implementer and translator of her husband and his purpose - a wife in capital letters."

Mrs. Johnson had one major cause during the Johnson presidency, highway beautification, and her husband pushed Congress into passing legislation to further the program.

Mrs. Johnson made many trips to explain her husband's programs like Head Start, the Job Corps and the War on Poverty. But, Ms. Carpenter said, she "never hesitated to admit that during the early years of their marriage, her husband expected coffee and newspapers in bed and his shoes shined and that she was happy to comply."

Bonnie Angelo, a reporter who covered Mrs. Johnson for Time magazine, said, "She took a lot from him, but she always said, ‘Lyndon is larger than life,' and she took him with equanimity. She was the eye of the hurricane, the calm center of the maelstrom that was Lyndon Johnson."

Mrs. Johnson developed her own public projects. She was an early supporter of the environment and, in championing highway beautification, worked to banish billboards and plant flowers and trees.

The Lady Bird Johnson Park in Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, is an outgrowth of her First Lady's Committee for a More Beautiful Capital. She founded the million National Wildflower Research Center in Austin, Tex., which opened in April 1995 and changed its name to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in 1998. The center conducts research and provides information on plants, landscaping and conservation.

Mrs. Johnson was known for her even temper, although she did not always consider it an asset. "I think it might be better to blow up sometimes," she once said.

She was a stoic, rarely admitting pain, a trait her husband characterized as perhaps her only fault. She had four miscarriages but never indulged in self-pity.

Mrs. Johnson financed her husband's first campaign for Congress in 1937 with a ,000 loan against a small inheritance from her mother. She began taking an active role in politics in 1941, after he lost his first bid for the Senate and returned to the House. While he was on active duty in the Navy during World War II, Mrs. Johnson managed his legislative office. From that point she shared his public life, representing him, speaking for him and answering questions with unusual candor.

When Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, rather than his rival Johnson, was nominated for the presidency in 1960, a reporter asked if she was disappointed. "I'm relieved," she said, then immediately confessed: "That isn't true. I'm terribly disappointed. Lyndon would have made a noble president."

Although Mrs. Johnson was less than enthusiastic when her husband accepted the nomination for vice president, she campaigned tirelessly and accompanied the women of the Kennedy family on many of their appearances, particularly in the South.