Reply #3: They Believed the Ranch Belonged to the Public [View All]

Lady Bird and Lyndon Johnson actually gave the ranch and hundreds of acres attached to it to the American public December of 1972, to be owned and run by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site, after going to Jefferson's estate at Monticello, and realizing then that the "Texas White House" was also a treasure of our Nation's, and belonged rightfully to all the American people, where they could go and visit it for free, at any time. This was all part of Lady Bird's general attitude that her life, and the life of any public servant, belonged to the American people, and that the common public places of the country, such as highways, belonged to society as a whole, to be enjoyed and cared for, and not to commercial interests to exploit, and thus her famous billboard bans along Interstate highways, and flower-plantings there instead. PBS "News Hour" had a nice tribute to her on Friday evening, with clips of her greeting visitors at the ranch several years ago. Although she also lived in another house for the last many years of her life, I think in Austin, she often still stayed at the ranch.

Lady Bird's hero was Eleanor Roosevelt, which explains a lot, and she had the same all-encompassing love for American history and the public's unfettered right to it, that Jackie Kennedy also had. Much has been made since her death, of her influence as the creator, just about, of the modern environmental movement, but it should not be forgotten that she believed, as all New Dealers did, that the people own the treasures of our country and should have free access to them; they are not the "property" of corporations or individual rich people. How different they both were, Lady Bird and Lyndon Johnson, and how seldom they got any credit for the greatness they both were.