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This is LBJ Country
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Published: March 23, 2008
JOHNSON CITY, Texas - Fifty years before taking the presidential oath aboard Air Force One in the wake of John F. Kennedy's assassination, 5-year-old Lyndon Baines Johnson sat on a porch step and squinted under the brim of a white cowboy hat.
"This little boy grew up in the hills of Texas," intones the narrator of a short biographical film at the LBJ National Historical Park. A black-and-white photo taken in 1913 shows the familiar face later lined by the Vietnam War.
Johnson's boyhood home in Johnson City and the LBJ Ranch and Texas White House of his adult years are 14 miles apart on U.S. 290 in Blanco County. Both are part of the historical park and an easy 45-minute drive north of San Antonio. It's about the same distance east to Austin and the LBJ presidential library and museum.
This rugged ranchland deep in the heart of Texas is called the Hill Country. It is dotted with limestone outcroppings and covered with stunted live oaks and cedar bushes. Texas bluebonnets and other colorful wildflowers carpet the landscape in spring.
The 2008 presidential campaign and centennial of Johnson's birth are bringing fresh attention to the 36th president, the only Texas native to hold the nation's highest office. George H.W. Bush lives in Houston and George W. Bush owns a ranch 140 miles northeast of Johnson City, but the 41st president was born in Massachusetts and the 43rd in Connecticut, and both were educated at Andover and Yale before tapping into Texas oil and politics.
Johnson was born just outside the little town named after his forebears, was raised in the town with his four siblings and attended college in nearby San Marcos. He always returned to his family's Hill Country homestead along the Pedernales River - whether following his election to Congress in 1937, when he become Senate majority leader in 1955 or upon assuming the presidency in 1963 after Kennedy's assassination.
Texas White House To Open Soon
Either the National Park Service's "ranch district" or "Johnson City district" is a good place to learn about Johnson's roots and presidency.
There are a few more things to see and do at the sprawling 718-acre ranch. The park service offers bus tours around the property for $3 to $6, depending on age.
The Texas White House typically hasn't been open to the public. With last year's death of former first lady Lady Bird Johnson, however, preparations are under way to make some rooms available for tours. The president's office inside the house is scheduled to open Aug. 27, the 100th anniversary of his birth.
LBJ's boyhood home and a related frontier settlement are open, free and within an easy walk of shops and restaurants in Johnson City, population 1,500.
The boyhood home was built in 1901 and restored in the 1970s. It is decorated with Johnson family heirlooms and period furnishings from the 1920s, when Johnson's father was elected to the Texas Legislature. Young LBJ's interest in politics and current events also was fostered by his mother, one of the area's few college-educated women at the time.
A then-rare radio also filled the house with news of the day.
"The interests of young Lyndon's parents had a profound effect on his subsequent political career and on the issues he championed both as a congressman and as president," tour literature says. "So began a career in public service that spanned more than three decades ... and ushered in landmark legislation such as Medicare, Head Start, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 43 national park authorizations or additions."
Civil Rights Efforts
Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were at the center of a controversial comment this year by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democratic presidential candidate.
"It took a president to get it done," Clinton said of the law that realized the dream of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Some political observers described the comment as a slight to King and Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton's Democratic rival in this year's presidential election and the country's most successful black presidential candidate. Obama has politically associated himself with Kennedy and King.
As the Democratic nominating process unfolds, it's startling to consider that, according to the LBJ presidential library and museum in Austin, there were no elected black officials in the United States when Johnson signed the civil rights law and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Museum In Austin
The LBJ Library and Museum, on the University of Texas campus, contains artifacts such as Kennedy's Roman Catholic missal that Johnson placed his hand on when sworn into office aboard Air Force One and the desk and pen used to authorize the Voting Rights Act.
The museum concentrates on Johnson's presidency, including his decision 40 years ago to withdraw from his re-election campaign and focus on the Vietnam War.
"I have concluded that I should not permit the presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year," Johnson said in a televised March 1968 speech. "Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."
After a bloody convention in Chicago, remembered for its violent clashes between protesters and police, the fractured Democratic Party lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon.
Johnson died Jan. 22, 1973, before the Vietnam War ended.
Austin and the Hill Country offer visitors other museums and recreational opportunities. But it hardly seems worth going all that way without remembering LBJ.
IF YOU GO
Lyndon Baines Johnson
National Historical Park
WHERE: The park consists of two districts, the boyhood home in Johnson City and the LBJ Ranch near Stonewall, which are about 14 miles apart on U.S. 290 in Blanco County. Johnson City is about 45 minutes north of San Antonio or west of Austin.
WHEN: Open 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Thanksgiving, Dec. 25 and New Year's Day.
ADMISSION: There is no fee at the Johnson City site; bus tours of the ranch are $3 to $6, depending on age.
INFORMATION: Call (830) 868-7128 or go to nps.gov/lyjo/index.htm
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Library and Museum
WHERE: 2313 Red River St., Austin, on the University of Texas campus
WHEN: Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Dec. 25
ADMISSION: Free
INFORMATION: Call (512) 721-0200 or go to www.lbjlib.utexas.edu.
Reporter Mark Holan can be reached at (813) 835-2102 or mholan@tampatrib .com.
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