LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION LBJ Library 2313 Red River Street Austin, Texas 78705 http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/biopage.asp CLAUDIA "LADY BIRD" JOHNSON ORAL HISTORY, INTERVIEW XXVII PREFERRED CITATION For Internet Copy: Transcript, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson Oral History Interview XXVII, 1/30/82, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library. For Electronic Copy on Compact Disc from the LBJ Library: Transcript, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson Oral History Interview XXVII, 1/30/82, by Michael L. Gillette, Electronic Copy, LBJ Library. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY Legal Agreement Pertaining to the Oral History Interviews of CLAUDIA TAYLOR JOHNSON In accordance with the provisions of Chapter 21 of Title 44, United States Code, I, Claudia Taylor Johnson of Austin, Texas, do hereby give, donate and convey to the United States of America all my rights, title and interest in the tape recordings and transcripts of the personal interviews conducted with me and prepared for deposit in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. A list of the interviews is attached. This assignment is subject to the following terms and conditions: (1) The transcripts shall be available to all researchers. (2) The tape recordings shall be available to all researchers. (3) I hereby assign to the United States Government all copyright I may have in the interview transcripts and tapes. (4) Copies of the transcripts and tape recordings may be provided by the library to researchers upon request. (5) Copies of the transcripts and tape recordings may be deposited in or loaned to other institutions. Claudia Taylor Johnson 6/20/02 by Patti O'Meara Sharon Fawcett 5-10-2011 Appendix A Attached to and forming part of the instrument of gift of oral history interviews, executed by Claudia Taylor Johnson, and accepted by the Archivist of the United States on 5-10-2011. Mrs. Johnson's Oral History Interviews: May 26, 1975, with Merle Miller June 25, 1976, with Merle Miller June 29, 1976, with Merle Miller January 30, 1977, with Merle Miller February 14, 1977, with Merle Miller August 12, 1977, with Michael Gillette August 13, 1977, with Michael Gillette August 14, 1977, with Michael Gillette February 4, 1978, with Michael Gillette April 1, 1978, with Michael Gillette August 6, 1978, with Michael Gillette October 9, 1978, with Michael Gillette January 23, 1979, with Michael Gillette January 24, 1979, with Michael Gillette January 25-26, 1979, with Michael Gillette February 27-28, 1979, with Michael Gillette August 19, 1979, with Michael Gillette September 2-3, 1979, with Michael Gillette September 9, 1979, with Michael Gillette November 13, 1979, with Anthony Champagne January 4-5, 1980, with Michael Gillette January 29-30, with Michael Gillette September 20, 1980, with Michael Gillette September 26-27, 1980, with Michael Gillette February 6-7, 1981, with Michael Gillette February 20-21,1981, with Michael Gillette August 10, 1981, with Michael Gillette August 23, 1981, with Michael Gillette September 5, 1981, with Michael Gillette November 15, 1981, with Michael Gillette January 2-3, 1982, with Michael Gillette January 10, 1982, with Michael Gillette January 30, 1982, with Michael Gillette March 15, 1982, with Michael Gillette March 19-20, 1982, with Michael Gillette March 22, 1982, with Michael Gillette March 29, 1982, with Michael Gillette August 3-4, 1982, with Michael Gillette September 4, 1983, with Michael Gillette December 30, 1984, video and audio interview with Michael Gillette January 4, 1985, video and audio interview with Michael Gillette February 23, 1991, with Michael Gillette March 4, 1991, with W. C. Trueheart March 8, 1991, with Michael Gillette August 1994, with Harry Middleton (six interviews) November 5, 1994, with Harry Middleton January 23, 1987, with Nancy Smith August 18, 1987, with Lou Rudolph, Jim Henderson, and John and Sandy Brice August 19, 1987, with Lou Rudolph, Jim Henderson, and John and Sandy Brice August 20, 1987, with Lou Rudolph, and John and Sandy Brice August 1994, with S. Douglass Cater March 22, 1985, with Louis S. Gomolak July 16, 1996, with Jan Jarboe Russell July 17, 1996, with Jan Jarboe Russell INTERVIEW XXVII covering 1950-1951 DATE: January 30, 1982 INTERVIEWEE: LADY BIRD JOHNSON INTERVIEWER: MICHAEL L. GILLETTE PLACE: LBJ Ranch, Stonewall, Texas Tape 1 of 2 J: You asked me a minute ago about whether Lyndon was interested in the publicity that came with the Subcommittee on Preparedness. I guess he must have been in that it was a tool to accomplish a cure of the ills that he was attacking. I remember he used the phrase about wanting to "turn the spotlight on profiteers." He was very much concerned about the rising prices on our defense, the items that we brought, the engines of war. He said the prices were getting so much out of hand that they just made any cost calculations an empty, tentative guess. I think what he was trying to do was to get them to clean their own house, the makers of planes, tanks, munitions, all those things, just hold them down by letting them know that out there there was somebody looking. He was a great admirer of [George] Marshall, the secretary of defense. In general, he admired, liked, and went along with Truman. Sometimes they would have a pretty tough exchange of letters when they disagreed. G: Do you recall Marshall's reaction to the investigations? Was Marshall supportive of the subcommittee? J: He testified before them, as did [General Dwight] Eisenhower. I don't know whether it Johnson -- XXVII -- 2 was in 1950 or when, but I remember, I can see in my mind's eye both of their faces testifying before those committees. September always ushered in one of those periods of, "Shall I go to Texas? How much of the fall will I spend there?" It was a divided life. I can't say that it wrecked any great damage on our family, though. I did go to Texas, I forget just when, and Congress adjourned in late September and Lyndon came on down. But it met again in late November. If 1949 was a period that for us, and in retrospect it seems to me for the country, was a sort of happy time, in 1950, particularly as the year wore on, there were rising clouds and frustration. The war was continuing in Korea and getting more and more painful. President Truman was talking about universal military training, the draft. People were mad--particularly Texans, I think--at [Dean] Acheson. They were concerned about the takeover of communism in China. "Who lost China?" was a phrase you heard a lot, and Russia was always looming in the background. So I went home sometime that fall, early I think, and put Lynda Bird in Miss Hubrick's [?] school, which was just about a block and a half down the street from 1901 Dillman. Community children in kindergarten I suppose it was. No, by that time, by 1950 she was six, so she must have been in the first grade there. Miss Hubrick was a born teacher, very much a lady. I still see people who Lynda will remember having met in those times. G: Why did you select that school, do you recall? J: Because it was close and because friends whose opinion I valued recommended it. Johnson -- XXVII -- 3 I began my household life of making little lists and crossing them out, getting Mr. Erb to work on the trees at Thirtieth Place [Dillman Street?] and repairing the roof and laying a concrete slab behind the garage. The children could enjoy wheel toys there, because there were no sidewalks in those days. There may not even be still. Looking back on it I'm sure my children would laugh if they knew some of the saving measures that I did. But the country did them. For instance, you would collect old wool, absolutely unusable old coats or rugs or things, and sell them by the pound to something called the Olson Rug Company. They would wash them and weave them and you would get back, for a very modest price, a new rug. I did a lot of painting and hopefully making Dillman more attractive. Mrs. Ferris worked on it with me. I put Lynda and Luci in a dancing school; I cannot remember the lady's name now. She taught dancing on the second floor of a downtown building; I believe it was on Congress Avenue [in Austin]. Annette Duval, that was her name, and she taught dancing for many years. The people that I would see and go to lunch with were my old school friend, Bess Jones, and my campaign friend, Jerry Wilke, and Anne Bird Nalle and the folks from--we were always ones to spend time with our staff, the wives of our staff, like Nellie Connally and Mary Rather and Dorothy Plyler, old friends like Jeanne Deason, Delle Birdwell, and Sugar Pickle, the lively, cute, funny wife of Jake Pickle. Eloise Thornberry, and Margaret Mayer from the newspaper world. When Lyndon came down, he began covering the state, speaking to his usual constituency, associations of postmasters and REA [Rural Electrification Administration] co-ops. Now that he represented the whole state, adding on a lot, he would go to Johnson -- XXVII -- 4 universities outside the ones that the Tenth District had made his chief objectives, like Southwestern and San Marcos. He would go to Lubbock, to Texas Tech, and to--gee, I think there was one in San Angelo. G: Angelo State I guess it was. Well, did you find that since he did have a much larger constituency to cover that he spent less time at home in Austin? J: Yes.