Dawn's Notes
Lady Bird and Flowers - March 2020
by Dawn Phelps, RN/LMSW
Lady Bird Johnson was born in 1912. I always wondered how she got her name. When I looked it up, I learned that her name was Claudia Alta Taylor, but the name Lady Bird stuck when her nursemaid, Alice Tittle, said, “She’s as purdy as a ladybird!”
Opinions vary as to whether Alice was referring to a bird or to ladybugs since ladybugs are also called ladybird beetles. Lady Bird’s father called her Lady, and her future husband would call her Bird—the name she used on her marriage license.
Lady Bird’s mother died when she was five. As a child, she spent most of her time outside, walking, fishing, and swimming. Looking back, she said she was not lonely. She loved watching the wildflowers bloom each spring, and she spent her summer with relatives in Alabama. She said her aunt “opened my spirit to beauty.”
As a young woman, when she flew to Austin, Texas, to attend college, when her plane was landing, she told of looking down at fields of bluebonnet flowers, and said she fell in love with Austin. She graduated with degrees in history and journalism.
A friend introduced her to Lyndon Baines Johnson who had political aspirations. They married, and after he became the 36th President of the United States, she looked for ways to pass along her love of flowers and beautification to others in the United States through legislation.
When her Highway Beautification Act was passed in 1965, it became known as Lady Bird’s Bill. The legislation included limiting billboards and junkyards along the interstates and encouraged planting sustainable wildflowers along the roadsides.
She established the National Wildflower Research Center near Austin, Texas, that encompasses hundreds of acres of land that are planted in Texas wildflowers. The center collects and stores seeds from the flowers and plants in an effort to preserve them.
My husband Tom and I were especially appreciative of Lady Bird when we drove back from Texas in March of 2019. We were awestruck by the variety of flowers along the highways. I remember saying aloud to my husband, “Thank you, Lady Bird Johnson!” as we were awed by the beauty of the flowers!
Bright-blue flowers sprinkled the medians and areas beside the highways. I wondered if they were bluebonnets, Texas’ state flower. There were yellow flowers, pink flowers, yellow and red sunflowers, as well as fields of purple henbit and yucca plants, some as tall as trees, sporting their large cream-colored blossoms.
There were patches of yellow clover, a true delight for bees! There were small trees with fluffy orange and yellow blossoms, crocuses in the median, and fields sprinkled with multi-colored flowers—pink, yellow, blue, white, and purple. What beauty! We snapped photos to help us remember our trip!
It is no accident that the highways of Texas are beautiful. Lady Bird’s love of flowers is still be shared by those driving the highways; she was deliberate in her actions. Even though she died in 2007, her legacy lives on in flowers in Texas, and she is not forgotten!
Have you thought about what you would like to leave behind as your legacy? Most of us will never sponsor a large beautification project like Lady Bird Johnson; we will probably not make history. But we can still help beautify our world and bring joy and beauty to others. We can “plant” love in the hearts of those around us.
Lady Bird once said, “Ugliness is so grim. A little beauty, something that is lovely, I think, can help create harmony that will help lessen tension.” Grief is an unpleasant, “grim” experience that is not easy.
But even in the midst of our grief we can do little things to help beautify our world and “perk” up our environment. A more cheerful color on the wall, a new picture, a different arrangement of the furniture, or a new outfit. Maybe some trees and shrubs or a flower garden to add color.
Since the weather should be warming up soon, why not plant flowers that will be “sustainable” year after year. Perhaps “plant” kindness and love for someone else. Even though kindnesses may not show on the outside, it can grow and be passed on. Like Lady Bird Johnson, plant beauty, and bloom where you are planted.
Call about the next "Living Life after Loss" Group at:
Meadowlark Hospice
709 Liberty, Clay Center, Kansas
(785) 632-2225
Dawn Phelps, RN/LMSW, Group Facilitator