Timeline: LBJ and the Nation
1908-1919 1920-1929 1929-1940 1941-1945 1946-1953 1954-1960 1960-1963 1963-1969 1969-1973
1969-1973
Portrait of President Lyndon B. Johnson at the LBJ Ranchcredit: Frank Wolfe
Portrait of Lady Bird Johnsoncredit: Frank Wolfe
After forty years in public life, capped by the presidential period of triumph and tragedy, the path for Lyndon and Lady Bird, who had walked the crowded years together, led home. “Perhaps the time will come,” the president says, “when I will look back on the splendor of the Presidency and find it hard to believe that I had actually been there. But leaving it, I know I have been there, and I know I have given it everything that was in me.”
Lyndon Johnson lived for four years and two days after he left the White House. They were the “milk and honey years,” Lady Bird called them. He became a full-time rancher, wrote the memoirs of his presidency, and watched over the construction of this Library. In every phase of its activities he left his signature, written large:
Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th president
(August 27, 1908 - January 22, 1973)
After leaving Washington, Lady Bird Johnson directed her efforts to encourage the growth and use of wildflowers and native grasses in every region of the country, both to beautify the land and save in the consumption of water. A generation after making her mark in the White House it was said of her: “She lit a fire in this country that still burns.”