Texas college student Jade Emerson found herself entranced as she worked on a podcast about Lady Bird Johnson, listening to hour upon hour of the former first lady recounting her life from childhood to advising her husband in the White House. "I fell in love very quickly. "She kept surprising me," said Emerson, host and producer of the University of Texas podcast "Lady Bird." The podcast, released earlier this year, is among several recent projects using Johnson's own lyrical voice to offer a new look at the first lady who died in 2007. Other projects include a documentary titled The Lady Bird Diaries that premieres Monday on Hulu and an exhibit in Austin at the presidential library for her husband, Lyndon B. Johnson, who died in 1973.
Lady Bird Johnson began recording an audio diary in the tumultuous days after her husband became president upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. It adds to recorded interviews she did following her husband's presidency and home movies she narrated. In making her podcast, Emerson relied heavily on interviews Johnson did with presidential library staff over the decades after her husband left the White House in 1969. "I don't know that people appreciated or realized how much she was doing behind the scenes, and I think that's the part that's only just now really starting to come out," said Lara Hall, LBJ Presidential Library curator. "Lady Bird: Beyond the Wildflowers" shows library visitors the myriad ways Johnson made an impact.
The new documentary from filmmaker Dawn Porter, based on Julia Sweig's 2021 biography Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight and a podcast hosted by the author, takes viewers through the White House years. Porter notes that Johnson's work included being "a fierce environmentalist" and an advocate for women. "She did all of these things and she didn't ask for credit, but she deserves the credit," Porter said. The couple's daughter Luci Baines Johnson remembers her frustration as a 16-year-old when she saw the message on the doorknob to her mother's room that read: "I want to be alone." Lady Bird Johnson was working on her audio tapes. "She was just begging for the world to give her the time to do what she'd been uniquely trained to do," said Luci Baines Johnson, who noted that her mother had degrees in history and journalism from the University of Texas.
(More
Lady Bird Johnson stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
