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Transcription: [00:03:51]
public image. She was the soft part of the relationship. Johnson was famous for giving people the treatment and,
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screaming and yelling at them, and roughing up whatever edges there were to rough up and being incredibly rough and boisterous and, she was the calming influence. She was the one who soothed hurt feelings, she was the one who was there to "really he's not that bad, he means well" [[laughter]] which was, kind of one of the balancing parts of their relationship.
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They were both from Texas. He -- met her through friends and they had known each other for just 10 weeks before they got married and
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he actually proposed to her on the first date, and she said, "No I want to wait, it's not that, I'm not saying 'no', it's that -- it's quick" and when she finally did agree,
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they drove from where she was living in Austin to San Antonio, got married, and then moved to Washington, D.C.
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He was working as a Senator's aid at that time and then shortly after their marriage ran for the House.
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He spent 12 years in the House, 12 years in the Senate, 3 years as Vice President, and a little over 5 years as President.
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And through all that time she was his second in command. She really did take an active role in his political career without overshadowing it. Unlike Eleanor Roosevelt, who had a very political, very forward [[sniff]] role as First Lady and championed her own causes.
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Sometimes in opposition to her husband. Lady Bird did not.
She did champion her own causes, but she always made a point to get her husband's support and to support her husband's causes.
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She really did strongly believe in his War on Poverty and in his civil rights work, and he really helped her out when it came to the Highway Beautification Act.
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So, it was a balancing act.
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They were married for 39 years, she, uhm, outlived him by almost 39 years. She died just recently in July of 2007.
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And because of her work in and around the Austin area after her husband's presidency ended, she was responsible for cleaning up
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Town Lake in Austin and making sure that the trails were actually usable. Shortly after her death, despite all her protests during her life,
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they renamed Town Lake to Lady Bird Johnson Lake in her honor,
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for her efforts to make it a lovely place to go visit. Uhm.