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Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Inside the Texas White House for the first time, Part 1
STONEWALL — President Lyndon Baines Johnson rose 6 feet 4 inches tall. The ceilings on the ground floor at his Texas White House — refurbished and opened to the public for the first time in December — are only 8 feet high.
The visitor’s main impression of the oak-shaded ranch house on the Pedernales River is its utter lack of grandiosity. The two-story structure, which the family used as a residence until very recently, looks less like the Texas seat of the world’s most powerful man, and more like the relaxing retreat where your beloved country relatives live.
“They just weren’t showy people,” says Russ Whitlock, superintendent of the LBJ National Historical Park. “The ranch and the ranch house take the Johnsons off the pedestal of president and first lady, and makes them into people we can relate to.”
“It was quite an emotional rollercoaster to fully come to terms that the only constant home that you had ever had, the place where you had gone to for all the good times — Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, summer, school breaks — would no longer belong to your family,” the president and first lady’s daughter, Luci Baines Johnson, says. “We had intellectually known this for 35 years, but it’s quite another thing to have to accept the day has finally come when life as you have known it for half a century is going to change, and it’s going to be forever!”
Parts of the house, including a blindingly yellow kitchen, have been restored to their 1960s glory. Lady Bird Johnson’s bedroom, on the other hand, retains the updates that she made almost until her death in 2007.
The family, including Luci Johnson’s sister, Lynda Johnson Robb, loaned personal belongings to the Park Service, so that every room looks as if the Johnsons had just stepped outside for a moment, perhaps for their daily drive through the surrounding, wildflower-blanketed fields.
“Mrs. Johnson wanted it to look lived-in,” Whitlock says. “Not a museum.” Visitors, formerly confined to bus tours of the grounds, now may take supervised tours of the ground floor.
At every turn, the visitor learns something new. The president, for instance, received a massage every day. The first lady — Texas celebrates her centennial through her birth date on Dec. 22 and beyond — wrote frequently from a small desk. At the president’s direction, a keg of Michelob always awaited guests in the service room behind the kitchen.
Even the Johnson family was surprised by some discoveries made during the renovation process.
It would take many visits to examine every memento, photograph and personal belonging, but Johnson admirers will likely make repeat pilgrimages. And we’ll revisit Lady Bird Johnson’s centennial periodically through the end of the year.
For now, we’ll share these first images from the Texas White House. (And more photos to come.)
Next up: Lady Bird Johnson Centennial events, Johnson family sites & Lady Bird’s Legacy update
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