March 31, 1968
From the personal diary of Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson. Entry for Sunday, March 31, 1968. First published in the posthumous collection A White House Diary, Volume III (University of Texas Press, 1985), with the permission of the Johnson estate. Handwritten in blue ink on White House stationery.
Sunday. The magnolias along the South Lawn are almost open. I noticed them this morning and thought: everything is about to break.
He showed me the speech at four o'clock. The full text, with the last paragraph. Six sentences. He had written them himself on the yellow pad — not dictated, not drafted by anyone. His handwriting was steady. That is how I knew he meant it.
I read them twice. Then I sat in the chair by the window and did not say anything for what must have been two minutes, though it felt longer. He watched me the way he watches everyone — reading the reaction before the words come.
What I said to him I will not write here in full. Some things between a husband and wife belong to the room they were spoken in. But I will say this: I told him that the work was not finished. That the men he had sent were still there. That Medicare and Head Start and the voting rights bill were not self-sustaining things — they were seedlings, and seedlings need someone standing over them. I told him that walking away was not humility. It was something else.
He said, "Bird, I am so tired."
I said, "I know."
He said, "The doctors told me —" and then stopped. He has been stopping mid-sentence more often lately. The thought arrives and he decides not to finish it. I have learned not to press.
I said what I believed, which is that he was the only man who could hold this together. The party, the war, the legislation, the country. I said it was not vanity to believe that. I said it was the truth, and that the truth sometimes asks terrible things of people.
He took the yellow pad back. He crossed out the six sentences. He wrote one new sentence in their place. I did not read it until he was on the air.
I offer not my resignation from this burden, but my life to it.
I was in the family sitting room when he said it. Luci was beside me. When he spoke that line, Luci took my hand. She did not know what I had done. She thought he was being brave. She was right. He was being brave. He was doing what I asked him to do.
The phones began ringing immediately after. I went to the bedroom and closed the door. I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time.
The magnolias will be open by morning.
