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N0KFQ > TODAY 22.01.17 16:12l 53 Lines 2535 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 19962_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Jan 22
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<F1OYP<F4DUR<F3KT<F1OYP<VK6ZRT<N0KFQ
Sent: 170122/1404Z 19962@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ6.0.13
1973
Lyndon Baines Johnson dies in Texas
On this day in 1973, former President Lyndon Baines Johnson dies
in Johnson City, Texas, at the age of 64.
After leaving the White House in 1968, L.B.J. returned to his
beloved home state, Texas, with his wife, Ladybird, and immersed
himself in the activity dearest to him: ranching. Although
ostensibly retired, L.B.J. kept up a busy daily schedule
reminiscent of his days in the White House. His biographer, Doris
Kearns, observed Johnson going about ranching duties with the
same intensity he had once displayed at work in the Oval Office.
At morning meetings on the ranch, Johnson instructed each hand to
make a solemn pledge that you will not go to bed tonight until
you are sure that every steer has everything he needs. We've got
a chance of producing some of the finest beef in this country if
we work at it.and if we treat those hens with loving care we
should be able to produce the finest eggs in the country. Each
night he found not presidential briefings on his bedside table,
but reports he had ordered on the ranch's daily production of
eggs. To Kearns, Johnson's obsession with his hens' inability to
produce as many eggs as he expected contained a hint of the
frustration he had once experienced in trying to win an
apparently un-winnable war in Vietnam.
Beneath the bustle, Johnson remained, in his own words,
miserable. For a man who had wanted to carve out a legacy as the
creator of a Great Society in America, his disappointment that
his part in escalating the Vietnam War overshadowed his other
accomplishments was immense. Johnson's record included successful
social and economic reforms such as the Voting Rights Act, the
Civil Rights Act, improvements in housing and urban development
and strong support for America's space program, but these seemed
to be forgotten as public criticism of the war dogged L.B.J. into
retirement and even beyond the grave.
On the day of Nixon's second inaugural celebration, Johnson
watched sullenly as Nixon announced the dismantling of many of
Johnson's Great Society social programs and, the next day, that
he had achieved the ceasefire in Vietnam that had eluded Johnson.
Johnson had reportedly predicted that [when the Great Society]
dies, I, too, will die. The following day, while Ladybird and
their daughters were in Austin, Johnson suffered a fatal heart
attack at his ranch in Johnson City.
73 - K.O., n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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