Monday, February 18, 2013

HISTORY - President Lyndon Johnson's Love Letters

"Presidential Admirer: LBJ's Love Letters to Lady Bird, His Bride to Be" PBS Newshour 2/14/2013

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  ..... a 70-year-old love story told in letters from President Lyndon Johnson to the woman he wanted to marry released today by the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.

The more than 90 letters showed the impatience of a man so taken by Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor that he proposed the day after they met in Sep. 1934.

And just weeks later, he wrote:  "I want to always love only you.  It is an important decision.  It isn't being made in one night -- it probably never will be yours -- but your lack of decision hasn't tempered either my affection, devotion or ability to know what I want," to which she replied:  "Your letter yesterday sort of put me on the spot, didn't it, dear?  All I can say, in absolute honesty, is I love you.  I don't how everlastingly I love you, so I can't answer you yet."

In audio recorded in 1978, Lady Bird Johnson described her dilemma at the time.

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