TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

AUSTIN, Texas — The topic of land conservation is regarded as one of the top issues not only for farmers, but for everyone. This year’s Farm Bill legislation will undoubtedly contain provisions for increased efforts in conservation – but acting on the issue isn’t something Americans put on the front burner.

It was a lady from Texas, in a time when conservation was only beginning to worry a collective few groups,  who stepped up to plant the seeds of beautifying a nation one road at a time. Claudia Alta Taylor was born in east Texas in 1912. Her father was a wealthy businessman, but she lost her mother when only five years old.

She would say later in an interview, it was those times after her mother’s death that she spent a lot of time alone walking the eastern Texas countryside and discovering its beauty.

Taylor earned a college education, in a time when women weren’t encouraged to do so, and would become accomplished in business building a broadcasting empire with her husband. She would remain active in these endeavors for four decades.

It was during those years she gained opportunities to start beautification projects, from the nation’s capitol to the highways of Texas. Thanks in part to her campaign to beautify the United States, she helped introduce legislation that would become known as the Beautification Act of 1965, designed to regulate billboards and clean up junkyards along America’s highways.

Then-President Lyndon Johnson, who signed the legislation, said, “There is a part of America which was here long before we arrived, and will be here, if we preserve it, long after we depart: the forests and the flowers, the open prairies and the slope of the hills, the tall mountains, the granite, the limestone, the caliche, the unmarked trails, the winding little streams – well, this is the America that no amount of science or skill can ever recreate or actually ever duplicate.”

It was the Johnson Administration credited with being the most active in conservation since the presidencies of each Roosevelt, enacting such legislation as the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Program and many additions to the National Park system – all told, a total of 200 laws relating to the environment.

Taylor’s involvement in the environment would continue throughout her life. Her passion for preserving native plants led to the creation of the National Wildflower Research Center in 1982 and in 1987, she helped add the native wildflower requirement as an amendment to the Surface Transportation Urban Relocation Authorization Act.

Today, certain native wildflower seeds or seedlings must be planted in landscaping all federal highways projects.

While most people would be hard-pressed to recall a little lady from eastern Texas named Claudia Alta Taylor, nearly all know of the environmental activities of former First Lady – and the former Miss Taylor – “Lady Bird” Johnson.

Johnson passed away last week at the age of 94 from natural causes, and though her time in the White House, was consumed with duties in a tremulous time for the nation, She never forgot the beauty she encountered as a child and never stopped trying to spread that beauty across the country.

Even her name, given by a nursemaid who said she was as pretty as a ladybird, produced a sense of that beauty she found and created all around her.

Her husband often credited her with helping champion environmental and other legislation passed during his presidency. While in Washington, Johnson started the First Lady’s Committee for a More Beautiful Capital and took an active role in promoting her husband’s program to combat poverty, known as the Great Society.

It may have been her stature as a First Lady that contributed to her notable causes and successes, but it is no doubt her love of the environment that continued her successes long after she left the White House.

In a speech dedicating a roadside native wildflower garden in honor of Mrs. Johnson in 1997, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney E. Slater said, “Because of you, Mrs. Johnson, the country that builds the most roads, also builds the most aesthetic roads. From coast to coast, every state in the union now plants wildflowers. Your love has become America’s love of flowers.”

In 1998, the National Wildflower Research Center was renamed in her honor as the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
In a letter to visitors posted on its website, Johnson wrote, “I’m optimistic that the world of native plants will not only survive, but will thrive for environmental and economic reasons, and for reasons of the heart.
Beauty in nature nourishes us and brings joy to the human spirit, it also is one of the deep needs of people everywhere.”

She was buried next to her husband last Sunday in the Johnson family cemetery, but her work to ensure a land of beauty will live on for generations – all one has to do is go for a short drive.
Johnson was quoted as once saying, “Where flowers bloom, so does hope.” For more information about her and her wildflower center, visit www.wildflower.org/ online.