Bluebonnets for Liz

This morning I learned that the legendary Liz Carpenter, press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson, passed away in Austin, Texas, yesterday. Many of the newspapers today are focusing on the short speech that she, Bill Moyers, and Jack Valenti wrote on Air Force One for President Johnson to give when he landed at Andrews with the coffin bearing President Kennedy’s body.

I had all but forgotten about Liz until about some five years ago when I was having coffee one summer morning at Austin Java with Troy Campbell. Troy mentioned he would be driving to a farm near Crawford later that night to play at an anti-war rally. He said that Liz Carpenter would be there, too. It takes a hurricane to keep me from attending services at the Saxon Pub on Sundays in Austin so I didn’t head to Crawford.

That night Ray Wylie Hubbard sat in with the Resentments and I figured I’d made the right decision. I got to hear RWH play “Snake Farm” before the CD was released.

The next day when I picked up the Austin American Statesman, I realized maybe I should have gone to Crawford. You could have checked any newspaper the following morning and seen how big the Joan Baez concert was, and I felt like I missed out on something big.

Liz Carpenter lived a very long, full life. A photo of her in today’s Austin American Statesman shows her seated on a sofa with a pillow that says “Uppity Women Unite.”

Amen to that, Liz.

Next week I take my daughter to Texas to look at schools. They grow strong women in Texas, and I’m thinking it’s the perfect place for my daughter. We’ll have plenty of time to drive along the highways, contemplating Lady Bird and her highway beautification efforts. For Liz, the bluebonnets will likely be very blue this April.