Lady Bird Johnson

Former U.S. first lady Lady Bird Johnson has died in Texas at the age of 94, less than two weeks after leaving hospital, a family spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

Facts about former first lady Lady Bird Johnson:

* Claudia Alta Taylor, born in Karnack, Texas, on December 22, 1912, was 2 years old when her family's maid came up with her nickname, saying the girl was "purty as a lady bird."
* She graduated from the University of Texas in 1934 with degrees in arts and journalism and intentions to become a reporter. She met Lyndon B. Johnson, then a congressional aide in Washington, that same year and he proposed marriage to her on their first date. She thought he was joking but they were married two months later.
* Lady Bird always played a major role in Johnson family finances, providing $10,000, part of an inheritance from her mother, to Lyndon's first congressional campaign. She also used inheritance money to buy an Austin radio station for $17,500 in 1942, starting what grew into a multimillion-dollar communications company.
* She faced often hostile crowds in 1964 when she went on a four-day, eight-state train tour of the U.S. South, delivering 47 speeches on behalf of the landmark Civil Rights Act and other programs being pushed by her husband.
* Beautifying America was her pet cause. She lobbied for the Highway Beautification Act, which encouraged planting of wildflowers on public land and regulation of billboards on federal highways. She and actress Helen Hayes established the National Wildflower Research Center in Austin, Texas, in 1982 on Johnson's 70th birthday. The center was renamed for the former first lady in 1998.
* Johnson chronicled some of her Washington time in the book "A White House Diary" and also co-authored "Wildflowers Across America."
* Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird were riding in the Dallas motorcade two cars behind President John Kennedy on November 23, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated.
* Lyndon Johnson died in 1973; they had two daughters, Lynda Bird and Luci Baines.