Luci Baines Johnson, (born July 2, 1947) is the younger daughter of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, the former Claudia Alta Taylor (known as Lady Bird Johnson). Her name was originally spelled "Lucy"; she informally changed the spelling in her teens. As her parents both had the initials LBJ, they named their two daughters to have these initials also.
Although her father was a member of the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, her mother was an Episcopalian, and she and her older sister, Lynda Bird, were raised as Episcopalians. Luci converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of eighteen, when she requested and received conditional baptism. Since Luci had been baptized with water and in the name of the Trinity when five months old by an Episcopal priest in Austin, Texas, her rebaptism caused protests from leading figures in the Episcopal Church, reaching the front pages. Roman Catholic teaching does not require converts who are already baptized to receive baptism a second time.
At the age of nineteen, Luci Baines Johnson married Patrick John Nugent (born July 8, 1943) in a high-profile wedding at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., on August 6, 1966. They had four children: Patrick Lyndon Nugent (1967), now a lawyer and a pilot in San Antonio, Nicole Marie Nugent (1970), Rebekah Johnson Nugent (1974) and Claudia Taylor Nugent (1976). The Nugents later divorced, and the marriage was annulled by the Catholic Church in August 1979.
On March 3, 1984, at the Johnson Ranch near Austin, Texas, she married Ian J. Turpin (born 1944), a Scottish-born Canadian financier; he is now president of LBJ Asset Management Partners. By him, she has a stepson.
She received a BLS in Communication from St. Edward's University in 1997.
Today, Luci is Chairman of the Board and "hands on" manager of LBJ Asset Management Partners, a family office, as well as Chairman of the Board of BusinesSuites, a national operator of executive suites, which she co-founded with her husband in 1989.
She has served on multiple civic boards, raising funds for The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the American Heart Association, acting as trustee of Boston University, and as a member of the advisory board of the Center for Battered Women.
In April 2010 she was diagnosed with Guillain–Barré syndrome, also known as Landry's paralysis, an autoimmune disorder affecting the peripheral nervous system, and was flown to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to begin treatment. Johnson returned to Austin in May. Her doctor has called her case "less severe than usual" and expects a full recovery.
Famous quotes containing the words baines johnson, baines and/or johnson:
“The world has narrowed to a neighborhood before it has broadened to brotherhood.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“I pray we are still a young and courageous nation, that we have not grown so old and so fat and so prosperous that all we can think about is to sit back with our arms around our money bags. If we choose to do that I have no doubt that the smoldering fires will burst into flame and consume us—dollars and all.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)