Yes, My Darling Daughters

Although only five months in residence, the Johnson girls already have furnished a few fresh footnotes to White House history.

Luci Baines, 16, insists that she is trying to shed what she calls her "Harry High School" image, but she recently had a group of teenagers in to dance the Frug in the Blue Room--a White House first. Lynda Bird, 20, a government major at George Washington University, often enriches her education when she spies a distinguished presidential visitor in the waiting room. She sits right down and starts popping a barrage of coed's questions about current events. Once Lynda spotted Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and asked, "Now what have you been up to?" Replied the grinning Justice: "Dispensing justice with an even hand."

Unwanted Praise. Far and away the girls' biggest fan is Daddy, who once drawled about his darling daughters: "I will never have to worry about either girl. Lynda Bird is so smart that she will always be able to make a living for herself. And Luci Baines is so appealing and feminine that there will always be some man around wanting to make a living for her." Well meant as it was, Lyndon's appraisal drew criticism from both girls. Lynda complained he had implied that she would be an old maid: Luci pouted that he had hinted she wasn't too bright.

One reason that both Lyndon and Lady Bird are so enormously affectionate toward the girls is that the Johnsons went through ten years of marriage and four miscarriages before Lynda was born. Family discipline has always been firm, but subtle. Says Lynda: "Mother never tells us to be in from a party or a date at a certain time. She just leaves it to our good judgment. How can you break faith with a woman who does that?" Neither girl smokes or drinks. Both have checking accounts, but Lady Bird's bargain-hunting frugality has been stamped irrevocably on their shopping habits. Both have a love for Texas land, and Lyndon has been buying acreage for them adjoining his L.B.J. spread.

Frankly Speaking. Yet the girls are in many ways dissimilar. Lynda, tall (5 ft. 10 in.), brown-eyed and pleasingly dimpled, leans to scholastic interests, knocked down three As and two Bs as a college freshman last year. Beamed Lyndon, "That means more to me than anything." She is not even slightly domestic, shrugs off kitchen skills, saying, "I can always learn to do those things." She is fascinated by politics, often dons a bathrobe, pads across the hall to sprawl on the President's bed and talk over the morning headlines. Once determined to be a history teacher, Lynda may skip a career, for she is engaged to Lieut, (j.g.) Bernard Rosenbach of Comfort, Texas. No wedding date has been set, but the President's daughter proudly wears Bernie's ring--a one-half carat center diamond flanked by two smaller diamonds.

Luci is small (5 ft. 31 in.), blue-eyed, and currently a brunette. She was once blonde, but White House sources have spent no little time denying reports that she dyed her hair, insisting it darkened naturally as she grew older. Admittedly no sparkling scholar. Luci, a junior at Washington's National Cathedral School, recently leveled with reporters: "Basically, I'm interested in science," she said. "I'd like to be a laboratory technician, but you know there are the haves and the havenots. I'm among the have-nots scholastically." When someone suggested she might need a private tutor, Luci retorted: "Oh, I'm not that bad." She has learned to cook (brownies are her specialty), plays the piano pretty well and likes nothing better than sweeping off with a gang of girls in her white Corvair convertible to gossip over lunch at a Washington Hot Shoppe. Of life in the White House, Luci says: "Quite frankly, sometimes the bad points thoroughly outweigh the good, but not usually. I am not as politically oriented as my father, mother and sister are, but I want to present a good image--but not so sweet and goody-goody that it isn't me."

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