TIME's chief Lady Bird watcher is one of the ten women correspondents on our staff, Jean Franklin. A 1947 graduate of Bucknell and former editorial researcher, Reporter Franklin specializes in the Washington bureau's contribution to our back-of-the-book sections--such as EDUCATION, MEDICINE, SCIENCE, ART, Music--and in covering the wife of the President.

For Jean, watching the Bird last week involved traveling more than 6,000 miles by plane, bus, aerial tramway and river raft from Washington to Wyoming's Rockies to the Canadian coastline. It brought her first encounters with fresh-caught mountain trout, buffalo a la bourguignonne ("It tasted like beef stew"), and His and Her press rooms. That was at the University of Vermont, where the male reporters were set up in the men's locker room at the gym and the women in the logical counterpart. This week, along with a large contingent of editors, writers, reporters and researchers, Jean will be in Atlantic City to keep Lady Bird in sight.

While Reporter Franklin was watching last week, Researcher Patricia Gordon was in New York digging into the lore to find out what First Ladies are made of. A Texan at heart and a cook by hobby, Pat was delighted when she came across Luci Baines Johnson's recipe for Texas cookies. They presented a particular problem, however, because they must be formed by a special cutter that makes them the shape of the state of Texas. After an unsuccessful search through Manhattan stores, Pat called her mother in Houston and had a Texas cookie cutter sent airmail special delivery, thereby enabling her to provide what Associate Editor Jesse Birnbaum, who was in charge of the story, could not resist describing as research that really gave him something to chew on.

The reports of Jean Franklin and Pat Gordon, along with files from White House Reporter Hugh Sidey and other correspondents around the U.S. and abroad--who analyzed the public impression of the First Lady --all went to Writer William Johnson. No kin, Johnson now feels that he knows the First Family from both sides, since he wrote our last cover story on the President (May 1). During a talk with Lady Bird at the White House, Writer Johnson asked how she felt about being the subject of a TIME cover story, and she admitted having "some trepidations" but philosophically quoted Bobby Burns: "Oh wad some power the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as others see us!" Artist Boris Artzybasheff saw Lady Bird partly through her name and designed as a fitting background to her portrait a strong and stylish Artzybird.

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