Claudia the Beautician

THE PRESIDENCY

"Ten thousand Girl Scouts of Kickapoo Council salute you," said the telegram, "pledging their continued services in the efforts of their city beautiful." The American Institute of Park Executives broke down and gave her the first honorary membership ever to go to a woman, and only the fourth in its 67-year history. Bannered the conservative Chicago Tribune: HER NAME is CLAUDIA, AND BEAUTY IS HER AIM.

If anyone doubted that Lady Bird Johnson was in dead earnest about her beautification program, he had only to watch her pace. Having presided over three White House conferences on the subject, toured the District of Columbia to plant flowers, participated in an anti-litter campaign called Potomac Pickup Day and made two trips outside of Washington--all since February--she might have taken a breather from beauty for a while. Not Lady Bird. She not only visited two more cities last week--planting trees, condemning litter and extolling beauty--but plans to talk beauty to a meeting of the Associated Press this week and to speak next week at a conference of Keep America Beautiful, Inc. in Manhattan.

In Milwaukee she spoke to the park executives, accepted a gift of 25 hawthorn trees to be planted in District of Columbia parks, helped to dedicate a new three-domed horticultural conservatory, planted a chestnut seedling in a park. Aware that she was in the city that beer helped make famous, she tactfully omitted mentioning discarded beer cans when she called litter "one of the greatest detractors of beauty," then praised the beer industry for urging customers to "stow away, don't throw them away."

In Peoria, Ill., which noted that she was the first First Lady to visit as an official guest in 140 years, Lady Bird dedicated the city's modernistic new $4,500,000 county courthouse and gardens in the heart of a $50 million, eight-block downtown renewal project. "A city is not just a collection of stores and homes and shops," said Lady Bird. "It is a place for people to live and, hopefully, it is a place where they can live the good life." Then, hefting a chrome-plated shovel, she planted a Japanese cherry tree. When a few citizens wondered aloud how the cherry tree could be expected to last through a bitter Peoria winter, Mrs. Everett Dirksen, whose husband once practiced law in Peoria, uttered the final word. "If Lady Bird planted this tree,"said Mrs. Dirksen,"it will survive."

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