Luci Baines Johnson (born July 2, 1947) is an American businesswoman and philanthropist. She is the younger daughter of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson.
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Early years
Born in Washington, D.C., Johnson has an older sister Lynda Bird. Johnson's first name was originally spelled "Lucy"; she changed the spelling in her teens as a rebellion against her parents. 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 converted to the Episcopal Church, and she and her older sister, Lynda Bird, were raised Episcopalian. Johnson converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 18, when she requested and received conditional baptism. Johnson had been baptized with water and in the name of the Trinity at five months old by an Episcopal priest in Austin, Texas. Her rebaptism caused protests from Episcopalian leaders, which made headlines as Roman Catholic teaching does not require a second baptism of converts Christians baptized using the Trinitarian formula and water.
She was 16 years old when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Johnson heard of the assassination while attending a Spanish class at the National Cathedral School. She was unaware whether her father had been injured as well but realized he had been sworn in as the 36th President of the United States when Secret Service agents showed up on her school campus a few hours later. She later attended Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies but dropped out in 1966 as the school prohibited married students (Johnson married her first husband in August 1966). In 1966, she learned to cook from Zephyr Wright, the White House chef for the Johnson family.