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Senate Years of Service: 1949-1961 Party: Democrat
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JOHNSON, Lyndon Baines, (father-in-law of Charles Spittal Robb),
a Representative and a Senator from Texas and a Vice President and
36th President of the United States; born on a farm near Stonewall, Gillespie
County, Tex., on August 27, 1908; moved with his parents to Johnson City, in
1913; attended the public schools of Blanco County, Tex.; graduated from
Southwest Texas State Teachers College at San Marcos (now known as Texas State
University-San Marcos) in 1930; taught high school 1928-1931; served as
secretary to Congressman Richard M. Kleberg in Washington, D.C., 1931-1935;
attended the Georgetown University Law School, Washington, D.C., 1934; State
director of the National Youth Administration of Texas 1935-1937; elected as a
Democrat to the Seventy-fifth Congress by special election, April 10, 1937, to
fill the vacancy caused by the death of James P. Buchanan; reelected to the
five succeeding Congresses and served from April 10, 1937, to January 3, 1949;
first Member of Congress to enlist in the armed forces after the Second World
War began; served as lieutenant commander in the United States Navy 1941-1942;
was not a candidate for renomination to the Eighty-first Congress in 1948;
elected to the United States Senate in 1948; reelected in 1954 and again in
1960 and served from January 3, 1949, until January 3, 1961, when he resigned
to become Vice President; Democratic whip 1951-1953; minority leader 1953-1955;
majority leader 1955-1961; chairman, Special Committee on the Senate Reception
Room (Eighty-fourth Congress), Special Committee on Astronautics and Space
(Eighty-fifth Congress), Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences
(Eighty-fifth and Eighty-sixth Congresses); elected Vice President of the
United States in November 1960, on the Democratic ticket with John F. Kennedy,
for the term beginning January 20, 1961; on the death of President Kennedy was
sworn in as President of the United States on November 22, 1963; elected
President of the United States in 1964, for the term commencing January 20,
1965, and served until January 20, 1969; did not seek reelection in 1968;
retired to his ranch near Johnson City, Tex.; died on January 22, 1973; lay in
state in the Capitol Rotunda, January 24-25, 1973; interment in the family
cemetery at the LBJ ranch; posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom on June 9, 1980.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography;
Dictionary of American Biography;
The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law; Dallek,
Robert.
Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991; Caro, Robert A.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
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