Sunday, July 15, 2007: Claudia (“Lady Bird”) Johnson, widow of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, died this week at the age of 94. She was beloved by millions, and renowned — in her quiet, gracious way — for the promotion of Texas wildflowers and her conservation and beautification projects in Texas and the nation. Her casket lay in state at the LBJ Presidential Library on the campus of the University of Texas, and then at a funeral service at a large west Austin church.
Then, on this Sunday afternoon, with intermittent clouds breaking up the bright Texas sunshine, her funeral cortege wound its way through the Texas hill country — along a route lined by many thousands of mourners and well-wishers — until it arrived at a small country cemetery near Stonewall, Texas. There she was laid to rest beside her husband.
While untold numbers watched the service on television, a commentator reminded the audience that the Johnson Family Cemetery, on the LBJ Ranch, was the final resting place for many members of his family. The Johnson Family Cemetery is a beautiful site, in a green pasture, beneath old live oak trees. The cemetery is encircled by an old rock wall, and it overlooks the Pedernales River. Cattle graze nearby. “There are 41 Johnson family members and close friends currently buried in this small country cemetery,” the reporter told his audience. “Mrs. Johnson will be the 42nd.”
Then it suddenly struck me… “41 currently buried” there! What an extraordinary choice of words! For more than half of those 41 are Christadelphians. Yes, they are… currently… buried there! But for how long? Will there be a day, perhaps soon, when another television reporter will announce, in wonder, “There are currently only 15 family and friends buried in the Johnson Family Cemetery; about 25 graves seem to have been opened!”
That number would include the grave of Priscilla (Mrs. R.H.) Bunton (1821 1905); she was LBJ’s great-grandmother (my great-great-grandmother, and the first Christadelphian in the family). Hers was the first grave in the cemetery. She was buried there because, when she died, the Pedernales River was overflowing its banks, and the family could not get her across to the regular community cemetery on the other side. And that is how the Johnson Family Cemetery got started, just over 100 years ago.
Her tombstone is small and simple and white; on the top it has a little lamb curled up as though asleep, and underneath it reads, “Here lies a Christadelphian, waiting for the resurrection.”
That number would include the graves of Priscilla’s daughter Eliza, and Eliza’s husband Sam Ealy Johnson, Sr. — Lyndon Johnson’s grandparents, and my great-grandparents. They were converted to the truth through listening to debates between local preachers and the traveling brother Oatman (who had learned the Truth from Bro. Thomas in Illinois). Sam is said to have waited expectantly through several nights of discussions, wondering when the preacher was going to bring out the real “guns” and demolish this Christadelphian “heretic”… until he finally realized that no more arguments were forthcoming. So he sought out brother Oatman and said, “Please show me what the Bible teaches.”
That number would include the graves of several of Sam and Eliza’s children. Among them is my grandmother, Jessie Johnson Hatcher. As a small child, she lived with her parents — just across the little country road from what became the Johnson Family Cemetery. There she listened to her father reading the Bible — and the newspapers delivered sporadically to that small hill country community — alert to the signs of the times, and talking of the return of Christ and the resurrection.
When I was a teenager, my grandmother Jessie told me, almost offhand, that her first childhood memory — at the age of three or four — was seeing a wagon and horses coming over the distant hill, and approaching her house. And she was running excitedly, to tell her parents that the angels were on their way to take them to the Kingdom!
My grandmother was born in the horse and buggy era, only a few years after marauding Indians regularly threatened the rough new settlements in the Texas hill country. During her 86 years she jetted around the world, stayed in the White House when her “favorite nephew” Lyndon was president, met prime ministers and other dignitaries, and was buried where she grew up, on the banks of the little Pedernales River.
But her earliest memory, of an eager expectation of the return of Christ, was surely the defining experience of her life. She died with the same hope she had lived with — more mature, and more knowledgeable, certainly, but the same hope nevertheless.
Near her grave there are, now, the graves of my father and mother too — Eldon and Ruth Booker, other Christadelphians awaiting the resurrection. All around them are more Christadelphians besides, ancestors and relatives of some who are reading these words.
Down the country road, only a couple of miles away and also along the Pedernales River, is an old Christadelphian campground, in use since the nineteenth century for ecclesial meetings and gatherings and Bible schools. Just north of the campground is another little cemetery — the sign at the entrance proclaims it “The Christadelphian Cemetery”. Another 50 or so graves, including other Bookers. And Bantas, Buntons, Greers, Hodges, Oatmans, Odiornes, Sankeys, Tanners — all names familiar to those who know Texas Christadelphian history.
One smiles to think, “What a busy place this area will be on the resurrection morn”… when “currently buried” gives way to “no longer buried”!
“O LORD, our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone do we honor. They are now dead, they live no more… But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead” (Isa. 26:13,14,19).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One