Texas Originals

Liz Carpenter

September 1, 1920–March 20, 2010

"Give me wide open spaces, a Model T, and a typewriter," Liz Carpenter once told her mother, "and I’ll see you in the hall of fame." That confidence carried Carpenter from Salado, Texas, all the way to the White House. She blazed a trail for women in media and helped build a new image of women in politics.

A sixth-generation Texan, Carpenter was born on her family's ranch in 1920. She moved to the state capital as a schoolgirl and earned a journalism degree from The University of Texas.

Carpenter worked as a reporter in Washington, DC, until joining Lyndon Johnson’s vice-presidential campaign in 1960. When the assassination of President Kennedy catapulted LBJ to the presidency, Lady Bird Johnson hired Carpenter as her press secretary. Together they modernized the role of First Lady, as Mrs. Johnson championed the president's policies and initiatives of her own, including highway beautification.

Carpenter returned to Texas in 1974 after the death of her husband, Les, but that didn't slow her down. At her home in Austin, she threw legendary parties in support of causes and campaigns. She fought for women’s rights, wrote three memoirs, and was a popular public speaker.

Carpenter died at age eighty-nine. The girl from Salado fulfilled her vow to her mother when, in 1985, she was appointed to the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame.

For More about Liz Carpenter

The Texas State Historical Association’s March 2011 luncheon for Women in Texas History was dedicated to Liz Carpenter. Michael L. Gillette, then-Executive Director of Humanities Texas, offered a tribute based on materials and photographs from the LBJ Library & Museum in Austin.

Carpenter was a distinguished alumna of UT Austin. In 1984, a group of her friends established the Liz Carpenter Lectureship in UT's College of Liberal Arts. The lectureship brings "distinguished individuals to the campus with the goal of enhancing the quality of the dialogue that occurs between leaders in The University and the community, between humanists and scientists, between men and women, between those who enjoy a formal education and those schooled by the lessons of life, and among the colleges of The University."

At the age of seventy-nine, Carpenter took on the responsibility of raising her late brother’s three teenage children. Her book, Unplanned Parenthood: The Confessions of a Seventy-Something Surrogate Mother, recounts this experience. Carpenter discussed the book, along with her time in the White House, on the CNN program Booknotes in 1994.

Selected Bibliography

Carpenter, Liz. Ruffles and Flourishes: The Warm and Tender Story of a Simple Girl Who Found Adventure in the White House. Garden City: Doubleday, 1970.

Carpenter, Liz. Unplanned Parenthood: The Confessions of a Seventy-Something Surrogate Mother. New York: Random House, 1994.

Carpenter, Liz. Getting Better All the Time. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.

Sweig, Julia. Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight. New York: Random House, 2021. 

Listen to the audio

Portrait of Liz Carpenter. Courtesy of the Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

Portrait of Liz Carpenter, 1974. Courtesy of the Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.