Today is the birthday of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States of America. When I moved to Texas in 1977, and for many years afterwards, the non-profit organization that employed me celebrated the birthday of Lyndon Baines Johnson as a holiday, and so, I got the day off.
I never forgot this, in part because August 27 was also the birthday of my father, Joseph Napikoski, who was born in 1919.
But, nevertheless, this is a Texas holiday.
Today, as I interviewed patients at work, and asked them the standard "orientation" questions, some of them knew the date: month, day and year. Not all did, but some did. When I asked these patients, who were all fairly young, not one knew that it was the birthday of a former president, and very sadly, not one of them knew that Lyndon Baines Johnson was a former president, nor that he was from Texas.
This is so sad. I am so convinced that our future depends upon the lessons learned from our history. Granted, offenders in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice are not always the smartest or most astute people. And they will probably not shape our future. But it made me wonder how many people of their same young age knew who Lyndon Baines Johnson was, and that today was his birthday.
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