For more than 50 years St. Barnabas Episcopal Church was a second home for Lady Bird Johnson.
"We talk in terms of a congregation being a family, well she really did look at members of this congregation as her family," Reverend Richard Elwood said.
St. Barnabas started in the 1950s in one of the first homes built in Fredericksburg. It didn't take the parish long to outgrow the one hundred year old building and a new chapel was built. Recently, they added a Parish Hall, and some debt.
"We had a debt on the Parish Hall that was built eight or nine years ago that the Parish has been dealing with and paying off," Elwood said.
That was until the former first lady stepped in. In their Sunday services three weeks before her passing, the church announced they had received a $300,000 gift.
The letter, signed by Johnson, reads: "I feel the time has come for me to repay a part of the debt for the irreplaceable gifts of comfort, strength and abiding faith I have received."
"We are now free from this debt and so just strictly from a financial position it just opens up all sorts of possibilities we can move in all sorts of directions and expand our ministries," Elwood said.
For the last 18 months, Elwood would bring Communion to Johnson almost every Sunday, and even though a stroke had taken her ability to speak, she would participate in the service.
 |  |
 | |  |
| | | | | | | |
Final gift
Lady Bird's financial gift to a church will allow them to refocus their efforts on outreach programs.
 
| | |
| | | | | |
|
"She was very, very present and her mind was still incredibly alert and you could tell she was mouthing the service, she was keeping up with the service," he said.
Elwood said Lady Bird was laid to rest at about the time they would normally have been having Communion.
He said this week is one of the first times in over a year he doesn't know where he'll be on Sunday afternoon.
