Luci Baines Johnson remembers as a teenager riding in a shiny jet trimmed with blue and white paint and emblazoned with black letters proclaiming “United States of America,” then landing on the narrow bumpy airstrip behind what Americans would come to know as the Western White House. She says the roughly mile-long airstrip behind President Lyndon Johnson’s ranch _ her childhood home _ has its “lack of perfection.”

On Friday, on LBJ’s 102nd birthday, the National Park Service, which manages the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park, will formally accept a JetStar aircraft Johnson used as vice president and then during his five-plus years as the nation’s 36th president.

The plane was rescued from a scrap yard in the Arizona desert and its exterior has been refurbished to look as good as new.
   
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