A Houston statue of LBJ?

Idea person: Charles Foster.

Idea: Build a statue in Houston to honor President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

How it started: As Charles Foster was growing up, his family moved around all over Texas. His alcoholic father had trouble holding down a job, Foster says, and his mother, a teacher, "put up with a lot." His mother encouraged Foster to look to President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a role model, and at her urging, Foster read small orange-bound biographies of presidents and other American heroes. She hung a print of a portrait of Eisenhower in Charles's bedroom. He still has the print.

After graduating from the University of Texas School of Law, Foster moved to Houston in 1969. Eventually he opened his own immigration law practice. An independent voter, he stays politically active, even now that he's in his seventies: He advised the George W. Bush campaigns on immigration policy in both 2000 and 2004, and also played an advisory role in Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Foster has also kept up his childhood practice of reading about the presidents and observing their different leadership styles.

He thinks a lot about presidential memorials. As a long-time admirer of President George H.W. Bush, Foster suggested to Ken Lay, then CEO of Enron, that the city should honor the former president when he retired to Houston. The city ended up renaming its largest airport after Bush, and for most people that was enough. But Foster wasn't satisfied. He notes that place names take on secondary meanings: "Most people don't think of Lincoln when they travel through the Lincoln Tunnel in New York."

Foster urged building a monument to Bush 41, and he became the prime instigator in the design and location of the George Bush statue in Sesquicentennial Park on the site formerly known as Fondren Garden. Subsequently, Foster helped put the James A. Baker monument across Buffalo Bayou from the statue of Bush 41, Baker's longtime friend and colleague. And he helped see that the Preston Street Bridge between the Bush and Baker Monuments was renamed to honor the late Secretary of Commerce Robert A. Mosbacher.

How it grew: When Foster leaves his house on Courtlandt Place, he often passes a 1904 farmhouse-style structure at the corner of Hawthorne and Garrott in the Westmoreland Historic District. It's the house where LBJ lived with his aunt and uncle for a year during the Great Depression. During the 1930 school year, Johnson taught at Sam Houston High School and helped the school's debate team place second in the state tournament.

When Foster was a student at Del Mar Junior College in Corpus Christi, he had the privilege of hearing Lyndon Baines Johnson speak. "He could really move an audience," Foster says.

Foster's wife, Lily, wants him to cut back on civic activities. But the thought has nagged Foster that LBJ never got his due. There's no statue of LBJ in Washington, D.C.  The Kennedy administration never respected Johnson in part because he was from Texas, Foster says, and then the Vietnam War diminished Johnson's stature.

But, says Foster, President Johnson was almost single-handedly responsible for more legislation that changed America for the better than virtually any president of the 20th century, arguably even more so than FDR. Foster reels off more than 40 ground-breaking laws passed during Johnson's short tenure in office. The list includes Head Start, Medicaid, Medicare and of course, Johnson's landmark Civil Rights legislation.

Recently, Foster decided that he won't be finished until he figures out a way to honor Johnson and his ties to Houston. "Without Johnson, we would have never had the Space Center," Foster notes.

Why it's important: "Great cities have great public art," says Foster. Besides beautifying the city, the statue would be a way to tell LBJ's story to schoolchildren and to engage them in history. Foster's interest as a young man in Dwight D. Eisenhower certainly changed his life and changed Houston for the better.

Next steps: Foster says that finding the funding for a statue for Johnson will be difficult, but he knows the ropes and is starting to assemble a team. Bill Wright, a financial advisor with Wells Fargo, was LBJ's chief of staff during the former president's retirement year. Wright signed up to help, along with David Jones of Dini Spheris fundraising consultants.

Nothing is settled about this monument yet. Not the location, the artist or the size of the monument. But Foster plans on getting this done.

Will it be the last monument to a president that he works to erect? Maybe so, says Foster.

Bottom line: Who knows what an LBJ statue might inspire a young person to do?

Bookmark Gray Matters. There's no statue of it in Washington, D.C.