To the Editor:

This week the daffodils on Mount Pleasant are in full bloom as they have been every April since my youth. I was recently reminded of the origin of those beautiful flowers, and wanted to share it with you.

In 1965 our Congress passed the Highway Beautification Act largely at the urging of our First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson. She saw the legislation as part and parcel of her husband’s Great Society initiatives. “Where flowers bloom, so does hope,” she said, “and hope is the precious, indispensable ingredient without which the war on poverty can never be won.”

The act had three major goals along our interstate and US highways: the limitation and control of advertising, the removal or masking of junk yards, and the funding of landscaping. Her initiative coincided with that of LBJ’s “See America,” which encouraged us to travel and spend in the US, rather than abroad.

The way her efforts later manifested themselves in Newtown was the planting of daffodils along US Highway 6, which comes off Interstate 84 at Exit 10, runs through the center of town, and then heads west, toward Bethel.

Though the Federal government provided the materials, our local Girl Scouts did all the work. Planting daffodils is now a long-standing tradition for the Scouts, but it all began in the early 1970s.

Through the decades, many of the original plantings have disappeared due to development and/or overgrowth, but on southern facing, undisturbed slopes they still radiate.

The Highway Beautification Act has been criticized for its restrictions on states and localities, but there’s no denying the benefits we all enjoy.

Randi Allen Kiely

Newtown