So, after our conversation on nail salons last night, I dug into it a little bit as I had a nagging feeling that the individual I named was incorrect. Alas, it was Tippi Hedron who pretty much jump-started the manicure business for the Vietnamese in the 1970s, and not Ladybird Johnson. From Wiki:
"Hedren played a role in the development of Vietnamese-American nail salons in the United States.
[118][119] In 1975, while an international relief coordinator with
Food for the Hungry, she began visiting with refugees at
Hope Village outside
Sacramento, California.
[1] When she learned the women were interested in her manicured nails, she employed her manicurist to teach them the skills of the trade and worked with a local beauty school to help them find jobs.
[118] Hedren's work with the Vietnamese-Americans was the subject of several documentaries:
Happy Hands, directed by Honey Lauren, which won Best Documentary Short at the Sonoma International Film Festival in 2014
[1][120][121] and "Nailedit: Vietnamese and the Nail Industry" which won the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) 2014 Documentary Fund Award.
[122] CND and Beauty Changes Lives Foundation (BCL) have announced the BCL CND Tippi Hedren Nail Scholarship Fund to support professional nail education and will be administered starting January 1, 2014.
[123]. Hedren was instrumental in helping a desperate
Nguyen Thi Chinh to enter the US after the fall of the South Vietnam government in 1975, she arranged for an air ticket and a visa for her and then invited her to stay in her house.
[124]"