Barbara Bush

First Lady

  • Born: June 8, 1925
  • Birthplace: New York, New York
  • Died: April 17, 2018
  • Place of death: Houston, Texas

President:George H. W. Bush 1989-1993

Overview

After nearly thirty years of living a very public life, including becoming a leading advocate for literacy, a best-selling author, and a popular public speaker known for her quick humor and uncommon frankness, Bush Bush would still say that simply being a wife and mother had been her life’s mission. Nevertheless, the fact that she was the wife of one president and the mother of another is an honor shared by only one other First Lady. Unfortunately, Abigail Adams did not live to see her son John Quincy sworn in as president, so Bush Bush made history on January 20, 2001, when she stood on the steps of the west side of the Capitol and watched, with her husband, George H. W. Bush, as their son, George W. Bush, became the forty-third president of the United States.

Early Life

Bush Bush was born Bush Pierce June 8, 1925, to Marvin and Pauline Pierce. She was the third of four children. She was very close to her father, who worked for the McCall’s Corporation and became its president in 1946. She wrote in her memoirs, published in 1994, that Marvin Pierce was the “fairest man I knew, until I met George Bush.”

She was not as close to her mother, whom Bush described as a beautiful, talented woman who really did not appreciate the life she had. “My mother often talked about when her ship would come,” Bush wrote. “She had a husband who worshiped the ground she walked on, four loving children, and a world of friends. Her ship had come in—she just didn’t know it.”

Despite disagreements with her mother, Bush considered her childhood a happy one, filled with love, friends, security, and lots of books. She first developed a love of reading from many long evenings spent in the family living room, when everyone would be reading a favorite book or magazine. She grew up in Rye, a bedroom community of New York City, where she and her friends could roam the streets freely and everyone knew everyone else.

During her sixteenth year, while home from boarding school, Bush met George Herbert Walker Bush at a Christmas dance. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor just a few weeks earlier, but Bush was oblivious to almost everything except her new beau. “I married the first man I kissed,” she once told an audience. “It makes my children sick when they hear that, but it’s true.”

In the midst of the romance and resulting engagement, George Bush, then the youngest pilot in the Navy at age eighteen, shipped out with his squadron for the South Pacific. Despite their separation, his almost daily love letters left no doubt in Bush’s mind that he would come back to her, as shown in this note that he wrote her shortly after they became engaged: “I love you, precious, with all my heart and to know that you love me means my life. How often I have thought about the immeasurable joy that will be ours some day. How lucky our children will be to have a mother like you.”

The romance nearly ended in tragedy when, on September 2, 1944, George Bush’s plane was shot down while he was on a bombing mission near the Japanese island of Chichi-Jima. Although his two crewmates were killed, the future president parachuted out of the plane and was eventually picked up by an American submarine. A number of days, “all of them a complete blur,” would pass between Bush’s learning that George had been shot down and that he had been rescued. They finally married on January 6, 1945, while George was home on leave.

Marriage and Family

Fortunately, World War II ended before George was shipped out again. While George went to Yale University, Bush had their first child, George Walker Bush. At the time, they shared married student housing with eight other families, including ten children. When George graduated in 1948, the young family made what would become one of many bold moves in their lives to come: they left the protected environment of their families and friends on the East Coast and moved to the dusty oilfields of West Texas.

It did not take long for the young Bush family to realize how different their new life was to be. Their first home, in wind-swept Odessa, Texas, was a tiny duplex, which they shared with a mother and her daughter. The two families shared the one and only bathroom, which became quite a problem at night when the two neighbors entertained guests. The visitors often forgot that when they left the bathroom from their side, they had to unlock the bathroom door that led to the Bushes’ side of the duplex.

Her mother was convinced that Bush had moved to the end of the earth and even insisted on sending her items such as laundry detergent. Nevertheless, George and Bush Bush thrived in Texas. After working as a supply salesman, Bush quickly moved up the corporate ladder and eventually ventured into the oil business. There were plenty of dry wells along the way but enough successful ones to enable George and his partners to become true pioneers in the offshore drilling business.

By 1953, the family included not only George W., but a girl named Robin and a new baby, Jeb. As Bush wrote in her memoirs, “Life seemed almost too good to be true.” However, a short time after Jeb was born, three-year-old Robin was diagnosed with leukemia. While George stayed back in Texas to watch the boys and his oil business, Bush took Robin to New York to seek the best treatment possible. Robin died six months later, leaving behind her heartbroken parents and bewildered older brother, George, who was six at the time. Bush told the story of how she finally pulled herself out of her deep mourning. She overheard little George tell his friends that he would not be able to come out and play, as he had to play with his mother. She realized right there and then that it was time she put aside her grief and come back to the family who needed her.

“George and I love and value every person more because of Robin. She lives on in our hearts, memories, and actions,” Bush wrote. Robin’s death began a lifelong devotion on the part of both Bushes to the cause of cancer. Bush would later serve as honorary chairwoman of the Leukemia Society of America and would become involved with Ronald McDonald House Charities. George served on the board of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the premier cancer hospital in the United States. They cochaired a national movement, the National Dialogue on Cancer, which seeks to reduce the risk of this dreaded disease.

After Robin’s death, three more children followed quickly: Neil, Marvin, and Dorothy, whom they would call Doro. The family eventually moved from West Texas to Houston, where George’s offshore oil business continued to thrive, but his growing interest in politics and public service would soon chart a whole new course for the family.

After losing a bid for the Senate in 1964, George was elected to the House of Representatives in 1966. The family packed up and moved to Washington, DC, not realizing it would be more than twenty-five years before they would move back to Texas for good.

In between, George would serve as ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Watergate years, the US envoy to China, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, vice president, and finally president. It was an incredible journey during which Bush, who up until the family moved to Washington had largely been a car pool mom, Cub Scout den mother, and PTA activist, learned the tools of diplomacy, entertaining, media relations, and public speaking. It was not a life she had sought but one at which she quickly excelled.

She never lost sight of what she considered her most important job: making a home for her husband and children. From Houston to Washington to New York to China and back, she lugged family photos, furniture, dogs, and keepsakes, so they would feel at home. She viewed every move as an adventure; by the time they were married fifty years, George and Barbara Bush had lived in thirty different houses in seventeen different cities. Some assignments were more difficult than others. Bush especially loved their year in China, when the two of them spent a great deal of time together, exploring a very different world. Her least favorite time periods were when her husband was head of the Republican Party during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s and, later, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director. For the first time in their marriage, her husband could not come home and share with her what he had done at the office that day. “He knew I was not good at keeping secrets,” she confessed.

When Jimmy Carter won the White House in 1976, George Bush lost his job at the CIA, and the Bush family moved home to Texas after being gone for ten years. Bush was thrilled and set about making a home in yet another house, possibly for the last time. Within a few years, however, George decided to run for the vice presidency, and Bush gave up her role as homemaker to become the candidate’s wife. When the election was over, her husband was vice president, and Bush suddenly found herself “Second Lady.” Despite keeping a very busy schedule and developing her budding interest in literacy, it would be eight more years—not until her husband became president—before the spotlight would truly shine on Bush.

Presidency and First Ladyship

Bush wrote in her memoirs that the very first thing she did after her husband became president on January 20, 1989, was “to unpack some of our personal pictures to set around on the tables so this great big house would feel more like home.”

However, by this time Bush understood the fact that her plan to simply be a wife and mother was no longer practical. She was now First Lady of the United States, a title that came with no job description and no salary but with enormous potential to do good. She was determined to stay out of her husband’s presidency—“They elected George, not me,” she said—and decided to take her cue from one of her predecessors and role models, Lady Bird Johnson, who had described the position as First Lady as the best bully pulpit in the world. In her first staff meeting, Bush told her East Wing team that she wanted to do something every single day to help others. In her four years as First Lady, Barbara Bush used that bully pulpit in many and diverse ways.

When she read in the newspaper that Washington, DC, area malls were banning Salvation Army bell-ringers because they disturbed Christmas shoppers, she immediately went to the closest mall (taking the press with her), found a bell ringer, and made a point of making a donation and talking about how important this Christmas tradition was. The malls changed their policies.

As she learned more about the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) virus, she visited an AIDS residential home in Washington called Grandma’s Place, to make the point that all AIDS victims—children and adults— needed love and care. When a young man told her in front of the media that his own mother was too afraid and too ashamed to hug him, she immediately got up and gave the young man a huge hug.

She traveled across the country visiting homeless shelters, food banks, shelters for victims of domestic violence, Boys & Girls Clubs, schools, hospitals, and orphanages. During the Gulf War in 1991, she focused her time and energy on visiting military bases to comfort families whose loved ones were fighting in the Middle East.

When her husband traveled abroad, Bush went with him; in addition to the traditional teas and museum tours enjoyed by First Ladies, she made a point of visiting schools, hospitals, and orphanages abroad as well.

Despite all these varied concerns and causes, Bush devoted most of her time and energy to literacy, which she had adopted as her number one cause. However, with the increased visibility which comes with the White House, she became the true champion of a growing movement to make the United States a more literate nation. For four years, she tirelessly visited literacy programs in nearly every state in the nation, encouraging students, tutors, and professional staff to continue their work. She talked to anyone who would listen about the importance of literacy to the United States’ future. She refused to take credit but stood proudly by as her husband signed the 1991 National Literacy Act, which was the first piece of legislation ever enacted specifically for literacy.

She also established the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which continues to thrive and to grow every year, and to date has given about 17 million dollars to literacy programs around the country. Her foundation’s annual “Celebration of Reading,” in which best-selling authors are invited to share their work, has become the most successful literacy fund-raiser in the United States.

When asked why she devoted so much time to family literacy, Bush said:

Like the experts, I truly feel that if more people could read, write, and comprehend, so many of our social problems could be solved. If you can read and write, you can learn. If you can learn, you can get a job and support yourself and your family. You will be less tempted to turn to drugs, alcohol, or crime, to drop out of school or get pregnant before you are ready. You will have pride and dignity and will be able to enjoy the best things in life, including a good book or bedtime stories with your child.

While she was promoting her causes, Barbara Bush was earning huge approval ratings as First Lady. When asked why she was so popular, she would scoff and credit her white hair and less-than-perfect figure. However, others would say it was more about her sharp wit, outspoken and down-to-earth nature, and reputation as a gracious hostess.

When Bush’s dog Millie gave birth to six puppies in March 1989, Millie “wrote” about the puppies and life at the White House in her tongue-in-cheek 1990 best-selling book, Millie’s Book, which earned more than one million dollars for the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. The birth of the puppies, the constant presence of the Bush grandchildren, and Bush’s sense of humor quickly endeared her to the entire country. She loved telling stories about life at the White House, especially if they had surprise endings. One of her favorites took place on a Sunday afternoon when the family was enjoying a relaxing time together. Barbara Bush was swimming in the pool while George played horseshoes nearby. (She swam every day at the White House, rain or shine, wearing a snorkel and mask.)

On this particular day, she had just gotten started when a big rat swam right in front of her mask. She flew out of the pool screaming, bringing every Secret Service agent, security guard, and her husband running. While the Secret Service tried to decide what to do, her husband walked over and, using the pool skimmer, drowned the rat.

Despite this incident, Bush loved life at the White House, and she and her husband became famous for the many intimate dinner parties they gave upstairs in the private residence, movie parties with popcorn in the White House movie theater, or weekend get-togethers at Camp David, the presidential weekend retreat in the Maryland mountains. Whether entertaining visiting dignitaries such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Raisa Gorbachev or Margaret Thatcher and Denis Thatcher; celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Kevin Costner, or the Oak Ridge Boys; or friends and family from back home, both Bushes earned reputations as gracious and fun hosts.

Bush also became well-known for a determined, quiet resolve. She did not ruffle easily. When George Bush became ill during a state dinner in Japan and passed out on international television, the world panicked while Barbara Bush quietly reassured everyone in the room that her husband simply had the flu. When he was hospitalized with heart problems, she once again stayed calm and stuck to her schedule, while other people urged her not to leave his bedside. During the Gulf War, when Americans became fearful of commercial airline travel because of terrorist threats, she gave up her Air Force plane (much to the Secret Service’s dismay) and insisted on flying commercial airlines. She always knew how to make a point without making a fuss.

As have all First Ladies, at times she found herself in hot water, usually because of a quote she gave a reporter. In addition, when Wellesley College invited her to be its commencement speaker in 1991, a handful of the graduates protested the selection, circulating a petition that said “Barbara Bush has gained recognition only through the achievements of her husband.” This protest garnered much media attention, though this died down after she gave her speech, during which she tried to bridge the distance between the two generations of women. She said, in part:

Cherish your human connection, your relationships with friends and family. For several years, you’ve had impressed upon you the importance to your career of dedication and hard work. This is true, but as important as your obligations as a doctor, lawyer, or business leader will be, you are a human being first, and those human connections—with spouses, with children, with friends—are the most important investments you will ever make. At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

Disappointed by her husband’s defeat in 1992 by Bill Clinton, Bush nonetheless left the White House very much ready to return to private life. She told friends that she and George moved back to Houston prepared to stay out of sight and out of mind. She went back to cooking (admittedly with little success) and to driving a car for the first time in twelve years. She wrote Barbara Bush: A Memoir (another best seller), joined the speaking circuit, and devoted more time to her children and grandchildren.

Legacy

Soon after leaving the White House, she composed a letter to her children about the lessons she had learned, which illustrated perhaps better than anything her approach to life and who she was as a person. It said, in part:

Try to find the good in people and not the bad. Take a lesson from your dad. He says when I remind him that someone has been hateful, “Isn’t it better to make a friend rather than an enemy?” He’s right.
Don’t talk about money—either having it or not having it. It is embarrassing for others and quite frankly vulgar.
Do not buy something that you cannot afford. You do not need it.
If you really need something and can’t afford it, for heaven’s sake call home. That’s what family is all about.
Do not try to live up to your neighbors. They won’t look down on you if you don’t have two television sets. They will look down on you if you buy things that you cannot afford and they will know it! They are only interested in their possessions, not yours.
Be sure you pay people back. If you have dinner at their house, have them back or take them out. People love to come to your home. Plan ahead and it will be fun.
Value your friends. They are your most valuable asset.
Remember loyalty is a two-way street. It goes up and down. Your dad is the best example of two-way loyalty that I know.
Love your children. I don’t have to tell any of you that. You are the best children two people ever had. I know you will be as lucky. Your kids are great. Dad and I love them more than life itself. I think you know that about your dad. I do also.
Remember what Robert Fulghum says: “Don’t worry that your children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.”
For heaven’s sake enjoy life. Don’t cry over things that were or things that aren’t. Enjoy now what you have to the fullest. We can always find people who are worse off and we don’t have to look far! Help them and forget self!
Above all else, seek God. He will come to you if you look. We, your dad and I, have tried to live as Christian a life as we can. We certainly have not been perfect. Maybe you can! Keep trying.

However, for Barbara Bush, retiring from public life was not to be. In addition to increasing demands as a speaker and her continued involvement with her literacy foundation and charities, a decision by two Bush sons in 1994 kept the family in the spotlight: George W. in Texas and Jeb in Florida followed in their father’s footsteps and entered the political arena in 1994, despite their mother’s advice not to. (“I just did not want them to get hurt in case they lost,” she explained.) Eventually, George W. became governor of Texas, and after losing his first attempt, Jeb became governor of Florida. “Now you know we went to Texas to breed governors,” Bush joked with audiences.

In 2001, with one son as president and one as a governor, Bush said it was a legacy neither she nor her husband ever sought and refused to brag about. When asked about her son the president, she simply said, “We are proud of all five of our children.” When asked about her life, she referred people to the dedication of her memoirs, which she said explained her life best: “To faith, family, and friends; and to George Bush, who taught me that these are the most important things in life.”

In 2004 Barbara Bush joined President George W. Bush to help him pitch his vision of Social Security reform to senior citizens groups, spoke at the Republican Convention (as she did in 2000), and actively campaigned for George W.’s second term. She also published her second memoir, Reflections, that year. She remained active in her literacy foundation, AmeriCares, and other nonprofit organizations in the 2010s.

In 2013, when asked about her son Jeb Bush running for president in 2016, Barbara Bush declared, “No more Bushes,” according to Alex Altman and Zeke J. Miller, reporting for Time magazine in 2015. Yet once Jeb decided to run, Bush stood behind him. “What do you mean there are too many Bushes?” she reportedly said. “I’ve changed my mind.” Bush celebrated her ninetieth birthday on June 8, 2015, with her family in Kennebunkport, Maine. During the celebrations it was announced that she was backing a multimillion-dollar challenge, along with X Prize and Dollar General, to help spur software developers to create an adult literacy skills mobile application.

George and Barbara Bush celebrated their seventy-third wedding anniversary in January 2018, setting a record as the longest-married presidential couple in the country's history. However, she was very ill by then, and after a series of hospitalizations decided, in April of that year, that she would not seek further treatment, instead returning home to be with her family. She died at her home in Houston on April 17, 2018.

Bibliography

Altman, Alex, and Zeke J. Miller. “Next in Line.” Time 16 Mar. 2015: 36–45. Canadian Reference Centre. Web. 13 Sept. 2015.

Brower, Kate Anderson. First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies. HarperCollins, 2016.

Bush, Barbara. Barbara Bush: A Memoir. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994. Print.

Bush, Barbara. Millie’s Book: As Dictated to Bush Bush. New York: William Morrow, 1990. Print.

Bush, Barbara. Reflections: Life After the White House. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.

Bush, George H. W. All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings. New York: Scribner, 1999. Print.

Grimes, Ann. Running Mates: The Making of a First Lady. New York: William Morrow, 1990. Print.

Kilian, Pamela. Barbara Bush: A Biography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Print.

Naftali, Timothy. "Barbara Bush Changed with Her Country." The Atlantic, 18 Apr. 2018, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/a-visit-with-barbara-bush/558362/. Accessed 3 May. 2018.

Nemy, Enid. "Barbara Bush, Wife of 41st President and Mother of 43rd, Dies at 92." The New York Times, 17 Apr. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/us/barbara-bush-dead.html. Accessed 3 May. 2018.

Parmet, Herbert S. George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee. New York: Scribner, 1997. Print.

Radcliffe, Donnie. Simply Barbara Bush: A Portrait of America’s Candid First Lady. New York: Warner Books, 1989. Print.