Forthright first lady Bush dies at age 92
HOUSTON — Barbara Bush, the wife of one president and the mother of another and whose embrace of her image as America’s warmhearted grandmother belied her influence and mettle, died Tuesday. She was 92.
Barbara Bush took a plain-spoken manner and utter lack of pretense to buttoned-down Washington, often boasting about her trademark triple-strand faux pearls and joking about her prematurely white hair.
“What you see with me is what you get. I’m not running for president
— George
Bush is,” she said at the 1988 Republican National Convention, where her husband, then vice president, was nominated to succeed Ronald Reagan.
The Bushes, who were married Jan. 6, 1945, had the longest marriage of any presidential couple in American history. And Barbara Bush was one of only two first ladies who had a child who was elected president. The other was Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams
and mother of John Quincy Adams.
“I had the best job in America,” she wrote in a 1994 memoir describing her time in the White House. “Every single day was interesting, rewarding, and sometimes just plain fun.”
On Sunday, family spokesman Jim McGrath said the former first lady had decided to decline further medical treatment for health problems and to focus instead on “comfort care” at home in Houston. She had been in the hospital recently for congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In 2009, she had heart-valve replacement surgery and had a long history of treatment for Graves’ disease, a thyroid condition.
“My dear mother has passed on at age 92. Laura, Barbara, Jenna, and I are sad, but our souls are settled because we know hers was,” George W. Bush said in a statement Tuesday. “Barbara Bush was a fabulous First Lady and a woman unlike any other who brought levity, love, and literacy to millions. To us, she was so much more. Mom kept us on our toes and kept us laughing until the end. I’m a lucky man that Barbara Bush was my mother.”
George H.W. Bush held his wife’s hand all day Tuesday and was at her side when she died, according to Jean Becker, chief of staff at George H.W. Bush’s office in Houston.
Funeral arrangements weren’t immediately released.
Barbara Bush, a publisher’s daughter and oilman’s wife, could be caustic in private, but her public image was that of a self-sacrificing, supportive spouse who referred to her husband as her “hero.”
In the White House, “you need a friend, someone who loves you, who’s going to say, ‘You are great,’” Barbara Bush said in a 1992 television interview.
As a political spouse, she contrasted sharply with her predecessor as first lady, Nancy Reagan, who had at times generated unwanted attention with her lavish spending, designer clothes and intrusions into her husband’s administration. Barbara Bush presented herself as the antithesis of glamour and excess.
The two wives’ relationship during the Reagan administration was noticeably icy. The Bushes were seldom invited to the Reagan White House’s family quarters.
Eight years after leaving the nation’s capital, Barbara Bush stood with her husband as their son George W. was sworn in as president. They returned four years later when he won a second term. Unlike Barbara Bush, Abigail Adams did not live to see her son’s inauguration. She died in 1818, six years before John Quincy Adams was elected.
Barbara Bush insisted that she did not try to influence her husband’s politics.
“I don’t fool around with his office,” she said, “and he doesn’t fool around with my household.”
In 1984, her quick wit got her into trouble when she was quoted as referring to Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, as “that $4 million — I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich.”
“It was dumb of me. I shouldn’t have said it,” Barbara Bush acknowledged in 1988. “It was not attractive, and I’ve been very shamed. I apologized to Mrs. Ferraro, and I would apologize again.”
Daughter-in-law Laura Bush, wife of the 43rd president, said Barbara Bush was “ferociously tart-tongued.”
“She’s never shied away from saying what she thinks. arkansasonline.com/barbarabush
… She’s managed to insult nearly all of my friends with one or another perfectly timed acerbic comment,” Laura Bush wrote in her 2010 book, Spoken from the Heart.
In her 1994 autobiography, Barbara Bush: A Memoir, Barbara Bush said she did her best to keep her opinions from the public while her husband was in office. But she revealed that she disagreed with him on two issues: She supported legal abortion and opposed the sale of assault-style weapons.
“I honestly felt, and still feel, the elected person’s opinion is the one the public has the right to know,” Barbara Bush wrote.
She also disclosed a bout with depression in the mid1970s, saying she sometimes feared she would deliberately crash her car. She blamed hormonal changes and stress.
“Night after night, George held me weeping in his arms while I tried to explain my feelings,” she wrote. “I almost wonder why he didn’t leave me.”
She said she snapped out of it in a few months.
In 2003, she wrote a follow-up memoir, Reflections: Life After the White House.
“I made no apologies for the fact that I still live a life of ease,” she wrote. “There is a difference between ease and leisure. I live the former and not the latter.”
Along with her memoirs, she wrote C. Fred’s Story and Millie’s Book, based on the lives of her dogs. Proceeds from the books benefited adult and family literacy programs. Laura Bush, a former teacher with a master’s degree in library science, continued her mother-in-law’s literacy campaign in the White House.
Bush raised five children: George W., Jeb, Neil, Marvin and Dorothy. A sixth child, 3-year-old daughter Robin, died of leukemia in 1953.
The 43rd president was not the only Bush son to seek office in the 1990s. In 1994, when George W. was elected governor of Texas, son Jeb narrowly lost to incumbent Lawton Chiles in Florida. Four years later, Jeb was victorious in his second try in Florida.
“This is a testament to what wonderful parents they are,” George W. Bush said as Jeb Bush was sworn into office. He won a second term in 2002, and then made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
In the 2016 election, Barbara Bush did not mince words about her distaste for her son’s primary opponent, businessman Donald Trump. In a joint interview with Jeb before the New Hampshire primary, she said it was “incomprehensible” to her that anyone would vote for Trump, particularly women in light of his abusive comments about them.
Noting how Trump’s apparent fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin might not sit well with voters, she added, “Putin has endorsed him, for heaven’s sakes. Putin the killer, Putin the worst. That’s an endorsement you don’t want.”
Trump issued a statement Tuesday evening, praising Barbara Bush as “an advocate of the American family” and highlighting her focus on literacy as one of her greatest achievements.
Sons Marvin and Neil both became businessmen. Neil achieved some notoriety in the 1980s as a director of a savings and loan that crashed. Daughter Dorothy, or Doro, has preferred to stay out of the spotlight. She married lobbyist Robert Koch, a Democrat, in 1992.
In a collection of letters published in 1999, George H.W. Bush included a note he gave to his wife in early 1994.
“You have given me joy that few men know,” he wrote. “You have made our boys into men by bawling them out and then, right away, by loving them. You have helped Doro to be the sweetest, greatest daughter in the whole wide world. I have climbed perhaps the highest mountain in the world, but even that cannot hold a candle to being Barbara’s husband.”
Barbara Bush was born Barbara Pierce in Rye, N.Y. Her father was the publisher of McCall’s and Redbook magazines. After attending Smith College for two years, she married young naval aviator George Herbert Walker Bush. She was 19.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael Graczyk of The Associated Press; and by Lois Romano of The Washington Post.