Tributes pour in for first lady Barbara Bush
HOUSTON — Former President George W. Bush says his mother, Barbara Bush, didn’t fear death because she believed in an afterlife and that she would be “wonderfully received in the arms of a loving God.”
Barbara Bush, who died Tuesday at age 92 at her home in Houston, was “warm and wonderful, until you got out of line,” her son added while appearing with his wife, Laura Bush, on the Fox Business Network.
Other relatives also described her as the family “enforcer” while her husband, former President George H. W. Bush, pursued careers in the Texas oil business and, later, politics and public service.
Bush was at his wife’s side when she died and had held her hand all day Tuesday, a spokeswoman said. They’d been married 73 years, longer than any presidential couple.
Tributes rolled in from around the world.
Current first lady Melania Trump, who will attend Barbara Bush’s funeral Saturday in Houston, praised her for putting “family and country above all else.” Among her greatest achievements, President Trump added in a statement, “was recognizing the importance of literacy as a fundamental family value that requires nurturing and protection.”
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, in office during the George H. W. Bush presidency, remembered Barbara Bush as warm and astute, saying he was “greatly saddened.” Gorbachev visited with the Bushes at the former president’s library at Texas A&M University, where Barbara Bush will be buried.
“Barbara did a lot to build trust and friendship between us. She immediately developed a warm relationship with Raisa (Gorbachev’s wife), they communicated easily and at ease,” Gorbachev said.
In Kuwait, which has long celebrated George H. W. Bush for its liberation from Iraqi occupation in the 1991 Gulf War, leader Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah sent letters of condolence. Barbara Bush visited Kuwait in 1993 and 2001, and was warmly received by dignitaries and Kuwaiti women.
Former President Barack Obama said he and former first lady Michelle Obama are “grateful for the way she lived her life — as a testament to the fact that public service is an important and noble calling; as an example of the humility and decency that reflects the very best of the American spirit.”