Boston won’t soon forget Barbara Bush
The Soviet Union and the United States were going through the bitter and contentious Cold War. You remember President Reagan standing in front of the Berlin Wall in 1987, demanding, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The Soviet leader immediately responded angrily to our president’s public attack.
So when I received a call from the White House in 1991 requesting that Boston host a joint public appearance for first lady Barbara Bush and Raisa Gorbachev, wife of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, my office called around to see if there was something that they had in common that they could share with the people in Boston. We learned that family was their highest priority.
Earlier, when my wife, Kathy, and I were in Moscow with the Waltham American Legion Band to participate in the historic May Day parade, but also to seek the release of several Russian Jews who were being held captive as political dissidents, we also developed a relationship with Mrs. Gorbachev. I had been on a mission to seek the release of Jewish political dissidents who wanted to be reunited with their families and neighbors in Israel and the United States, including in Boston. Abraham Foxman, national director of the AntiDefamation League out of New York City, and I became good friends while I was president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He even bestowed on me the ADL’s highest award for helping develop stronger relations between the Vatican and Israel in 1993 when I was ambassador to the Vatican.
While in Moscow I was introduced to the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Dimitrios and to various Russian political leaders including Moscow Mayor and first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, as well as Gorbachev. It was then that we were able to obtain the release of people we didn’t know, but years later met in a Jewish Elderly Development in Brighton. Later, we were invited by Pope John Paul II to Assisi and the Vatican to have lunch with President and Mrs. Gorbachev. We talked about that day in Boston with the gracious Barbara Bush.
But listening to Kathy’s conversation with Mrs. Bush at the Parkman House on Beacon Hill was something I won’t forget. My young daughter Julie was standing next to them and listening to every word.
Naturally, they talked about children and families and the challenge all parents face today. It was hard to imagine Mrs. Bush facing these same challenges that our neighbors in Boston experienced, but she talked about losing a daughter and said “that the reason why she was so driven to help all children get a good education because that was the road out of poverty.”
But what she said to Kathy next stayed with us all these years. She said, “You know, just because some people grew up wealthy, that doesn’t mean that we don’t care about helping the poor.”
When I heard the news of Mrs. Bush passing recently, I thought back to that day at the Public Garden while she was admiring the children from the Mather Public School in Dorchester with Mrs. Gorbachev and listening to them singing “Let there be Peace on Earth.”
Rest in peace, Mrs. Bush, you earned it.
The children of Boston won’t forget you.