Bushes display lifetime of love
Former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral was an hour America needed.
The service included honest tears, loving laughter, stories of a life welllived, compassion and caring. No shouting. No blaming. Nary a discouraging word.
I sat transfixed, feeling a familiar uplifting of spirit and rededication to living a better, more productive life.
I knew the Bushes a bit and helped the 41st president in his first run for the office, albeit unintentionally.
Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush had to get past the New Hampshire primary. The newspaper I edited, the EagleTribune in Lawrence, had many subscribers in New Hampshire.
I put together a team of ordinary voters to meet with the presidential candidates and then vote for their favorite.
A Latino member of the panel, a Democrat, rather aggressively challenged Vice President Bush on one of the points in his platform. Bush handled the challenge masterfully.
He turned his chair to face the woman, saying, “Let’s you and I talk about this. Tell me your point of view.”
The panel recommended that my newspaper endorse Bush.
Later in that same election cycle, Bush and I enjoyed one degree of separation that many say led to his defeat of Michael Dukakis, Massachusetts’ governor and his Democratic opponent.
The one degree was a truly fierce and rotten human being named Willie Horton. Horton and two equally worthless thugs robbed a Lawrence gas station one evening and murdered the 17-year-old attendant. The three were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The Massachusetts prison system allowed Horton, and other first-degree murderers out on weekend passes called furloughs.
Horton skipped out one weekend. He broke into the home of a young couple in Maryland, and tied up both. He took turns raping the woman and slashing the man across his chest with a knife.
The man escaped and called the cops. Why furloughs? I ordered my staff to find out. It took us a year. The purpose was to mollify the inmates. The prison system couldn’t control the murderers, so they let them loose on weekends.
Our reporting earned us a Pulitzer Prize.
Bush ran TV commercials alleging that Dukakis was soft on crime. The label stuck.
The Democrats fought back, claiming the Bush commercials were racist.
Nearly four years later, while he was running for re-election, the president and Barbara invited my boss and myself to breakfast at a New Hampshire motel.
The 41st president of the United States opened our conversation with a confession. It surprised me.
“I guess I didn’t do a very good job with that Horton thing,” he said.
Barbara Bush came out of the bedroom dressed for a day of campaigning in a beautiful blue suit and a white blouse. Her entrance set off a touching husband/wife moment.
“I don’t think your top button is buttoned,” said President Bush, touching her neck.
Flustered, the First Lady reached for her throat, then huffed, “It is not.”
Just two ordinary folks off to work in the family business, politicking, with an air of nobility and a touch of a common man and woman in love that characterized their life together.