George H.W. Bush a man of honor
The 41st president of the United States stood, removed his tie clasp with the presidential seal and gave it to Bryan Eaton, a photographer for the Eagle-Tribune newspaper of Lawrence. George H.W. Bush was chagrined. He had not expected Eaton and had no gift for him. He had prepared souvenir cufflinks with the Presidential Seal for Irving E. Rogers, the newspaper’s then-publisher and owner, and myself, the newspaper’s editor, because we had been invited to join him for a breakfast in his suite at a motel on the outskirts of Nashua. We asked Bryan to come along to make a pictorial record of our breakfast meeting. We weren’t sure the Secret Service would let Bryan in, but the president welcomed our photographer as warmly as he greeted us. As he did for the two of us, the leader of the free world made every effort to put Bryan at ease, rising to pass plates of fruit and pastries, and pouring coffee. It was classic Bush. He came from a family of wealth, but in an era when service to others was considered a high calling. The president and publisher Rogers, a longtime resident of Andover, talked fondly of Bush’s years at Phillips Academy, joking about a particular classmate who became a liberal activist. We had been invited by a presidential aide who credited our newspaper with helping Bush get elected because of our endorsement in a crowded New Hampshire primary and our expose of Willie Horton, the life-term murderer who had been set free on weekend furloughs by the administration of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, the man Bush defeated for his single term. The Horton scandal was considered by many to be one the major reasons Dukakis lost. Bush enlisted in the Navy the day he turned 18, right after graduating Phillips, and became a pilot off an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. On a mission to take out a Japanese radio station, Bush’s plane was shot down and he parachuted into the ocean, rescued quickly by a United States submarine. Two crew members on the plane perished, triggering a lifetime of anguish for the future president. While still on the sub, he wrote a letter to his parents, lamenting the loss of his comrades. Later, he would say their deaths changed his life, making him less likely to send to war the sons and daughters of American parents. As with his special gift to Bryan, Bush’s thoughts, to say nothing of his heart, focused on others. I gave the cufflinks to my son when I retired and stopped wearing a suit and tie, but kept a personal note Bush wrote thanking me for a column calling him “a class act.” “I am 73 years old now, and kind words mean an awful lot,” he wrote. That was 21 years ago. My opinion is unchanged. He was a class act. May his legacy of grace survive the ages.