PRAYERS FOR BARBARA BUSH
FORMER FIRST LADY & FIRST MOM, 92, IN FAILING HEALTH
FORMER FIRST LADY Barbara Bush’s health is failing, and she has opted to no longer be hospitalized, a family spokesman announced Sunday.
The 92-year-old Bush “decided not to seek additional medical treatment and will instead focus on comfort care” in Houston.
Bush, the First Lady from 1989 to 1993 and mother to President George W. Bush, has been battling congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, CNN reported.
“It will not surprise those who know her that Barbara Bush has been a rock in the face of her failing health, worrying not for herself — thanks to her abiding faith — but for others,” family spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement.
“She is surrounded by a family she adores, and appreciates the many kind messages and especially the prayers she is receiving.”
Messages of support poured in for the woman regaled as “everybody’s grandmother,” whose acerbic wit endeared her to admirers on both sides of the political aisle, but sometimes put her on the hot seat for going too far.
The best — or worst — example of her candidness came in 1984, when she criticized vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who was campaigning for her husband’s job.
“I can’t say it,” Bush said about Ferrraro, looking for the right descriptive word. “But it rhymes with rich.”
She later insisted that the word she was looking for was “witch.”
Bush also took heat in 2005 when she said evacuees displaced by Hurricane Katrina “were underprivileged anyway,” and that the displacement was “working very well for them.”
Despite the fallout, Bush has remained a favorite.
“Prayers going up for a woman of great faith, great strength, and an unwavering love of country. Our country is better because of former First Lady Barbara Bush,” tweeted Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Meghan McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain and co-host of “The View,” said she was “sending all my love and prayers to the entire Bush family today — Barbara Bush is a woman of great strength, patriotism and an iconic First Lady of our times who has touched and inspired countless lives.”
She and George H.W. Bush have been married 73 years. They tied the knot in January 1945 while the future President was serving as a Navy torpedo bomber pilot in World War II.
They went on to have six children, including former President George W. Bush and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and have been married longer than any First Couple.
“I am still old and still in love with the man I married 72 years ago,” Bush wrote in a Spring 2018 alumnae magazine for Smith College, where she received an honorary degree in 1989 after dropping out in the 1940s to marry Bush.
“I have had great medical care and more operations than you would believe,” she said. “I’m not sure God will recognize me; I have so many new body parts!”
Bush became one of two women in U.S. history whose husband and son became President after George W. Bush’s 2000 victory.
Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams and mother to John Quincy Adams, was the first.
Bush became a leading literacy advocate while still First Lady, which she’s continued in the 25 years since the couple left the White House.
She and the 41st President have both been in declining health over the past few years, however.
George H.W. Bush missed President Trump’s January 2017 inauguration after a bout with pneumonia.