EX-FIRST LADY BARBARA BUSH DIES AT 92
Barbara Bush, wife and mom to Presidents, dies
FORMER FIRST Lady Barbara Bush, the wife of one President and the mother of another, whose everywoman charm appealed equally to tree-hugging liberals and ardent conservatives, died Tuesday. She was 92.
“A former First Lady of the United States of America and relentless proponent of family literacy, Barbara Pierce Bush passed away Tuesday,” former President George W. Bush’s office said in a statement.
Bush had been battling congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and refused further medical treatment in the days before she died.
Her son George eloquently recalled a mother “who kept us on our toes and kept us laughing until the end.”
“I’m a lucky man that Barbara Bush was my mother,” the former President said. “Our family will miss her dearly, and we thank you all for your prayers and good wishes.”
Tributes poured in from both sides of the political aisle.
“President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump join the nation in celebrating the life of Barbara Bush,” the White House said in a statement. “As a wife, mother, grandmother, military spouse and former First Lady, Mrs. Bush was an advocate of the American family.”
Former President Barack Obama, in a joint statement with his wife, Michelle, said, “Barbara Bush was the rock of a family dedicated to public service.”
“Barbara Bush was a remarkable woman,” tweeted former President Bill Clinton. “She showed us what an honest, vibrant, full life looks like. Hillary and I mourn her passing and bless her memory.”
Former President Jimmy Carter called her “the matriarch of a family dedicated to serving.”
Barbara Bush was a fixture alongside her husband as he rose from Texas politics after a career in the oil business, and used her own position to champion adult literacy.
She was known as “everybody’s grandmother,” a whitehaired, pearl-wearing witty philosopher with the moral authority to influence the President and a nation.
Nancy Reagan was regal. Jackie Kennedy was royal. But Barbara Bush was noble. Born of blue blood and married to authority, Bush, the wife of former President George H.W. Bush, will forever share a place in history with Abigail Adams as the wife and the mother of Presidents of the United States.
At one moment Bush would be comfortably in the background, maintaining a private presence on policy issues while sidestepping public discussions.
“I don’t criticize anybody,” she once told a crowd. “I leave that for George.”
Then at another moment she was shredding vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who, in 1984, was campaigning for her husband’s job.
“I can’t say it,” Bush said. “But it rhymes with rich.” She later insisted that the word she was looking for was “witch.”
When she was First Lady, she promoted reading by starting the Barbara Bush Foundation for Literacy, using $800,000 in proceeds from her best-selling “Millie’s Book,” which follows a day in the life of First Family through the eyes of the White House dog.
She also encouraged people to volunteer at homeless shelters and Head Start projects, and she promoted AIDS awareness when the disease was still highly stigmatized and misunderstood.
In 1989, she made front-page headlines when she visited Grandma’s House, a pediatric AIDS care center in the District, and cradled an infant patient at a time when many people mistakenly believed the disease could be contracted through mere proximity to the virus.
Barbara Pierce was born June 8, 1925, in New York City, raised in the Westchester County suburb of Rye and attended boarding school at the tony Ashley Hall all-girls prep school in South Carolina. The Smith College student met George H.W. Bush at age 16 at a Connecticut Christmas dance while he was a finishing prep school and headed for Yale University.
“I didn’t like to study very much,” she confessed later. “The truth is, I just wasn’t very interested. I was just interested in George.”
They were married for 73 years, having tied the knot in January 1945 while he was a Navy torpedo bomber pilot in World War II. She gave birth more than a year later to George W. Bush, who would go on to become the 43rd President. The couple had five more children including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Pauline, who died in 1953 of leukemia at age 3.
Her hair began to turn white prematurely after the shock of her daughter’s death.
She accompanied her husband to New York when he became Richard Nixon’s ambassador to the United Nations, then to Beijing as Gerald Ford’s liaison to China.
Bush became second lady of the United States when her husband was elected to the first of two terms as Ronald Reagan’s vice president in 1980.