The last goodbye
Bush family bids farewell to Barbara
As the nation paid its last respects to former First Lady Barbara Pierce Bush, a father and son — the 41st and 43rd presidents of the United States, George H.W. and George W. Bush — poignantly watched pallbearers carry a beloved wife and mother.
The nation bid a solemn farewell to Barbara Pierce Bush, the former first lady who holds a unique place in American hearts and history, at her funeral in Houston on Saturday.
Bush, who died Tuesday at age 92 in her home in Houston, became a national matriarchal figure as the wife of the country’s 41st president and mother of its 43rd and stands only with Abigail Adams as the center of such a political dynasty.
The private funeral at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, the nation’s largest Episcopal church, was thronged with 1,500 mourners.
Her husband, former President George H.W. Bush, 93, was pushed in a wheelchair to a front pew. He followed two of the couple’s four sons — former Presi- dent George W. Bush, 71, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, 65.
First Lady Melania Trump attended, seated alongside former President Barack Obama. Former First Ladies Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, along with former President Bill Clinton, joined them in a front row.
Buses shuttled dignitaries to the Gothic cathedral. Former first-family members, including Caroline Kennedy and Chelsea Clinton, attended, as did former Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, former Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona, retired Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, and officials from the Bush administrations.
Just as previous sitting presidents have not attended the funerals of former first ladies, President Trump was not present for Bush’s funeral but said he would watch TV coverage from his Mar- a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
“Today, my thoughts and prayers are with the entire Bush family,” he tweeted 11:45 a.m. “In memory of First Lady Barbara Bush, there is a remembrance display located at her portrait in the Center Hall of the White House.”
The large Bush family — the couple had six children, 17 grandkids and seven great-grandkids — took prominent roles in the ceremony as readers and pallbearers.
Eight grandsons escorted her coffin, draped in a white shroud adorned with a large gold cross, up the long central aisle.
Granddaughter Elizabeth Dwen Andrews could barely contain her tears as she read from Ecclesiastes: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”
Jeb Bush delivered one of the service’s three eulogies.
“She was our teacher and role model of how to live a life of purpose and meaning,” he said.
“She called her style a benevolent dictatorship, but honestly it wasn’t always benevolent. There were no safe spaces or microaggressions allowed with Barbara Pierce Bush.”
Presidential historian Jon Meacham called her “the first lady of the Greatest Generation.”
Her husband “was the only boy she ever kissed,” he said. “She said her children always wanted to throw up when they heard that.”
Barbara Bush was known for her grandmotherly looks — and her steel spine. She was an unobtrusive but fiercely protective political partner for her husband, whose career included stints as the UN ambassador and CIA director, two terms as Ronald Reagan’s vice president, and a single term in the White House, from 1989 to 1993.
“Please notice — hairdo, makeup, designer dress,” she said at an inauguration event in 1989. “Look at me good this week, because it’s the only week.”
Born Barbara Pierce in Flushing, Queens, in 1925, Bush grew up in well-to-do Rye, Westchester County. Her 73-year marriage began when she was still a teen. She and George met at a dance in 1941 when both were in high school.
On their first date, she wrote in her 1994 memoir, George “begged his mother to let him use the Oldsmobile that night because it had a radio and their other car did not. He was so afraid we would sit in stony silence and have nothing to say to each other. For years, he has teased me that there was no silence that night and I haven’t stopped talking since.”
They carried on the romance by letter for four more years after he became a Navy flier in World War II. She studied at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., while he served in the Pacific. She dropped out after her freshman year.
“I was just interested in George,” she said.
Two weeks after he returned to the US on Christmas Eve 1944 after being shot down, they were married — at ages 19 and 20.
“In wartime, the rules change,” she wrote later. “You don’t wait until tomorrow to do anything.”
They moved 11 times in their first six years together as George attended Yale, then launched his career in Texas.
Devastated by the death of their 3-year-old daughter, Robin, of leukemia in 1953, Barbara Bush’s hair went white at age 28.
Her persona as a traditional, retiring political wife belied her role as a fierce family protector.
“Look out, the Silver Fox is really mad at you,” President George H.W. Bush would playfully warn reporters who had earned his wife’s ire.
“She always took her duties seriously,” George W. Bush wrote. “But never herself.”
The two former presidents left the church together, with the younger pushing his father’s wheelchair down the aisle. They frequently paused so both could greet mourners in the pews.
Barbara Bush was buried at Robin’s side at the George H.W. Bush Library and Museum at Texas A&M University in College Station. Scores of people lined the highway to pay their respects as the funeral cortege sped by.