Barbara Bush made impression during Memphis visit
Barbara Bush’s storied graciousness and humor made an impression on the Memphians who met the first lady.
“She was very sweet, very outgoing, very gracious with everyone, and had a great sense of humor,” said Jerry Chipman, former director of public relations at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where the first lady dedicated a new research facility on June 14, 1991, in what was probably her most significant Memphis appearance.
Bush died at her Houston home Tuesday after a long struggle with congestive heart failure and pulmonary disease. She was 92.
Bush dedicated the $35 million, fivestory Thomas Family Research Tower in a ceremony attended by about 1,000 hospital employees, patients, board members and guests, according to The Commercial Appeal.
Joining the first lady — whose husband, George H.W. Bush, was in the midst of his term of office as president — were the children of hospital founder Danny Thomas, including Marlo, Tony and Terre Thomas.
Bush’s visit was particularly resonant because she and her husband had lost their daughter, Pauline Robinson “Robin” Bush, to leukemia in 1953, two months before Robin’s fourth birthday. By 1992 — thanks partly to St. Jude research — more than 70 percent of children diagnosed with such leukemia beat the disease.
”George and I know something about the catastrophic illness of children. We know what a miracle this (hospital) is,” she said.
Bush — who had visited the city previously while campaigning for her husband in 1988 — had returned to Memphis at the invitation of Danny Thomas, who had died four months earlier, but not before writing to Bush to ask her to take part in the dedication.
Bush said her husband had encouraged her to visit St. Jude after his own stop at the hospital on Nov. 23, 1989, while he was in Memphis to launch his Thousand Points of Light campaign to encourage volunteerism, in a ceremony that took place on the lawn of The Commercial Appeal.
While at St. Jude, both George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush talked to parents and children as the youngsters received chemotherapy.
Barbara Bush told one child that her husband’s last birthday present to her had been a pair of sneakers in 20 colors. ”I should have brought you a pair,” she told Candi Snider, 7, of Zachary, Louisiana, who had painted her toenails with three colors of nail polish while receiving chemotherapy to combat acute myeloid leukemia.
Bush’s visit belonged to a St. Jude tradition that has continued for decades. Other first ladies who have visited the hospital include Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama.
Chipman — a local theater veteran currently directing a production of “August: Osage County” that opens April 27 at Theatre Memphis — said Bush was “unpretentious and very approachable.”
“Waiting to go onstage for the dedication, she kept everyone entertained in the holding area,” he said. “She was a lot of fun.”