Global leaders recall modest side to Bush

HOUSTON — George H.W. Bush played many prominent public roles in nearly a century of life, from when he was a 20-year-old World War II hero to the 41st president of the United States. In between came turns as a congressman, the director of the CIA, an ambassador to the United Nations and China, and a two-term vice president.

Yet colleagues and friends and rivals said the great-grandfather was humble, modest and unfailingly polite.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Saturday expressed his “deep condolences” to the Bush family.

Gorbachev worked with Bush to bring an end to the Cold War in the late 1980s and 1990s and lauded the former president for his abilities as a politician and his

personal character.

“It was a time of great change,” he told the Interfax news agency, “demanding great responsibility from everyone. The result was the end of the Cold War and nuclear arms race.”

Gorbachev said that he and his wife, Raisa, “deeply appreciated the attention, kindness and simplicity typical of George and Barbara Bush, as well as the rest of their large, friendly family.”

Bush, who died late Friday at his Houston home at age 94, would see his popularity as president soar after he assembled a U.S.-led military coalition that liberated the oil-rich nation of Kuwait from its invading neighbor Iraq in 1991 during the Gulf War. But a year later, an economic crisis at home would drive him from office when he lost his bid for re-election to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

“Dear Bill,” George H.W. Bush scribbled Jan. 20, 1993, to the Democrat about to succeed him as president. “When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too.”

Short yet intimate, the note left in the Oval Office from vanquished to victor seeded a friendship that flowered in the decades since, to a point where Bill Clinton said upon Bush’s death Friday: “I just loved him.”

Hillary Clinton said the letter made her cry, when she first read it back then and again when she heard Bush was gone. “That’s the America we love,” she said on Instagram.

Air Force One was being sent to Texas to transport Bush’s casket to Washington, where his body will lay in state at the Capitol Rotunda after an arrival ceremony Monday. The public is invited and can pay their respects from Monday evening through Wednesday morning. The family is still arranging funeral services, but the White House said President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump plan to attend.

President Trump on Saturday ordered federal offices to be closed Wednesday to honor Bush.

Trump signed an executive order Saturday, directing federal agencies and departments to close “as a mark of respect for George Herbert Walker Bush, the forty-first President of the United States.”

Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, joined in the tributes pouring in for the late president.

They said Bush served his country with “modesty, integrity, and patriotism” and made the world “more peaceful, prosperous and secure.”

Former President Jimmy Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize after his presidency, praised the man he said lived a life defined by service and civility.

Carter said in a statement release Saturday: “Rosalynn and I are deeply saddened by the death of former President George H.W. Bush. His administration was marked by grace, civility, and social conscience. Through his Points of Light initiative and other projects, he espoused a uniquely American volunteer spirit, fostering bipartisan support for citizen service and inspiring millions to embrace community volunteerism as a cherished responsibility.”

And praise came from other leaders overseas.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel

said Bush was “a true friend” of her country, whose reunification 28 years ago he supported.

Merkel wrote to Trump on Saturday that America has lost “a great patriot and statesman.” Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, highlighted Bush’s role in

helping bring about German reunification in 1990, less than a year after the Berlin Wall fell.

In a letter of condolences Saturday, Benjamin Netanyahu wrote that Israel “will always remember his efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East.”

During his presidency, Bush got a reluctant Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s prime minister at the time, to send a delegation to an international Mideast peace conference in Madrid. That helped launch Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts that ultimately ran aground.