When All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings hit book stores almost two decades ago, it revealed a thoughtful side of our country’s 41st president. One letter from Bush to his mother deeply touched millions who read the book or heard the excerpt read on television.
With the recent passage of President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara, it’s worth taking another look at that poignant letter from long ago.
The words were written in 1958 when Bush was the father of four boys. Five years earlier he and wife Barbara lost their daughter to leukemia. Robin was just 3 when she died.
“There is about our house a need,” Bush wrote. “We need some starched crisp frocks to go with all our torn-kneed blue jeans and helmets. We need some soft blond hair to offset those crew cuts. We need a doll house to stand firm against our forts and rackets and thousand baseball cards … We need a little one who can kiss without leaving egg or jam or gum. We need a girl. We had one once …”
Bush and his wife were blessed with another daughter not long after this correspondence, but the memory of little Robin remained intense throughout Bush’s lengthy life.
“She is still with us. We need her and yet we have her. We can’t touch her, and yet we can feel her,” Bush wrote. “We hope she’ll stay in our house for a long, long, time.”
The pain of losing a child has touched many occupants of the White House. Even the power and influence of the Oval Office has failed to exempt our leaders from such heartache. Before, during, and after their presidencies, many of America’s leaders have dealt with the greatest tragedy imaginable.
Former Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge each lost young sons to sudden illness during their tenures as chief executive. In a cruel twist of history repeating itself, both John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams were devastated as they left office by the death of a tormented, adult son. Theodore Roosevelt’s youngest son, Quentin, was killed during an aerial battle in the final months of World War I.
Just weeks prior to Franklin Pierce’s 1853 inauguration, the president-elect watched in horror as his only surviving son, Bennie, died during a train accident. Dwight Eisenhower’s first boy contracted scarlet fever as the 1920 holiday season arrived and died a week after Christmas, with a new little red tricycle still waiting for him under the tree.
A decade before his daughter’s death, Bush was surrounded by profound losses. On Sept. 2, 1944, the young Avenger pilot led an attack on a Japanese radio station on Chichi Jima. After his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, Bush bailed out. Bush’s two crew members, radio operator John Delaney and gunner William White, did not survive.
He never forgot this rendezvous with death. Bush wondered if he did enough to assist his crewmates in those final moments before the plane went down and even welcomed the sisters of Delaney and White to the White House decades after the war ended. The carnage in the Pacific weighed heavily on Bush’s mind as he sent troops into combat during the Persian Gulf conflict.
The Bushes always carried memories of Robin throughout the remainder of their 73-year marriage. The crucible of Robin’s final illness drew the couple closer together. The experience left them more determined than ever to make every day count as they pursued a life of public service. The aching hurt eventually gave way to mostly happy memories of their child.
Bush once referred to his late daughter as a “Christmas angel.” As the nation bids goodbye to the former chief executive at the dawn of this holiday season, George H.W. Bush has been reunited at last with his beloved Barbara and Robin. The example of their enduring love is a lasting gift for us all.
Kendall Wingrove is a freelance writer from Okemos, Mich.
