She may not be nearly as poetic as Sir Elton John, but Laura Bush received a standing ovation on Thursday as she told some family stories while she spoke before the International AIDS Conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. (John talked Monday).
When Bush talked about her family’s AIDS advocacy, she talked about it spanning three generations. “While my father-in-law was president during those early days when people thought you could ‘catch’ AIDS from touching somebody, Barbara Bush cradled HIV positive babies and hugged people with AIDS, she met with families who lost loved ones to AIDS and she visited the AIDS Memorial Quilt that was on the Mall like it is now,” Laura Bush told the audience. “Her graceful example challenged all Americans to confront HIV/AIDS with care and compassion rather than fear and rejection.
She then moved on to another Barbara — her daughter. Bush spoke of being with the younger Barbara Bush at a pediatric clinic in Botswana, swarmed with AIDS patients, and seeing a dying young child in a lovely lavender dress. “Her mother’s last hope was to make her beautiful,” the former first lady recalled. “Barbara, my daughter, was so affected by this beautiful child that she resolved then to help confront the challenges this little girl faced.” Barbara Bush soon after founded Global Health Corps, which recruits college graduates for health-related jobs. When Bush mentioned this, the audience responded with spontaneous spurts of clapping. “Thank you for clapping for Barbara,” mother Bush gushed.
Barbara, when she appeared on a panel at Georgetown University last month, shared a different anecdote about what inspired her activism. “I got engaged because my professor in college passed away because he was HIV positive and didn’t have access to medicine,” she said. “I went to Yale, this was the United States, this was not a poor university and people all over the world have experiences like that.”
