Barbara Bush had no need for a big, sleek limousine or a private plane.
Soon after becoming first lady, she told the Secret Service she wanted to travel in a small car and commercially by train or airline. The Secret Service didn’t like it but gave in on the small car. It convinced Bush, however, to use a private plane. It wasn’t the fact that she was first lady and was expected to exploit such luxuries that convinced her, but that she didn’t want to delay the public passengers while the Secret Service checked for threats. “To inconvenience so many others was not reasonable,” she wrote in her 1994 memoir.
That humility and thoughtfulness defined her life and time as first lady.
Even though she was wealthy, she was frugal. Knowing she would only wear them once before giving them to the Smithsonian, she attended her husband’s inaugural ball wearing fake pearls and a $29 pair of shoes ($60 in today’s dollars). After leaving the White House, according to a former Secret Service agent who protected the Bushes in the late 1990s, Bush would drive her own car and go out by herself. “You could be in a grocery store and there would be Mrs. Bush and she was very approachable, talked to anybody, loved people.”
That personality is why the public and White House staff loved her. Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton went out of her way on Sunday to compliment Bush, tweeting:
Keeping Barbara Bush and her family in my heart and prayers. I will never forget how kind she was to me on every occasion we met, and how fondly the White House staff always spoke of her.
— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) April 15, 2018
First ladies serve an important role even without an official title or formal power. Leaders need spousal support in public, a confidant, and someone privately willing to tell them what they need to hear. A 1989 Time magazine profile testified to Bush’s practice of publicly supporting and privately prodding her husband. When President George H.W. Bush gave standard talking points to a question about homelessness, an aide said, “She really talked hard at him … and rode him until he got it right.” Yet, when she was asked publicly for her personal opinion on abortion, she said, “I’m not running for president, so I am not going to tell you my position on abortion. But I would love to tell you what George’s is.”
As the wife of a vice president for eight years, wife of a president for four years, and mother of a president for eight years, Bush served her country in ways for 20 years that we will never know, but that deserves national gratitude.
She not only supported our leaders, but was also a national role model in her 73-year marriage and raising of successful children.
For more than 60 years she and her husband sent romantic letters to each other, entirely unlike the texts of today: “I <3 you.” The Bushes supported each other through stressful times both professionally and personally (their second child, Robin, died of leukemia at age 3).
Barbara Bush lived long, lived well, and loved well, and she deserves the nation’s fond farewell.
