Barbara Bush, the wife of former President George H.W. Bush and the mother of former President George W. Bush, died April 17 at 92, according to The New York Times.
Here are six quotes from recent obituaries commemorating Ms. Bush's life.
"Bush was the bipartisan matron and gracious host, the self-effacing philanthropist who took life's tragedies (the death of a daughter) and turned them into a lifelong cause (fighting childhood leukemia). Her son Neil struggled with dyslexia; Bush became a dogged advocate for literacy," Jennifer Rubin wrote in The Washington Post. "She understood that with the role of first lady came not just an opportunity to live well but also the obligation to do good. She never considered shirking public duties because one was shy or self-conscious or just didn’t care for public life. It wasn't about what she wanted, but what was expected."
"Mrs. Bush was regarded as unpretentious, a woman who could wear fake pearls, enjoy takeout tacos, walk the dog in her bathrobe and make fun of herself. Perhaps adding to her appeal, she conformed to the popular view of an old-fashioned grandmother, with her white hair and matronly figure; though she was almost a year younger than her husband, many thought she looked much older," Enid Nemy wrote in The New York Times.
"The value of bluntness was something that she also learned about, in a way, after [her daughter] Robin's death. She wrote in her memoir that the doctors were kind but, to an extent, remained detached: 'They just could not get too involved emotionally. At the time no leukemia patient had recovered.' And her friends and neighbors, with kind intentions but caught in the trap of Wasp reserve and politeness, simply stopped speaking about the girl," Amy Davidson Sorkin wrote in The New Yorker. "The one who 'helped break the ice,' she wrote, was her son George. In company, he would suddenly ask, for example, whether Robin had been buried upright or lying down, because he had learned that the world rotated and wanted to know if she spent time standing on her head, 'and wouldn’t that be neat?' There might be 'shocked silence' at first, his mother wrote, but 'he made it okay for our friends to mention her, and that helped us a great deal.' We can learn a lot from our children when they are most provoking, and also, if we let ourselves, from our First Ladies."
"Former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama said they were grateful for her generosity to them and said the way she lived her life was a testament to public service as an important and noble calling, that she was an example of humility and decency… Myra Gutin says Bush was popular in part because she was a throwback to old-fashioned values and because she pushed back against popular conventions of beauty," Tovia Smith wrote in NPR. "When she was about to become first lady, she quipped, 'My mail tells me that a lot of fat, white-haired, wrinkled ladies are tickled pink.'"
"Mrs. Bush had a bull-detector like no one. She gave it to you with the bark off. But when you earned her affection, which I eventually did, it meant all the more. You knew it was real. There was no falsity, no pretense, no guile, no spin, no art to Barbara Bush, who died on Tuesday," Christopher Buckley, novelist and speechwriter to Vice President George H.W. Bush from 1981 until 1983, wrote for The New York Times. "She was What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get avant la lettre. (That is, before the concept of WYSIWYG had a name.) Americans are always clamoring about the virtues of 'transparency.' Barbara Bush was as transparent as distilled water."
"My dear mother has passed on at age 92. Laura, Barbara, Jenna and I are sad, but our souls are settled because we know hers was. Barbara Bush was a fabulous First Lady and a woman unlike any other who brought levity, love and literacy to millions. To us, she was so much more. Mom kept us on our toes and kept us laughing until the end. I'm a lucky man that Barbara Bush was my mother. Our family will miss her dearly, and we thank you all for your prayers and good wishes," George W. Bush wrote in a statement.
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