Good Afternoon.
The funeral of a distinguished first lady will be held tomorrow at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston. Barbara Bush, dubbed The Enforcer by her children because of her ability to promote a certain decorum, died a few days ago at the age of ninety-two. She had a fabulous life, but it wasn't without disappointment and pain. She lost a young daughter to leukemia and watched her husband get defeated for reelection to the presidency and another son be unsuccessful in his attempt to win the nation's highest office. The son who did achieve that goal got us into a war in the Middle East, but as I recall, the lady Bush never commented on it one way or another even though she was known for being rather outspoken. She also had a delicious sense of humor.
Barbara Pierce Bush was a descendant of Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president of the United States. She grew up in Rye, New York, a fashionable, upscale suburban community, and probably never saw the inside of a public school as a student. She attended Smith College but left early to marry a fellow patrician named George Herbert Walker Bush. She said she was breathless the first time she laid eyes on George at the age of sixteen and that her children almost threw up when she told them he was the first and only man she ever kissed. That sort of comment showed the earthier side of the woman, a former debutante who ordered her son, when he was president, to get his feet off her coffee table. During her final hospitalization, she advised her doctor that the reason son George had turned out that way was because she smoke and drank during her pregnancy. For those of you who are shaking your heads, my generation and earlier ones were dumb and dumber when it came to certain indulgences.
Mrs. Bush acquired her white hair during the time when she was caring for the daughter who was taken by cancer. As a tribute to the little girl, she determined never to color it, and the decision made her look somewhat older than her husband.
Apparently she didn't give a rip and neither did he because they were married for seventy-three years, longer than any couple in presidential history. In later years she made fun of her weight and her wrinkles and wore them well. She was the real deal in her size fourteen wardrobe with three strands of pearls at the neck. With her proper upbringing, she breezed through formal events but also read with genuine affability to children of every race, creed, color, and economic status. She championed literacy and had no time for any form of bigotry. She and her husband slept in their bed at the White House with their English Springer, Millie, and welcomed a litter of puppies to the people's house. One can imagine them showing off those babies to the prime minister of somewhere before sitting down to Beef Wellington and a nice Cabernet at a state dinner.
How we have come to where we have come with regard to the residents of 1600 is beyond me. Let us forget our political loyalties for a minute and ponder the idea that regardless of how we feel about tax reform, climate change, national defense, health care, and even deeply sensitive issues like abortion, we deserve a large measure of decency and civility in the White House, the kind understood by George and Barbara. We deserve a First Couple who behaves themselves and cherishes each other and they did. We're supposed to be respected on the world stage and they were. We're even supposed to keep our feet off the coffee table, i.e. it's okay to have some manners and some couth.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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