Barbara Pierce Bush

Pierce Bush passed away Tuesday, April 17, 2018 at the age of 92. She is survived by her husband of 73

years, President George H. W. Bush; five children and their spouses; 17 grandchildren; seven great

grandchildren; and her brother, Scott Pierce. She was preceded in death by her second child, Pauline

Robinson “Robin” Bush, and her siblings Martha Rafferty and James R. Pierce.

Her husband’s election as the 41st President elevated the plain-spoken, faux-pearl wearing, distant relative

of President Franklin Pierce to First Lady from January 20, 1989 to January 20, 1993. Aware that she was

not elected and carried no official duties, Mrs. Bush instructed her staff: “Each day we should do

something to help others.” So along with the endless entertaining and public ceremonies, she went to soup

kitchens, homeless shelters and senior centers. She participated in events supporting worthy causes from

veterans’ hospitals, to teen pregnancy programs and the Boys & Girls Clubs.

Notably at the time, Mrs. Bush visited facilities for AIDS victims, held infected babies and hugged adults.

In so doing, she helped erase the stigma of that disease, and encouraged her husband’s administration to

increase funding for AIDS research and treatment. Mrs. Bush also came to the rescue of the Salvation

Army in 1989, when several Washington, D.C. area malls decided to ban the Army’s red kettle bellringers

claiming they were a nuisance to Christmas shoppers. Outraged, the First Lady made a very public

trip to a local mall that was allowing the bell-ringers, and dropped $10 into the red kettle. That ended the

ban then and there.

But Barbara Bush’s signature cause was literacy, a passion that began during the 1980s when statistics

showed that 35 million U.S. adults could not read above the eighth-grade level – while 23 million were at

or below fourth-grade proficiency. Inspired by business leaders like publisher Harold McGraw, public

officials like Gov. Jim Edgar of Illinois, and other literacy advocates across the country, Mrs. Bush

quickly came to believe that, in her words, “if more people could read or write, we could be much closer

to solving so many other problems that our country faces.” Furthermore, she recognized the vital

importance of family literacy – ensuring literacy programs were accessible to help struggling parents and

children so they would have an equal chance to succeed in life.

Her literacy advocacy gradually expanded with her public profile. During her husband’s vice-presidential

years, for example, she unveiled billboards, visited Head Start and Even Start classes, supported

alternative school programs for at-risk students like Cities in Schools, wrote dozens of articles, and

participated in a variety of media programs to raise awareness of the basic need for every citizen to be

able to read. In 1984, Mrs. Bush also published C. Fred’s Story: A Dog’s Life, which raised $100,000 for

Literacy Volunteers of America and Laubach Literacy Action.

Then starting as First Lady in 1989, Mrs. Bush took the family literacy movement to a new level of

national awareness when she launched the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, focusing

simultaneously on early childhood education for preschoolers and adult literacy for their parents. In 1990,

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she published a second book, Millie’s Book: As Dictated to Barbara Bush, which sold more than 300,000

copies in its first year and raised nearly $900,000 for her new foundation. She also began Mrs. Bush's

Story Time, a national radio program that stressed the importance of reading aloud to children. In 1991,

Mrs. Bush and other advocates celebrated the passage of the National Literacy Act, which created the

National Institute for Literacy and permitted the use of libraries and other municipal property as evening

literacy centers for adults.

After leaving Washington, Mrs. Bush continued to volunteer her time to worthy causes and help others.

Her Foundation for Family Literacy, from which she stepped aside in 2012, has raised and awarded over

$110 million to create or expand family literacy programs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

She also served as AmeriCares ambassador-at-large; a Mayo Clinic Foundation board member; and a

supporter of organizations including the Leukemia Society of America, the Ronald McDonald House, and

the Boys & Girls Club of America.

Of course, Barbara Bush shares the rare distinction with Abigail Adams of being both a wife to, and

mother of, a president. She addressed both the 2000 and the 2004 Republican National Conventions that

nominated George W., and actively campaigned for him during both national campaigns. In 2016, at the

age of 90, she also campaigned for her son and former Florida Governor, Jeb, as he vied for the

Republican presidential nomination. Another unique political moment came in November 1998, when

George W. was re-elected Governor of Texas and Jeb was elected to the first of his two terms as

Governor of Florida. Today, her grandson, George P. Bush, serves as the newly re-elected Texas Land

Commissioner.

Barbara Pierce was born in New York City on June 8, 1925, the third of Marvin and Pauline (nee

Robinson) Pierce’s four children. She was raised in Indian Village in Rye, New York, and received her

primary education at Milton Public School and Rye Country Day School before attending Ashley Hall, a

boarding school in South Carolina.

At a December 1941 Christmas dance, neighborhood friend Jack Wozencraft introduced 16 year-old

Barbara to her future husband, “Poppy” Bush of Greenwich, Connecticut. They danced briefly and sat out

the waltz that followed, chatting for 15 minutes. The courtship that followed was largely conducted

courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service, as George had already determined he would join the fledgling war

effort following the attack at Pearl Harbor. They were secretly engaged just before George Bush was

dispatched to the Pacific where he flew torpedo bombers.

With the onset of war, young Barbara spent a summer working as a gofer at a nuts and bolts factory in

Port Chester, New York. She eventually interrupted her studies at Smith College in 1944 as the couple

prepared for marriage in Rye on January 6, 1945. (At the time of Mrs. Bush’s passing, the Bushes were

America’s longest-married “first couple.”)

After his honorable discharge at the end of World War II, Mr. Bush enrolled in Yale University, and the

newlyweds moved to New Haven, Connecticut. There, the couple's first child, George Walker Bush, was

born on July 6, 1946. Mr. Bush graduated from Yale in 1948, and immediately set out for Texas and the

oil business – sending for his young family once established in Odessa. The first of their 30-plus

residential moves during their marriage took them to various towns in southern California before they

settled in Midland, Texas.

Tragedy struck twice early in the Bushes’ marriage: first in 1949 when Barbara’s parents were involved in

a car crash that killed her mother, Pauline; and again in 1953 when the Bushes’ second child, three yearold

Robin, succumbed to leukemia. They welcomed three more sons while in Midland – John Ellis or

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“Jeb,” Neil and Marvin. In August of 1959, the Bushes moved to Houston and welcomed their second

daughter, Dorothy or “Doro,” that same month.

The dawn of George H. W. Bush’s career in elective politics in 1962 introduced Barbara Bush to the

campaign trail that she would relentlessly tread for the next 54 years on behalf of her husband, her friends

and political allies, and her family. The family moved to Washington, DC in late 1966 following Mr.

Bush’s election to the U.S. House from Texas’ seventh congressional district; and to New York and the

Waldorf Hotel in 1971 following his appointment by President Nixon as Ambassador to the United

Nations.

Other presidential appointments, and family moves, followed: Chairman of the Republican National

Committee back in Washington; Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing (then Peking); and Director

of Central Intelligence in northern Virginia.

The Bushes returned home to Houston after the 1976 election, where Mr. Bush quietly assembled a team

and prepared to mount his 1980 candidacy for the presidency. He accepted Ronald Reagan’s offer as

running mate, and was sworn in as Vice President on January 20, 1981.

Despite the demands and visibility of being First Lady, Mrs. Bush called her eight years as wife of the

Vice President – from 1981 to 1989 – “the busiest of my life.” In all, she spent 1,629 days and 1.3 million

miles traveling away from Washington. While in the Nation’s Capital, she hosted 1,192 events and

attended another 1,232 events during the same span.

Several schools, libraries and parks have been named for Mrs. Bush, including middle schools in San

Antonio and Irving, Texas, and elementary schools in Houston, Texas, the Dallas suburb of Grand Prairie,

Texas, and Mesa, Arizona. Also bearing her name is the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital at Maine

Medical Center in Portland.

Mrs. Bush chronicled her life’s story in two autobiographies: Barbara Bush: A Memoir (1994), which

covered her life through her husband’s term in office; and Reflections (2003), which focused on life after

the White House and her first son’s ascension to the presidency. A Memoir was re-released with updated

introductions by her children in 2015 to coincide with Mrs. Bush’s 90th birthday.

“George Bush and I have been the two luckiest people in the world, and when all the dust has settled and

all the crowds are gone, the things that matter are faith, family and friends,” Barbara Bush wrote in 1993.

“We have been inordinately blessed, and we know that.”

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy at

http://barbarabush.org/.