The Bush Family Women: Their Story in Photographs

By Elaine S. Povich

The Bush Family Women is a must-have collectible for devoted fans of the Bushes and a celebration of four women—Barbara, Laura, Jenna, and Barbara—who hold a unique place in the story of America.

The Bush family’s political resume is unequaled in US history: one senator, two governors, one vice president, and two presidents, all whom have helped shape the nation for decades. The Bushes have long lived in front of the camera, but never has a photographic book focused on the stories and achievements of the three generations of the family’s women who came of age in the public eye: Barbara Pierce Bush (First Lady, 1989–1993, Second Lady, 1981–1989); Laura Welch Bush (First Lady, 2001–2009); and twins Barbara Bush Coyne and Jenna Bush Hager.
     Barbara Bush was a passionate promoter of literacy and education, as is her daughter-in-law, Laura. Both wrote bestselling memoirs. The younger Barbara is co-founder of Global Health Corps, an organization building a global movement for health equity, and, with Jenna, a New York Times bestselling coauthor. Jenna is a contributing correspondent and cohost on NBC’s Today show—where she launched a successful book club in 2019—and also a New York Times bestselling author.

In this stunning, collectible volume, the inspiring journeys of these four women—from childhood to the White House and beyond—are brought to life with more than 150 photographs, quotes, and highlights from notable speeches, punctuated by insightful commentary from award-winning Washington journalist and author Elaine S. Povich.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Union Square & Co.
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781454952305

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Gentle Grace and Fierce Fortitude

When BARBARA PIERCE secretly became engaged to George Herbert Walker Bush in 1943, theirs was to be the uniting of two great American families. That fact is well-known. But the two teenagers never could have imagined that their union would be a key building block in an American political dynasty eclipsing most others in United States history.

Not since the Adamses served the young United States in the wake of the American Revolution has a family like the Bushes governed the US. Other noted political dynasties include the Roosevelts and the Kennedys. But in some respects, the Bush dynasty has been the most enduring, with three or four (depending on how you calculate) generations of Bushes having been elected by the American people, and three generations of Bush women—Barbara, Laura, and Laura’s twins, Barbara and Jenna—living in the public eye for decades. The Bush women are known around the world, and the details of their lives are fascinating.

Each of the Bush family women has made an impression in her own way. Two were First Ladies, and all have been members of the First Family. Each had causes that they have championed; all had children; all volunteered; and the younger two sought impactful careers, most notably Jenna, a television personality. Each had to deal with fame, publicity, and the public eye that accompanies them. Like all new daughters-in-law, Laura didn’t know Barbara very well and was at first worried about how she would get along with the formidable woman, but they grew closer as Laura followed in Barbara’s footsteps as First Lady. Jenna and her sister, Barbara, also didn’t know Gamma very well for years, as they lived in Texas and Barbara was in Washington, but grew closer on a family trip to Italy as teenagers. The matriarch, Barbara, was sharp-witted, exacting, and canny. Laura was influential, calm, and steady. The Bush twins were rambunctious, tested the boundaries of their famous family as only children can, but were also smart and clever. They were the only ones who were born Bushes—the elder Barbara and Laura married into the Bush family, knowing their in-laws’ history, but undoubtedly not fully anticipating what lay in the future.

All dealt with tragedy and misfortune. Yet through everything, they made their mark on the American scene. Barbara and Laura worked on literacy programs; the younger Barbara concentrated on health (Global Health Corps) and volunteerism, and Jenna started a book club on NBC’s Today show that rivals Oprah’s.

Barbara Pierce Bush was at the center of it all: wife of one president and mother of another, and mother of two governors. She had tremendous influence over all but her father-in-law, Prescott Bush, a Republican senator from Connecticut in the 1950s and ’60s.

She was the enforcer, according to her grandchildren—a stickler for the rules, yet with enough compassion to cuddle babies afflicted with AIDS to show they were not contagious and give her husband, President George H. W. Bush, the steel to fund HIV research and send money to Africa for medical assistance for babies and adults with AIDS there. She fiercely defended her husband and son George W. Bush as presidents, but exhibited her tough love and wicked sense of humor when she cracked that perhaps the country had had enough Bushes when her son Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, tried to get the GOP nomination in 2016.

Barbara Bush onstage at the Republican National Convention of 1992 at the Astrodome in Houston.

Her husband eschewed his family’s banking wealth in New England for the wildcatting oil fields of Texas, and Barbara threw herself into raising children and keeping house. The third of four children and a bit insecure about her appearance when young, she seemed somewhat stunned by the fact that the dashing World War II pilot had chosen her to be his life partner. But as Barbara’s bond with George grew stronger and she eased into the comfortable role of mother and wife, she also began to assert herself—first at home and eventually in the wider social circles of oil-rich Texas, Republican politics, and international affairs. Those roles went along with her husband’s career, initially as an oilman, then as a politician (running unsuccessfully for the US Senate and successfully as US representative), and later as ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, chief of the US Liaison Office to China, and head of the CIA, as well as vice president and president.

While her husband held national office, Barbara made literacy and health care her projects, and was an author of children’s books and her own autobiography, Barbara Bush: A Memoir (1994). Her famously white hair—said to have lost its original brown color after the death of her three-year-old daughter, Robin, to leukemia in 1953—gave Barbara a regal bearing befitting her role as head of the dynasty.

Laura Bush at the convention center in Austin, Texas, where Governor George W. Bush announced a presidential exploratory committee on March 7, 1999.

LAURA LANE WELCH had some inkling of the life she might be marrying into when she met George W. Bush in July 1977 at age thirty. In her memoir, Spoken from the Heart (2010), she writes of anticipating that her meeting with George W.—an unofficial blind date at a friend’s barbecue—would not be very promising, as she assumed George would be very interested in politics, while I was not.¹

But, surprisingly, the two (who had actually known each other from afar since elementary school) got along well. They felt like they were rekindling a relationship, yet in a very different way. Just six weeks later, he asked her to marry him. After many years as a teacher and librarian, she was ready. And after many years as a single playboy and eligible bachelor, so was he. She was almost thirty-one, just his age.

Life as a Bush really struck home with Laura when George W. went to work for his father’s campaign for president in 1988. Suddenly, she saw the spark in her husband’s eyes about political life. While still not sure about politics, she later threw herself into George W.’s campaigns both for the House of Representatives (unsuccessful) and for governor of Texas (successful) in 1994. She was entering a world her mother-in law knew well, and that gave them something else in common (in addition to George W.) and a clearer understanding of what it meant to be a political wife.

When I married George, I had thought that I would be embraced by his mother every bit as much as he was embraced by mine. I had planned on being more a daughter than a daughter-in-law, Laura writes in Spoken from the Heart, "but Barbara Bush had five children of her own. She was their defender first. What I came to see ultimately as our bond was that we both loved George and the depth of our love was what we had in common.… But a decade after my marriage, Bar Bush and I finally got to know each other. We both loved reading and shared our favorite books. One morning, just as