In Appreciation: Barbara Bush, Beloved First Lady, and “First Mother”– to All Americans
By Art Harris, The Bald Truth, (c) artharris 2018 all right reserved
I covered her visit to historic Bennett College on Mother’s Day, 1989 and slightly edited what I wrote back then for The Washington Post. Out of 2,600 requests for her to speak at college graduations, she’d picked the all-black women’s school in North Carolina.
It was a warm Spring day, and what struck me about First Lady Barbara Bush was the warmth she radiated and how students pressed forward to meet her, later telling me how smart, special and proud she’d made them feel.
She made waves as the first First Lady to visit since Eleanor Roosevelt addressed the women there in 1945.
Now here was Barbara Bush at 62, daring and down-to=earth, a beloved First Lady with white hair and matching pearls … radiating a megawatt smile that came from the heart, and they’ve been celebrating memories of her visit there 29 years ago, and mourning her death along with a nation that adored her.
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After George W. Bush pressed hands of fellow mourners from his wheelchair, to express gratitude for the family matriarch Presidents and just plain folks eulogized last week, Barbara lay in state for final goodbyes, then an invitation only crowd of 1,500 gave her a final send off. Two days later, her husband of seven decades, father to another President, wound up in a Houston ICU.
Meanwhile, campus blogs at Bennett College were still chattering about how she embraced the 92 grads in the class of ’89, sprinkling the crowd with Mama Bushisms and that made the young black women clutch their dreams tight and feel anything was possible in the America she loved.
But many couldn’t believe it Barbara Bush had opted to spend Mother’s Day at Bennett, as their commencement speaker, preaching the gospel of education, advancing her passion for learning as a way out of “slavery” — along with some motherly advice for the 92 women who graduated that day.
“Like your mothers, I gave advice to my gang,” said Mrs. Bush, 63, who has five children and 11 grandchildren and great grands. “Like ‘Clean your plate, remember the starving Chinese … don’t put that in your ear … don’t cross your eyes, they’ll freeze that way … don’t put that in your mouth, you don’t know where it’s been.’ ”
But there are other useful lessons to take into the world, she said, borrowing from the bestseller “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Like “Play fair, share everything, wash your hands before you eat, put things back where you found them, don’t hit people … don’t take things that aren’t yours, say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody, clean up your own mess, and warm cookies and milk really are good for you.”
Beaming in a black cap and gown, she warmed them with a smile a lot of them couldn’t stop talking about later. Many said they were touched that she had chosen Bennett’s over an undisclosed number of invitations to speak at other college graduations, a first lady stumping for the kinder, gentler America her husband has been talking about.
“Whether you young women end up as computer whizzes, teachers, doctors, chemists, accountants, U.S. senators or presidents, whatever, these guides for living aren’t really bad,” she said. “[These] are things we tell children that could help adults live better lives.”
An outspoken advocate of literacy programs, she conjured heroes from black history: Frederick Douglass, who learned to read as a slave; a black woman surgeon was an orphan; a once-illiterate typesetter who now heads literacy campaigns and tries to help others escape their “bondage. I can’t tell you all the people I’ve known who have escaped the bondage of ignorance,” she said. “You graduates have recognized this. And I urge you to help the young … out there today … enslaved by ignorance, to learn their ABCs …”
There was more: “Another thing most of us were taught early in school that we shouldn’t forget when we get older is: Help your classmates … help your fellow human beings.”
Like Eleanor Roosevelt, she brought down the house, as 2,500 students, relatives, and faculty members gave Barbara Bush a standing ovation, shouting for her to turn so they could take her photograph as she left with an honorary degree after the nearly three-hour ceremony. “Mrs. Bush!” they yelled, as she waved. “Mrs. Bush!”
“It’s a wonderful Mother’s Day present for me,” she had said to the graduates of her welcome. “And what a present for your mothers!”
One mother fought back tears as she stood with her camera to take it all in. Her daughter, Michelle Roberson, 23, was getting a college diploma, the first in her immediate family to do so.
“This morning, she told me, ‘Mama, please don’t cry,’ ” sniffed Yvonne Roberson, 54, a geriatric nurse who drove 156 miles from Rocky Mount, N.C., along with 18 family members to watch her third child receive a degree in health sciences. “But I’m about ready to do that big cry. God, how I’ve waited for this day. It’s been a long hard time. I couldn’t be happier.”
For the last four years, she had scraped to help with the $ 6,500-a-year tuition, although her daughter was on partial scholarship. “You give up just about everything,” she sighed. “You get by with the bare necessities. But now she’ll be able to take care of herself, get a good job. I’d do it again.”
And on top of it all, there was Barbara Bush “giving me another chill. It’s about the best honor we could have.” Mrs. Bush’s visit had even warmed Roberson to the president. “I feel like the Bushes are better people than we thought they would be,” she said. “The girls are very pleased she’s here. Nobody could have topped her, except maybe Oprah.”
The idea of attracting Mrs. Bush to Bennett began with Gloria Randle Scott, the college president, who met her at a United Negro College Fund dinner in New York, then went to Washington in January to meet the president-elect and explore his education goals.
Aware of Mrs. Bush’s interest in education, Scott fired off a packet of information on Bennett — and an invitation to speak at graduation. Two months later the first lady, who has been deluged with more than 2,600 invitations to appear at various events since she hit the White House, signed on to address the 615 students at one of the smallest colleges in North Carolina.
Her press secretary Anna Perez declined to name schools that had been rejected. “That would be rude,” she said. So why Bennett? “She was invited, it fit into her schedule, and she had learned about some really terrific literacy programs for young children and single mothers the college is doing.”
Mrs. Bush was also quietly lobbied by Greensboro resident William J. Trent Jr., a former head of the United Negro College Fund who has known the Bush family for more than 40 years. He “told her what a wonderful institution it was,” said Perez. During his tenure at the UNCF, Trent once asked a young Yale student, George Bush, to act as campus coordinator for the organization, and the future president accepted. That was in 1947. And now he was asking Mrs. Bush to visit Bennett, founded in 1873 as a coeducational school, then reorganized in 1926 as a four-year liberal arts college for women.
Was there any intended symbolism in the first lady honoring an all-black college in a city where a famous sit-in helped set off the civil rights movement, especially after an eight-year Republican administration that played badly among black voters?
“For the Bushes, civil rights is not symbolism,” said Perez, “it’s real. They’ve been involved with the United Negro College Fund since 1947 when the president was a student coordinator for UNCF at Yale. There’s real concern. They want to encourage the growth and stability of these historically black colleges. It’s not enough to say their commitment to black colleges is symbolic.”
Beneath the black gown, Mrs. Bush wore a bright red suit and three strands of the Kenneth Lane imitation pearls she favors. It was an important speech for her, said Perez, and she had spent at least two hours polishing it after a granddaughter’s White House birthday party Saturday.
As far as Mother’s Day went, only a family dinner was planned, said Perez, nothing special. One son, Jeb, had sent red roses. She didn’t know whether the president had gotten his wife a card, not that it really mattered. “Every day for them is Mother’s Day,” Perez said.
While only half of the 5,000 lawn chairs were filled, there was a handful of serious political spectators on the sidelines. “If we had Barbara Bush down here for about three months, we’d be all right,” said attorney Ron Barbee, 47, a former Superior Court judge and a Republican since 1973. “All these people have got to be impressed. She’s just a genuine, likable person who cares for everybody. It’s the best show in town.”
Barbee was musing with another black Republican, Jim Patterson, who owns a consulting firm in High Point, N.C. Both speculated that if the awareness of the first lady’s interest in black colleges and other human concerns were to trickle down to black voters, “the Democrats might have something to worry about. For years we’ve tried to get blacks into the Republican Party, but we’ve had difficulty [because of] how actions in the [Reagan] administration were perceived in the black community,” said Barbee. “With the first lady here and mingling, it’s bound to give us some ammunition for our recruiting efforts.”
But one potential voter wasn’t sure if she would go that far. “I’m a Democrat, and I know she’s cared about black colleges for years, but I don’t think I’d change [parties] because of that,” said Edith Taylor Shepherd, class of ’46. Resplendent in purple Ultrasuede and peach carnation, she’d come down from Washington, a retired physical education teacher at Frank W. Ballou High School, to visit her granddaughter, a student, and catch a whiff of history. “I’m appreciative and very happy she came … I was touched by the radiance of her smile, but she didn’t come in here to just smile for the cameras, and when she started speaking the sun came out.”
As songbirds chattered in the trees, the young women lined up on the sidewalk in their caps and gowns.
Then came the motorcade, a 10-car procession, with Mrs. Bush in a blue Cadillac limousine. “She’s putting Bennett on the map,” exclaimed senior Regina Hucks, 23. “They’re going to know all about us when we go for job interviews.”
“It’s a positive move for Afro-American college graduates to get this recognition,” said Jessica McDaniel, 23. “A lot of people don’t think we can compete with everyone else, but if Mrs. Bush looks into it, she’ll know we’re just as marketable and competitive as the next person.”
“We’re honored to have her,” said Tracy Durant, 23, a biology major. “There’s plenty of excitement.”
“It’s the same excitement I remember with Eleanor Roosevelt,” said Nancy Lee, a retired teacher from the class of ’45. “She reminds me of Mrs. Roosevelt in a way. But she’s a little warmer. Mrs. Roosevelt seemed more reserved, but her visit was very significant. At the time, we never expected any such thing to happen.”
Indeed, it was the postwar, segregated South, and accounts of the day suggest Greensboro was rattled by a first lady who invited local children, black and white, to the campus to hear her speak on her two-day trip to visit soldiers. “I was in the seventh grade,” recalls Greensboro native Carolyn Williamson Charity, a retired D.C. police officer who came home again yesterday to hear her second first lady speak at her alma mater.
“It was the first time I’d ever been in a totally integrated situation with white children,” she said. “It was a memorable experience. I felt like there was history in the air.”
And so it was yesterday on campus, as parents stood on blue lawn chairs to film their daughters and ran toward Mrs. Bush for a snapshot as she paraded by in her gown. “I never thought I’d see the day,” said Robert Earl, 81, a retired high school principal whose niece was getting her degree. “It’s an advancement. It’s wonderful. It near about frightens you, to see how things changed so quick. I just hope we’re smart enough to take advantage of it.”
