rosalyncarter.org. >> for our first lady to laura bush and discusses her book with coakie roberts. this is about one hour and 15 minutes. >> good evening, everyone. i am the under secretary for history architecture at the smithsonian institution. it's my pleasure to welcome all of you, and it really is all of you, nice crowd here tonight, to this program this evening to perform the first lady of the united states, lord of bush, on occasion of the publication of the memoir for a -- laura bush which "the new york times" called a keenly observed account that mrs. bush conkers her home town with enormous detail and

feeling. tonight, mrs. bush will be interviewed by coakie roberts and we are delighted to welcome her back to the smithsonian even ..

for more than 10 years. additionally, she's a political commentator for abc news, the winner of countless awards for more than 40 years in broadcasting. she's been inducted into the broadcasting and cable hall of fame and the american women in radio television cited her as one of the 50 greatest women in broadcast history. cokie is the offer several books including we are mothers daughters, and it canted minutes roles and relationships throughout the country and certainly an appropriate topic for tonight program. and i can tell how proud i am to have worked with cokie tv mom malindi bugs who is here with us. lindy was of course a distinguished member of commerce, to distinguish board of regents in a promoter and supporter of america's cultural heritage, both in new orleans and louisiana, indeed across the

nation. welcome, lindy thoughts. [applause] is a distinct honor and privilege to introduce ms. laura bush. center eight years as first lady of the united states, ms. bush has continued her active involvement in key issues including education, health care and human rights. she recently hosted a conference on the needs of women at the newly opened george w. bush institute in dallas, where she directs her global and women's initiative project. mrs. bush's early career as a teacher and librarian in a particularly partial to that because my own wife is a teacher. her early career as a teacher like her and has helped shape her lifelong interest in literacy and education. during her tenure in the white house, she focused on early childhood development and is an enthusiastic proponent of teacher recruitment programs

such as teach for america, the new teacher project and troops to teachers. and as first lady, mrs. bush helped launch the very popular library of congress first national book festival 2001, which continues over here and attracts hundreds of thousands of people to the mall every september. in 2006, she took her passion for nearly 40 nations for a special summit to address the worldwide licorice increases were nearly three quarters of a billion adults cannot read. she is currently the honorary ambassador for the decade and in 2005 she made a historic trip to afghanistan, visiting the newly opened women's teacher training institute in kabul that she hoped to establish. as first lady, she made three trips to afghanistan, five to africa, were championed in his treatment of malaria eradication and also visited the burma border. she's been an advocate for women's humans rights around the

world. among her other accomplishments, mrs. bush has been an active participant in campaigns to raise awareness for breast cancer and heart disease, both in the united states and again around the world. i've no mrs. bush is a great friend to the smithsonian. she showed a variety smithsonian collections in the white house. she has a defense of the american art museum, using it as a venue to grief or later something for your community. she dedicated her porcher with president bush in the natural porcher gallery and took friends on trips to the national museum of american history and the national design museum in new york or she hosted the cooper-hewitt national design awards at the white house and quite memorable for me with that she graciously loaned the white house copy of the gettysburg address, which usually besides in the lincoln bedroom in the white house. she found that to the smithsonian for the opening of the american history museum so

millions of americans could have access to that wonderful document. and now she serves on the board of the national museum of african-american history and culture, scheduled to open in 2015. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, ms. cokie roberts and ms. laura bush. [applause] [cheers and applause] >> thank you all. thanks so much. thanks, everybody. [applause] thank you all. thanks a lot. [applause] thank you,.your kurin. thank you, very much. and i did that to visit all the smithsonian museums and institutions. they were our neighborhood

museum and they are so wonderful. they are such a huge asset to the united states. and so, i'm thrilled to be here at the invitation of the smithsonian institution. i'm very happy to be in washington and to see so many friends. thank you all very, very much for coming out today. i know that there are a lot of people who work in the administration. i think they're volunteers here that i volunteered to open on both letters and help us answer those letters. thank you all for everything you did for us for the 80 or so we list here in thank you so much for coming out to welcome me tonight. i'm thrilled to be back in thrilled to see all of you. you may not know that i actually have lived in washington place before george and i moved in the white house. george and i lived in washington in 1987 and 88, when george was working on his dad to be

campaign. and my first stay in washington was during the summer of 1969, when one of my good friends from southern methodist university and i headed east to see what life outside texas would be like. [laughter] we ended up in washington. she got a job at the old garfinkel's department store and mike decided to try my luck at getting a job on capitol hill. i set up with an interview that congressman george mayon, who in with the congressman from my own district of midland and he had represented actually midland the district at midland texas is an, for as long as the district have been a district. he had been there almost 35 years. the congressman invited me for an interview. he looked over my resume and then he asked if i could type or take shorthand. [laughter] i said no.

i'd taken a quick course of typing in summer school and high school, but i hadn't really paid a lot of attention. congressman man then asked me if he thought my father -- a fight that my father would consider sending me to secretarial school. last night and i thought about what my father had just spent to send me to fmu and i said no again. and congressman may haunt gently suggested that without being able to type or take shorthand i wasn't qualified for a position in his office. had i been a typist, however, in the summer of 1969, i might very well have become a congressional staffer in washington. instead, i returned to texas and to public school teaching and was very happy. had i stayed in washington, i might never have met george w.

bush. so in retrospect, i'm grateful that i was turned down by capitol hill. [laughter] [applause] and i'd like to take just a few minutes to share with you something from my boat about how george and i met in midland texas and how we both without realizing it began our journey to washington d.c. for at least a year now, my friend jan donnelly's husband, joey o'neill had been telling me that he wanted to introduce me to one of his friends. gm had gone to lee high school and a bluetooth meet in houston at the château dijon. after spending a few years in san francisco, dan and joey had come home to live in midland. joey was working in his dad's oil business and his childhood friends, george bush, was working as an oil lamp man,

scouring county courthouse records for land that might be leased for drilling wells. joey talked up george every time i stopped by to visit jan. i was in no rush. i had a vague memory of george from the seventh grade, almost 20 years before. [laughter] i knew that his dad had ran for senate and lost in the 1970's when i first moved to houston and i assumed that george would be very interested in politics, while i was not. it was late july, one of those high heat days when the sun, left behind it a spent and exhausted world. i put on a blue sun dress, drove the car around the corner and walked up to the door of jan and joey's brown brick townhouse. even the roof was a cedar shape around. the cicadas were groaning and overlaying their vibrating wings

with the city were of air-conditioners to keep the baking hot houses cool. joey was at the grill. it was not some elaborate party. it was just the four of us. chan, joey, george and me sitting out back eating hamburgers. we laughed and talked until it was nearly midnight. the next day the following. there was george saying, let's go play miniature golf and so we did with jan and joey as our chaperones. [laughter] the miniature golf course is one of the prettiest places in midland. it was built among a veritable forest of old palm trees, which had grown tall and graceful even in the west texas ground. we played off under the stars and laughed again. then i went back to often and george started visiting on the weekends. sometimes the flyover on a friday night or he would drive, but he came every weekend,

except for the very end of august when he left for me to see his family. laura bush loves to tell the story du jour spent exactly one day and kenny but worth that summer. when he called my apartment, she says, that some guy answered and he raised a plane and flew right back down. [laughter] i returned to the library at dawson elementary and worked all through september. by the end of the month, george had asked me to marry him. we've been dating only six or seven weeks, but our childhoods overlapped so completely and our worlds were so intertwined, it was as if we had known each other our whole lives. i loved how he made me laugh and his steadfastness. i knew in my heart that he was the one. i looked out and said yes. that's sunday night when george arrived in midland, he headed to humble avenue to speak to my

parents. a week later, early on a sunday morning, george and i drove to houston to meet his. he introduced me with the news that we were getting married. after lunch at the bushes home, george's dad hauled out his pocket calendar and looked over each week and not fall. in a few minutes, we picked the wedding date. november 5, 1977, 1 day after my birthday and one day before the anniversary of that awful accident and only about three weeks away. there was no time even to order printed wedding invitations. my mother wrote and addressed all of our invitations by hand. far more nervous than either the freiburg room where chan and joey o'neill. joe and jan had dated for years before they got married. neither of them dreamed that

their invitation to dinner with the dice to the altar in a mere three months. and perhaps it wouldn't have if joey had introduced us when we were growing up in midland or when george and i had lived on the opposite sides of the sprawling château dijon in houston or at any, almost any other moment prior to that night. but at that particular moment, on that warm summer night, both of us are hoping to find someone. we were not looking for someone to date, but for someone with whom to share life for the rest of our lives. we both wanted children. we were ready to build an enduring future. those were the facts of our lives when we were to dinner that night. it was the right timing for both of us. of course, not everyone in midland agreed. as i was packing to leave boston, reagan and billy will selling their house. a week he for the wedding, a

mother of a friend of mine for midland came to see reagan and billy's house. she was thinking about buying it for her daughter. she didn't recognize reagan, but reagan recognized her and said, we are going to be in midland next weekend. we are going to laura and georges wedding. and without a second hesitation, this woman said to reagan, yes, can you imagine the most eligible bachelor in midland dairy in the old native midland? [laughter] reagan was speechless. but i thought it was funny. after all, i am four months last two days younger than george. the movers loaded up a few things after the last talks with stove, my cat, do we, and i began a drive that i had never quite imagined making back to live in midland. right outside of san angelo, i came upon a few scattered trees lining the edge of the road.

now on the verge of november, the frost had already settled on the land and their leaves had fallen and blown away. trunks and branches stood dark and tea against the sky. suddenly, from one tree a great mass of winged bird lifted up, feathers boxing, air swirling as they rose. i slowed and watched in silence as they beat their migratory way south, then glanced back at the end and track remarkable tree that had extended its branches for rest and refuge. the site was like a beautiful wedding guest on the long ride toward home. we were married on a saturday morning at the first at his church in midland, the church had gone to all my childhood, where he was baptized as a baby, where it learned to sing in the choir and where my mother still went every sunday.

methodist weddings are brief and ours was especially so. there were no bridesmaids to add a few extra minutes as they walked down the aisle. it was perfect for the old maid and the eligible bachelor. [laughter] the rehearsal dinner had been held the night before in a windowless basement ballroom of the new hilton hotel. barring george bush had hosted it in the menu was chicken and rice. when dinner was served, my mother blanched, our wedding reception was to be a post-ceremony lunch and at the midland racquet club the next day and mother in the caterer had settled on chicken and rice. [laughter] mother and bart had never thought to compare menus. the next morning mother called the caterer at the crack of dawn to see if something could be changed. austin said of rice, anything. but the meal was already in

motion, so our guests eat chicken and rice all over again. last night the morning after my 31st birthday, i stepped into the chapel and my father's arms. george was waiting for me at the altar. the night before, when george stood up to give his toast, he had wept. george and his father are deeply sentimental men. in years to come, to others, the court removed the television would frequently obscure the depth of their caring, how much and how deeply their own hearts open. george herbert walker bush didn't even try to give a toast. barr spoke for the family. [laughter] that morning, the stained glass windows sparkled with light, casting pretty patterns over the simple wooden chapel pews. she was, i later learned, exactly 31 steps down the aisle

into the rest of my life. [applause] [applause] >> thank you all very much. and especially to cokie, thank you so much. >> as you know, i should reveal to everyone else i am an enormous laura bush fan. automatic i've written about you and have admired your work, but this is a delightful book. and one of the nice things about the passage you read as being charming and enlightening, is it gives a couple of things that i think i wanted to talk to you

about anyway. you know, you are a voracious reader and as i was reading particularly as he can into your descriptions of texas and your childhood where you are there and the open plains in midland. was there somebody whose style you had in mind quite >> well, there was not really a specific writer whose style i had in mind, but i did want this to be a literary memoir. i do love to read. i love to read every kind of book, but especially literature. so i did want this to be that way. and so, there was not a specific style, but i wanted to be able to paint the pictures that i saw for instance when those birds lifted off that tree outside of san angelo. >> and your sentence structure even. i mean, short sentences, all

that. >> i do like really plain and sordid street writing. that's what appeals to me, the kind that is just straight and spare and maybe that's also that affect at growing up someplace that was so plain and spare, the landscape of voice. >> in addition to talking about your meeting your husband, talk about reagan and millay. and reagan is all through your book. she is your good friend. it struck me and it struck me the whole time you're here, these girlfriends from your childhood have remained your really close friends. and how important has that been to your life into your success? >> well, all of our friends have and important both to george and me and they were a very big support in politics. reagan was in the second grade with george. and i met her when we were in the fourth grade at her mother

and this was in the book, married seven times. [laughter] only to three different men. [laughter] but because of that, reagan moved from school to school every time she would divorce she would move into another house and reagan would live somewhere, you know, move into another school district or so she went to school with george in houston energy transferred over to where i was. i am very fortunate in georgia is due to have this long history of friendship with all those friends we have in midland, jan and joey and many others. the women i hike within the national park every year are women i've known since then. george is still -- we still see those same friends and george loves to tell the story that the midland friends, the first time they came up and they took them to the oval office and they've paid, bush, i can't believe i'm

here. and then they look at him. [laughter] that's one thing about a long history of friendship like that is we do these people -- you know, they've got us our whole lives. they know everything about us here at they were friends long before politics and there still are friends. and there's great emotional support early in this kind of friendships. >> reagan's mother was one. my mother's mother married three times and her philosophy was all of life is one big date. [laughter] and when you're married, you have to take them in your married to. but before and after him, you know, you're free to do what you want. >> exactly. >> you talk about knowing about you your friends and the

horrible accident and you have written about that in the book. >> i did write about that and i had to write about that. i mean, obviously, you know, the largest tragedy by far in my life and in the life of obviously the family, but also in all of our friends. he was a friend of all of us. he had actually dated reagan. he was one of my best friends. he and i talked on the phone every night for years and it was just a terrible tragedy have not seen the stop sign on a dark country road until too late. and just by some very, very off chance of coincidence, i guess, he happened to be coming on the other road. and i didn't know, obviously, that i take his car.

when i got out of the car, the girl, my friend i was with me in the car was not thrown from the car. she was able to get out and walk to the site. and then when i got out, had it broken ankle but i didn't know it for a few days. and she said another car came up in a man got out of that card went over to the person who was laying on the ground, who was mike that we didn't know at the time. my friend judi said i think that's his father. i think that's the person's father on the ground. i said that could be his father. that's mr. douglas. and then what we got taken to the hospital, of course, we're just in a room with a cloth draped separating judy and i am we had very minor injuries and no one was there with us. and then i could hear ms. douglas crane on the other side of the curtain.

and then when i got home, my parents told me that it was mike and the authority figure that out. and that was a huge tragedy and it was a lifeless and that is a really very hard lesson to learn and that i learned early. and that is that you have been to you and you cause things to happen that she would never -- if you could take it back you would, but there's never anything you could ever do about it and it's just a fact and you just have to accept it with whatever creasy can accept it with. >> but you hadn't talked about it before now. >> now, i hadn't really. i had, i was asked in the 2000 when it came out in the newspapers i was asked about it several times. i just reread an article that opera did in her own magazine writeup right after we moved to the white house and she asked me about it. it was in that article. but i was never asked about it that often, so of course i never really talked about it.

people knew because i would get letters from family members as someone who had been, any young person, who had saguenay car accident where there was a death. and i get letters and teachers or parents or aunts and uncles and they would ask me to write to the young person, some words of encouragement. and so i did, of course. and i would always suggest that they get some kind of counseling , that they talked to a pastor or get a counselor or find some sort of hope. but i didn't do that and no one ever suggested that i do that. and we didn't -- no one really talked about it. reagan and i talked about it, but it was just something he swallowed it and talk about. >> but the whole town knew. >> of course everyone knew. >> and in fact in some way help when you met george bush, that he knew it needed not to talk about it. >> that might have, although we

did talk about it and he knew because i wanted him to know. and i didn't know that he was ever going to run for office, but i did want him to know that for sure in case i would occur in some way affect his political runs if he wanted to run. >> that's an important thing about you. >> that's right. >> suppose her daughters had married someone they had just met -- [laughter] >> i would think that is really reckless. [laughter] but i will say, my parents were thrilled and barb and george were thrilled. they were glad we have found somebody and they were hoping for grandchildren. that's right. i was 31 the night before we got married. and so i think they were really happy about it. and we had to have the same background could regroup in the same time. we've grown up actually blocks from each other, but in what to say newsstand and i were to change the way and then leave it to the same apartment complex in

houston without ever really running into each other. so it really was like we've known each other our whole lives. and we knew all the same people. so, there weren't any surprises really from either one of us. >> cover? >> i mean, there wasn't something in our background at the other didn't know about. >> among the things that might be surprised if he got home from getting married he was running for congress. >> and that was really fun. it was very fun. he was running for congress in may hotseat, the congressman i had interviewed with. [laughter] >> and you know, conversely mayon -- he had taught us all where to sit on the subway at the capital not to get your hair blonde. [laughter] ..

you decided and then what happened in? >> that time asked george's mother gave me some advice and

said don't criticize george's speeches. she said she criticized hurt george's speech and he came home with letters saying that it was the best speech he had ever done. [laughter] so i took it to heart. one time we were driving home pulling into the driveway after a campaign and said tell me the truth always my speech and i said well it wasn't very good and he ran into the garage door. [laughter] >> before a moment or to political life i want to challenge it is so interestingly you're father is coming home from the war with tiny pictures of concentration camps.

why did he do that? >> he's 104th infantry, ban and by the concentration camp he came home with photographs that would have been in world war ii at the bodies they found a and i think there were about 5,000 dead when they liberated and in the story he has the american troops and their faces and hands were wet when they found this but my dad never really talked about it. we had these photographs and every once in awhile we would look but he didn't really talk about it but my mother told me one story that he did tell her and that was that he was just sort of in pressed with the army nurse. he remembered an army nurse standing with a shovel handing

it to one of the generals still there when they liberated and said it did and he said no, i'm an officer and she took the shovel and hit him and said dig and he did. [laughter] of course he was digging a grave and then later, many years later when i was in prague for a nato meeting i was approached by a holocaust survivor and told them my dad's company liberated north heights and he said he had been in a concentration camp and i said my dad never talked about it and he said well i never tell my children that have it either and he thought about it like daddy it's too terrible to tell you can't admit to your own and

children that mankind could be that cruel. >> but he held on to those pictures. >> so what was your reaction in later life when you heard about the holocaust survivors? -- dee dee myers? >> it is terrible to hear about. it's crazy is what it is. it just happened we went to the remembrance at the capitol the first year george bush was president and mother happened to be there. she came home with me after easter break and we were sitting together and if you've ever been to the day of remembrance it is very meaningful and the soldiers marched in with a flag of all of the american companies that liberated concentration camps and we didn't expect that. so we see the flags start coming

in and a bunch of us are thinking what did his company's weigel clich? we couldn't remember and then it came by, the timber wolves, the wolf head that is the timberwolves flag and mother and i burst into tears to see that flag of daddy go by of his company. >> you also had letters from him from the war. you always knew you had those letters? >> i knew my mother had the letters but i never read them. when i started to work on the book i went to make land and drove around and looked at all the houses. i mean i go there often of course because my mother lives there but i don't always go driver down and look at the house is my daddy built. he was a home builder, or the houses we lived in and because he was a home builder every time he opened a new edition he would build a new house so we lived in several houses and we drove by the house is the george and i lived in when we had barbara and

jenna. but then i read the letters and had i not read them i always knew mother had the letters and he believed they were his love letters. the then newly married and he was shipped overseas. but i always felt like she didn't want me to read them. there was something private and personal about them but then i read some of them and they were private and personal and i felt a little bit [inaudible] [laughter] but it was fine and well and interesting and fun to think of them as these young people in love and separated by the war. >> your mother lost three of their babies which is a great tragedy in her life and when you were pregnant with barbara and jenna you are very frightened. >> that's right. mother lost three babies after me.

the second baby is my first memory, looking through the glass at the nursery at the western clinic in mid land and i didn't -- i don't remember seeing a baby i just remember thinking that's where my baby was, for that little baby was and i was aware this was a big disappointment in their lives that they didn't get to keep the three other babies and have a family of four children instead of an only child and not just one but four children. so i was sad, too get a that was always my wish on a star to have those brothers and sisters. >> there's this wonderful picture of you at your first birthday. what happens next after that picture? [laughter] this is what we let barbara and jenna do with the cake. barbara and jenna did that, too.

and then they would like the cake. [laughter] i think they had ever had sugar. until their first birthday. [laughter] >> it was good to term one. but you had to go to dallas. >> i struggled to get pregnant and finally when i did i was thrilled when i had a sonogram and found out there were two babies because i was hoping that my children would have a sister or a brother, and they got to have each other which was great. but it was a high-risk pregnancy. i was 35. it was a twin pregnancy. so close to the end of the pregnancy i got preeclampsia and was sent to dallas where there was an intensive care nursery because they thought the babies would be -- would mean an intensive care nursery which they didn't really when they were born.

they were big for five weeks early twins. but it was a worry full-time and i worry also because of my mother's losses. >> you got involved in the 1980 campaign and then suddenly was vice president. talk about celebrity by association. suddenly you were somebody. >> that's right, and midland. [laughter] so i would be working in the yard and would see cars drive buy slowly and you could tell somebody had their friends from out of town and they were driving by the vice president's son at house. [laughter]

>> but then when he ran for president you all live up here as you were saying earlier. and we leave here in 1987 to work on mr. bush's campaign. it was after the price of oil had fallen so much again. midland was a boom and bust town because it was a one industry town so when the price of oil was high everybody was in high cotton i guess or higher oil, and then when it went down midland would go through the last and there was one before that george was able to sell the oil company and we moved up here to work on the campaign and that was really fun and was the first time in the ten years george and i had been married that i was ever really with his mother a lot. every other time it was in maine

when all the other kids were there, the other grand children and she was i know highly stressed. >> i love the line asking for instructions, hard-line about when things get tense grab a bottle aspirin and do what it says on the bottle, t2 and keep away from children. [laughter] >> but when we lived there that year running for president they were donner of course all during the week but they made a sort of the world to be home on sundays together and we had sunday hamburger launch which was their family tradition every sunday and i got to know barbara for the first time and i sure also she got to know me. she had five children. i expected her to welcome me with open arms.

my mother will come to george. he was the only other one. but then we got to know each other and loved each other and loved the same things. she left to read and that year and a half we lived here we would get up on a saturday morning and read the review of an art show here at the smithsonian or somewhere else and she would call me and we would jump in the car because she was the vice president's wife we could get in 30 minutes early and have a tour by ourselves. [laughter] but it was a wonderful chance for george and me both to have this relationship with his parents as adults, we were adults and they were, too. they are bdy to babysat for barbara and jenna even though they were running for president at the time and i am so grateful i had that chance to live in the same town with them because it made a huge difference in our relationship. >> by the end of the presidency you're right that you were seeing things on television and reading things about him that

just were not true and that were such mischaracterization of him and when your husband goes and runs for governor were you distressed that more politics was going to be in your life? >> not really. we've love to build one of race for congress. it was really politics is a family business, you know this. >> i do. [laughter] >> when you have a family member in politics everyone is in it together and you have opponent's so it doesn't have to be each other and you are really in it together so that your dee dee ticker dear george and i traveled in texas when he read for congress was great. we did everything together. we wrote in the car together every day so when he decided to run for governor i was fine with it. i had a really good time and you

know you run and win that's great but if you lose, life goes on. it's not the end of your life if you lose the political race. and i knew that and so when he wanted to run for governor -- i used to say when people would say is that congressional race do you think george will ever run again for an office and i used to kind of joke and say maybe when you're 50. and we were kind of close to 50. [laughter] but that was my hesitation when he wanted to run for president but, you know, running for governor, that is a big job, the media and the scrutiny and the criticism and, you know, the attacks are not near what they are when you run for president. senate and you knew that because most people really are taken by surprise. so the fact that he had been involved in those campaigns. >> that's right. we knew because watching

mr. bush and especially the '92 campaign but in the '88 campaign as well. >> and after your husband was elected governor, and you're father got terribly sick. use of a mother in the role of caretaker and i wonder how you reacted to that as being distant from heard and seen her take on that role. >> that was hard for me. my father got alzheimer's and see slowly it progressed and he got worse and worse. he didn't ever get so bad he didn't know me but -- sprick the last thanksgiving after georgian been elected governor in the inauguration we spent that thanksgiving with them and at one point daddy said who is that over there? and i said that's my husband,

george bush and he said you married george bush? and i said yes. [laughter] and he said i think i will ask him for a loan. [laughter] then he laughed. that was so funny. >> the first lady started a few things in texas that you were thankfully able to bring here starting with the book festival. spicer to the texas book festival. i think it is now in its 15th or 16th year. it's hugely successful. it's very popular with authors. they love to get invited to tehran of course. it's really fun. and it's held inside of the texas capitol building. the only way we got to do that is because george was governor and speaker of the house, the texas house is the group that oversees the capitol building but they, you know, they don't let anyone else meet in the texas capital and of course i'd understand that but they still

allowed us to have the book festival in the capitol, so for one weekend a year the texas capital is turned over to literature and i think that is pretty great. so the meetings are in the -- on the senate floor and the house floor and the committee hearing rooms and auditoriums so there are a lot sizes and in use. the authors who won't draw big crowds will be in the committee area room and it's just been very successful. then we sell the books outside of the capitol grounds because you can't sell on the grounds, they sell things up the capitol grounds, and we've made the book festival went to a fund-raiser for texas public libraries, so we give them grants for every single texas library. [applause] >> but you know, you also got involved in the arts and education and family protective services and you came here as

first lady and immediately wanted to keep the book festival going, the national book festival which thankfully we still have going and you were very involved in their literature, you have the wonderful meetings of the white house and then early childhood, all of the things that you learned a great deal about while you were in texas, you started to concentrate on this race and of course at the capitol on the tiberi listened, 2001 to testify before the senate education committee on early childhood education and tell us what happened next. >> i got in my car that morning. i was going to the brief on the early childhood education so i had the -- i didn't have the tv on that morning. i was looking at my briefing and i was nervous, very nervous. this was september the first

year. george was president in 2001 and it just as i was getting in the car the secret service agent leaned over to me and said a plane has just flown into the world trade center. and i was getting in the car with margaret spellings and my chief of staff at a time and we had no idea what what transpired and when we got in the car and went on to the capitol, we assumed it was just some weird accident, so terrible accident that the plan had flown into the trade center on the way to the capitol we got the message about the second plane. so we know then that it is a terrorist attack. but i go on and go to senator kennedy's office. he's waiting for me when i get out of the car and we go to his office and he starts to give me a tour of the office and shows me the momentos on wall including the letter from his brother, jack, that he had

written to their mother when they were little. he was still amused after all these years of the cute letter. but the whole time he kept up this small talk. and i thought about it over and over and wondered if this was for himself because he had so many shocks in his own life that he just kept up the small talk so that we didn't start to talk about what had happened and what this meant for all of us or if he thought i would fall apart so he was trying to keep everything in this sort of present small talk way. we did go out, senator judd gregg joined who was one of the closest friends and had been at the ranch that summer because he was the one who played al gore.

>> another son of a senator. >> exactly. so he joined in he and i would just sort of look at each other as we were kind of looking over at senator kennedy's shoulder to look at the television, the small television in the corner of the office and we were sick. we felt sick. i fought judd looked sick and he thought i was sick, too bad because we couldn't imagine. and i think it was a sort of blessing senator kennedy kept up the small talk. it is a way to try to process what we were seeing and what it meant. then the three of us went out and spoke to the press and said we were postponing the briefing. already it was in defiance of the terrorists, we've learned when to cancel the briefing that was going to be postponed. then as we finished saying we

were postponing the meeting, the briefing from usa today said mrs. bush, what do we say to the children? and that is when i got the idea of what do we say to the children? and i said then parents need to assure their children they are safe and turn off the television and don't let them watch over and over again the buildings falling so then it really gave me the direction of what i did in the days to follow including the letters i wrote to the high school students and then another letter for younger students about what had happened and what they could do for each other. how we needed to take care of each other at a time like this. >> also let me to your great passion for the women of afghanistan. and you have been there three

times and you are still working on that issue and continue to work on that issue. tell us about that. >> i will work on that for ever and i think what happened is everyone's eyes turned toward afghanistan. the women of the united states were shocked by the contract between the law avis of wildmon and afghanistan in our lives. we couldn't believe it. we couldn't imagine a government that would forbid girls from being educated. and immediately i heard from women all over the country who wanted to do something. unbelievable stories. one woman that i know whose husband was the president at the university and she said she would lie in bed at night and think what can i do? what can i do to help women and one day at dawn on me she could write other universities and say can i get afghanistan young women scholarships that include

everything so they can come here and be educated and go back, and she did. she and students to stay in a number of universities to the first credit rating class of afghan women at that university in her husband's university four years later and that is just one of so many different ways american women mentor afghan women and help them in some way to make sure they enjoy the freedom that we all enjoy. >> one of the reasons, because you are out there advocating for them, and right after the invasion, the first person other than the president to have gone to the microfilm for the president's weekly radio address and you used this to defend the women of afghanistan and say women's rights and human rights and you tell the story of being in the department after that and

someone really understanding. and i love the thought you told me at one point that lady bird johnson said i have a podium and i am going to use it. and i knew that. >> that is what lady bird johnson said and she did use the podium. she really did. and speaking of lady bird johnson, i always admired her because she was a texas first lady and i knew what impact she had on the country. it was something i also was interested in partly because my mother was a naturalist and interested in wild flowers and native plants that lady bird started the whole use of the native plants in the landscape and we can think her for the daffodils that bloom on the parkway now still in washington and for all of those bluebonnets that are on this side of the road in texas that i just saw last week because they're all blooming now toward the end of

leedy board johnson's life, linda, her daughter, called me and said her mother was going to make one more trip to washington and she knew that it would probably be her last trip to washington and she wondered if she could bring her to the white house and of course i was thrilled for her to come. and she was in a wheelchair and by then she had a stroke and she still had that wonderful trinkle in her eye injury expressive so when she would see a painting or something she would remember she put her hands together and gasped and when we went to look at president johnson's's portrait she kind of put her arms out. it was very sweet and i was glad to have that chance to show her the white house and water around the white house with her and in fact the room on the ground

floor where a lot of the most recent portraits of the first lady are, her portrait is over the fireplace and she is wearing a yellow gallen and when we redid the room we have adjusted the paint color in the room to beat the yellow closer to the color of the gallen she was wearing. i was at texas when lyndon johnson died, at the university of texas in graduate school and lady bird and linda and lucey, his body lay in state at the library that's fair and day said and shook everyone's hand and i stood in line to walk through and pay my respects and shake their hands never imagining this but i would ever meet them. >> it's time to go to questions but one last thing of my own is you did this work for the afghan women and became a passionate advocate for the freedom in

burma writing of heads and go into the white house briefing room and grabbing the microphone there. the first time that had ever happened and calling for the overthrow of the regime of burma. it wasn't exactly -- [applause] i know that you are very gracious in this answer always about why people didn't understand how forceful you have them as a first lady and why they would put you in a sweet little wife category and i am not saying you're not. [laughter] i think that happens to everyone. >> i know you say that. >> it's the same with ladybird johnson. instead of being a leader in the environmental movement, a start, one of the founders of the u.s.