>> good evening everyone. i'm the undersecretary for history, art and culture for the smithsonian institution. it's my pleasure to welcome all of you and it really is all of you, nice crowd here tonight, for this program this evening, with the former first lady of the united states, laura bush, on the occasion of the publication of her memoir. "laura bush, spoken from the heart" which the new york time called a deeply felt, keenly observed account, adding mrs. bush conjures her hometown with enormous detail, lyricsism and detail. tonight, mrs. bush will be interviewed by cokey roberts and

we're all delighted to welcome her back to a smithsonian event. copies of mrs. bush's book, which she has already signed are in the lobby. because of her schedule, there will not be any personalization of the book after the program. and of before we begin, i'd like to remind all of you to have your cell phones or electronic devices silenced, and i'd better do that with mine too. additionally, no photos are allowed during the interview, from cell phone cameras or other cameras. we appreciate your cooperation on these items. as i mentioned, we're pleased to have cokey roberts here with mrs. bush, a senior news analyst for npr news, where she was a congressional correspondent for more than 10 years. additionally, she is a political commentator for abc news, a 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 and television cited her as one of the 50 greatest women in broadcast history. cokey is the author of several books, including "we are are our mother's daughters" an account of women's roles and relationships throughout american history and certainly an appropriate topic for tonight's program. and i can say how proud i am to have worked some with cokey's mom, lindsay boggs, who is here today with us. lindsay was of course a distinguished member of congress, a member of the smithsonian board of regents and a stalwart promoter and supporter of america's cultural heritage, both in new orleans, in louisiana,, indeed, across the nation. welcome, lindsay boggs. [applause]

>> it's a distinct honor and privilege to introduce mrs. bush. mrs. bush has continued house of representatives active involvement in key issues, including education, health care and human rights. she recently hosted a global 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 easterly career has a librarian and teacher, and i'm partial to that because my wife is a teacher, has helped shape her lifelong interest in education. during her early tenure in the white house, she focused owned early childhood and is a recruiter of teach for america, the new teacher projects and troops to teachers and as first lady, mrs. bush helped launch the very popular library of congress first national book

festival in 2001, which continues every year and attracts hundreds of thousands of people to the mall every september. in 2006, she took her passion global, hosting leaders from nearly 40 nations for a special summit to address the worldwide literacy crisis, where nearly three quarters of a billion adults cannot read. she is currently unesco's honorary ambassador, and in 2005, she made a historic trip to afghanistan, visiting the newly opened women's teacher training institute in kabul, that she helped to establish. as first lady, she made three trips to afghanistan, five to africa, where she championed aids treatment and malaria eradication, and also visited the thai-berma border, she has been an advocate for women's and human rights around the globe. among her many other accomplishments, mrs. bush has been an active parents pants in campaign to raise awareness for breast cancer and heart disease,

both in the united states and again around the world. i've known mrs. bush as a great friend to the smithsonian, she showed off a variety of smithsonian collections in the white house, hosted events at the american heart museum. she dedicated her portrait with president bush at the national portrait gallery and took friends on low key trips to the national museum of american history and the national design museum in new york. she hosted the cooper u.s. national design awards at the white house, and quite memorable for me was that she graciously loaned the white house comb of the gettysburg address, which usually resides in the lincoln bedroom, in the white house, she loaned 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 on

the mall in 2015. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome ms. cokey roberts and ms. laura bush. >> thank you all. thanks so much. thanks everybody. thank you all the thanks a lot. thank you dr. kurin, thank you very much, and i did really love to visit all those smithsonian museums and institutions. they were our neighborhood museum and they're so wonderful. they're 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 p for. coulding out tonight. i know that there are a lot of people who worked in the administration, i think there are volunteers here that have volunteered to open all those letters, and help us answer those letters. to you all for everybody you did for us for the eight years that we lived here and thank you so much for coming out to welcome me tonight. i'm thrilled to be back and thrilled to see all of you. you may not know that i actually had lived in washington twice, of about george and i moved in the white house. george and i lived in washington in 1987, and 1988, when george was working on miss dad's campaign, and the first -- 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. we ended up in washington. she got a job at the old garr finkel's department store and i desaided to try my luck at get a job on capitol hill. i set up with an interview with congressman george mahan, who was the congressman from my home district of midland and he represented midland, the district at midland, texas is in, for as long as the district had been a district. he'd 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. i said no. i had taken a quick course of typing in summer school in high school, but i hadn't really paid a lot of attention. congressman mahan then asked me if i thought -- if i thought my

father would consider sending me to secretarial school. and i thought about what my father had just spent to send me to smu, and i said no again. and congressman mahan 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 type 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. [applause]

>> and i'd like to take just a few minutes to share with you something from my book about how george and i met, in mid land, texas, and how we both, without realizing it,, began our journey to washington, d.c. for at least a year now, my friend jan had been telling me that he wanted to introduce me to one of his friends. jan had gone to lee high school and had lived with me in houston. of after spending a few years in san francisco, jan and joey had come home to live in midland. joey was working in his dad's oil business, and his childhood friend, george bush, was working as an oil land 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 of before. i knew that his dad had run for senate and lost in 1970 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 come dusk, the sun would, 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 shake brown. the cicadas were droning and overlaying their vibrating wing was the steady whirl 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. jan, joey, george and me. sitting out back, eating hamburgers. we laughed and talked until it was nearly midnight. the next day, the phone rang. it was george saying, let's go play miniature golf. and so we did, with jan and joey as our chaperons. the miniature golf course is one of the prettiest places in midland. it was built among a forest of old elm trees, which had grown tall and graceful, even in the west texas ground. we played golf, under the stars and laughed again. then i went back to austin, and george started visiting on the woke ends. sometimes he'd fly over on a fly night, or he would drive, but he came every weekend, except for the very end of august, when he left for maine to see his family. barbara bush loves to tell the story that george spent exactly one day in kennebunkport that

summer. when he called my apartment, she says, that some guy answered and he raced for the plane and flew right back down. 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'd 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 at him, and said yes. that sunday night, when george arrived in midland, he headed to humboldt avenue to speak to my parents. a week later, early on a sunday morning, george and i drove to houston to meet his parents. he introduced me with the news

that we were getting married. after lunch, at the bush's home, george's dad pulled out his pocket calendar and looked over each weekend that fall. in a few minutes, we picked a wedding date. november 5, 1977. one day after my birthday, and one day before the anniversary of that awful accident, and only about three weeks away. there was no time to even or the printed wedding invitations. my mother both and addressed all of our invitations by hand. far more nervous than either the bride or groom were jan and joey o'feel. joey and jan dated for years before they got married. neither of them dreamed that their invitation to dinner would lead us to the altar in a mere three months. and perhaps it wouldn't have in 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 chateau de john in houston or at any other moment prior to that night. but at that particular moment, on that warm summer night, both of us were hoping to find someone. we were not looking for someone to date, but for someone with whom to share a 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 went 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 austin, reagan and billy were packing to sell their house. a week before the wedding, a mother of a friend of mine came to see the house. she was thinking of buying it for her daughter. she didn't recognize reagan, but reagan recognized her and said,

we're going to be in midland next weekend, we're going to laura and george's wedding and without a second hesitation, this woman said to reagan, yes, can you imagine? the most eligible bachelor in midland marrying the old maid of midland. reagan was speechless. but i thought it was funny. after all, i am 4 months less two days younger than george. the movers loaded up my few things. of after the last box was stowed, my cad duey and i dan that drive that i 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 empty against the sky. suddenly, from one naked tree, a great mass of winged birds lifted up. feathers, air swirling as they rose. i slowed and watched in silence, as they beat their migratory way south, then glanced back at the unremarkable tree that had extended its branches for rest and refuge. the site was like a beautiful wedding gift on the long ride toward home. we were married on a saturday morning at the first methodist church in midland, the church i had gone to all my childhood, where i was baptized as a baby, where i had 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. the rehearsal dinner had within held the night of about in the windowless basement ballroom of the new hilton hotel. barbara and george bush had hosted it and the menu was chicken and rice. when dinner was served, my mother branched, -- blanched. our wedding reception was to be a post wedding reception at the mid land racket club and the mother and the caterer had settled on chicken and rice. mother and barbara had never thought to compare men use. the next morning, mother called the caterer at the crack of dawn to see if something could be changed. pasta, instead of rice, anything, but the meal was already in motion, so our guests ate chicken and rice all over again. the morning after my 31s 31st birthday, i stepped into

the chapel on my father's arm. george was waiting for me at the altar. the night of before, when george stood up to give his toast, he'd wept. george and his father are deeply sentimental men. in years to come, two others, the cool remove of television, would frequently obscure the depths of their caring, how much and how deeply their own hearts open. george herbert walker bush didn't even try to give a toast. barbara spoke for the family. that morning, the stained glass windows spark he would with light, casting pretty patterns over the simple wooden chapel pews. it was, i later learned, exactly 31 steps down the aisle, into the rest of my life.

[applause] >> thank you all very much and thanks especially to cokey. >> as you know, i should reveal to everybody else, i'm an enormous laura bush fan. >> thank you kindly. [applause] >> and i've written about you and have admired your work, but this book is a delightful book. one of the nice things about the passage you read, as well as it being charm being and enlightening, is it gives a couple of things that i think are -- that i wanted to talk to you about anyway, and one is the style. you know, you are a sew requires read he were. as i was reading particularly as you get into your descriptions

of texas, and your childhood, where you're there in the open plains of midland, was there somebody whose style you had in mind? >> there was not a specific writer whose style i did have in mind, but i did want this to be a literary memoir. i do love to read, you know, i of 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 wanded to be able to paint the pictures that i saw, for instance, with those birds lifted off that tree outside of san angelo. >> and you do it. you do it. and the things like your sentence structure even, short sentences, all of that, was that something -- >> well i do like really plain and sort of straight writing. that's what apeople's to me. the kind that is just straight

and spare and maybe that's also that effect of growing up supplies that was so plain and spare, the landscape itself was. >> you, in addition to talking about your meeting your husband, talk about reagan and mille and reagan occurs all through your book, your good friend. how -- it struck me and it struck me the whole time you were here, these girlfriends from you were childhood have remained your really close friends. and how important has that been to your life, and to your success? >> well, all of our friends have been very 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. her mother and this is in the book, married seven times. >> one man three times. >> only to three different men. but because of that, reagan

moved from school to school, every time wanda would divorce, she would move into another house and reagan would live somewhere, move into another school district, so she went to school with george and the first couple of years at sam houston and transferred over to james buoy which is where i was, but i am very fortunate and george is too, to have this long history of friendship with all us friends we had in midland. jan and joey that introduced us, many, many others, the women i hike with in the national parks every year, women that i've known since then. george is still -- we still see those same friends, and george office to temperature the story that the midland friends, the first time they came up and he took them to the oval office and they'd said, gosh, bush, i can't believe i'm here and then they would like at him. -- look at him.

>> that's good. >> but the one thing about a lingual history of friendship like that, we've known these people, they've known us our whole lives. they were our friends long before politics, and they're still our friends and they're great emotional support really in those kind of friendships. >> praying an's mother was wanda. >> wanda, that's right. >> my mother's mother married three times and her philosophy was all of life is one big date, and when you're married, you have to date the man you're married to, but before and after him, you're free to do what you please. >> find someone else. >> you talk about knowing everything about who your friends have and you referenced in that reading the horrible accident and you have written about that in the book. do you want to talk about that? >> i did write about that and i had to write about that. i mean, obviously, that was a --

the largest tragedy by far in my life and in the life of obviously the family, mike douglas' family, but also in all of our friends, because mike 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 of not seeing the stop sign. it was on a dark country road until too late, and just by some very, very odd chance of coincidence, i guess, his -- he happened to be coming on the other road. and i didn't know obviously that i'd hit his car. when i got out of the car, was thrown from the car and the girl, my friend that was with me in the car was not thrown from the car, she was able to get out, and walk to the side and then when i got up and i could

walk too, i had a broken ankle but i didn't know it for a few days, and she said, another car came up and a man got out of that car and went over to the person who was lying on the ground, who was mike, but we didn't know at the time, and my friend judy said, i think that's his father. i think that's the person's father that's on the ground and i said well no, that couldn't be his father, that's mr. douglas, and then when we got taken to the hospital, of course, we were just in a room with a cloth drape at the, you know, separating us, judy and i were, and we weren't injured, we had very minor injuries, so no one was there with us and then i could hear mrs. douglas crying on the other side of the curtain and then when i got home, my parents told me, you know, that it was michael, but i'd sort of already figured that out and that was just a huge tragedy and it was a life lesson that is a

really very hard lesson to learn, that i learned early, and that is the things -- that things happen to you or you know, you cause things to happen that you would never -- if you could take it back, you would, but there's never anything you can ever do about it. and it's just a fact, and that you just have to accept it with whatever grace you can accept it with. >> but you hadn't talked about it before now. >> no, i hadn't really talked about it. i had, i mean, i was asked in the 2000 race when it came out in the newspapers, i was asked about it several times, i just re-read an article that oprah did in her "o" magazine of after we had just moved to the white house, and it was in that article, but i was never asked about it, so i never really talked about it. people knew, because i would get letters from family members of someone who had been -- of a young person who had been involved in a car accident, where there was a death, and i'd

get letters from teachers or parents or aunts and uncles, and they would ask me to write to the young person, write words of encouragement to them, and so i did of course, and i wallet's suggest that they get some kind of counseling, that they talk to a pastor or get a counselor, or you know, find some sort of help, but i didn't do that. and no one ever suggested that i do that. >> it is just the time. >> we didn't -- no one really talked about it, reagan and i talked about it, but it was something that you swallowed and didn't talk about. >> but the whole town knew. >> of course everyone knew. >> did that in some way help when you met george w. bush that he knew and he didn't have to talk about it? >> that might have, although we did talk about it and he knew because i wanted him to know. i didn't know that he was ever going to run for office, but i wanted him to know that for sure if case that would ever in some way, you know, affect his

political run, if he wanted to run. >> and it was an important thing about. >> that's right. it was very important about me. >> suppose your daughters had married someone they had just met. >> i would think that was really reckless. but i did say, my parents were thrilled and bar and george were thrilled, they really were. i think they were really glad we found somebody and they were hoping for grandchildren. >> you were all of 31. >> that's right. i was 31 the night before we got married so i think they were really happy about it. and we had had this same background, we had grown up in the same town, we had grown up just blocks from each other, but he went to sam houston and i went to james buoy and we lived in the same apartment complex without ever really running into each other, so it was like we had known each other our whole life and we knew all the same people, so there weren't any surprises really from either one

of us. >> ever? >> well, there wasn't something in our background that the other one didn't know about. >> well, one ethics that might be a surprise is the minute you got home from getting married, he was running for congress. >> that's right. >> and that was really fun. it was very fun. he was running for congress for mahan's seat, the congressman that i had interviewed with. >> and you know, congressman mahan -- a second hairdo -- he had taught us all where to sit on the subway at the capitol, not to get your hair blown. >> but anyway, he was retiring in 1978, and so george just thought, what the heck, why not friday to run for it. it was a seat that had only been held by congressman mahan for as long as the district had been a district, and so that's what he did, and we traveled up and down

the panhandle of texas, it was a big disstrict, from mid land on the south to hur ford on the north, midland and odessa were the two oil towns in the district and the rest was rural farming district, dry land cotton farming, and all the way up to herford. >> and i'm not sure this is in the book, but i do remember you telling me a story once about he asked about a speech, and you did actually -- go ahead and have some water. water. and you had always said his speeches were terrific, but this night, you decided to actually give a little critique and then what happened. >> one time when george was running for congress, that time, george's mother gave me some advice and she said, don't criticize george's speeches. she said that she had criticized her george's speech and he had come home for weeks later with letters saying it was the best

speech he'd ever given. so i really took it to heart and i didn't ever criticize him and one time we were driving home from lubbock and we were just driving into our driveway of after our campaign event and george said, tell me the truth, how was my speech? and i said, well, it wasn't very good. and he drove into the garage wall. >> men are well known for taking criticism well. before i -- we jump p forward into the political life, i do want to go back to your childhood a little bit, because you write about it so interestingly, and your father coming home from the war, with tiny pictures of concentration camps, why, why did he do that? >> my dad's company, the 104t 104th infantry, had liberated nord house, which is one of the

concentration camps and he came home with eight little photographs, i remember the little sized photographs, that would have been in world war ii, of the bodies that they found, and i think there were about 5,000 dead when they found -- when they liberated nord house and he said american troops went in and put their faces in their hands and wept when they found this, and -- but my dad never really talked about it. we had these photographs and every once if a while, we'd look at them, 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 impressed with an army nurse, he remembered an army nurse standing with a shovel, and handing it to one of the german, you know, -- germans that was still there when they liberated nord house and he said no, you know, set himself up and

said i'm an officer and she took the shovel and hit him across the bottom and said dig and he did. of course, when he was digging were graves, big, big trenches really. and then later, many, many years later, when i was in prague for a nato meeting, i was seated by a holocaust survivor and we started talking and i told him my dad's company had liberated nord house 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 told my children about it either, and he thought like i thought about daddy, that it was just too terrible to tell, that you just couldn't admit to your own children that mankind could be that cruel. >> but you held on to those pictures. >> but we always kept those pictures. >> what was your preaction in later life when you heard about

holocaust deniers. >> it's really terrible and crazy is what it is. it just happened that we went to the day of remembrance at the capitol, the day of the remembrance of the holocaust, the first year, george was president and mother happened to be there, she had come home with me after the easter break and we were sitting together, and if you've ever been to the day of remembrance or haven't been, go sometime, because it's very meaningful, and the soldiers marched in with the flags of all the american companies, that liberated concentration camps. and we didn't know to expect that, i mean, we hadn't been there for that, and so we see the -- these flags start coming in and both of us can't -- are thinking, what did daddy's company flag look like, we couldn't remember and it came by the timber wolves, the wolf's

head that is the timber wolf flag and mother and i both burst into tears to see that flag of daddy's go by of his company. >> you also had letters from him from the war. did you always know that you had those letters? >> i knew that mother had those letters, but i never read them. when i started to work on the book, i went to midland, and drove around again and looked at all the houses. i mean, i go to midland often of course because my mother lives there, but i don't always go drive around and look at the houses my daddy built, he was a home builder oral the houses that we lived in and because he was a home builder, every time he opened a new addition, he would build a new house for us, so we lived in several houses. and then drove by the houses that george and i had lived in when we had barbara and jenna, the years that we lived in midland, and then i read the letters, and i had not read them, i always knew mother had daddy's letters and they were his love letters, i mean, they were newsroom married and then

he had been shipped overseas, and -- but i always felt like she didn't want me to read them, that there was something private about them and personal, but then i read some of them, and they were private and personal, and i did feel like -- a little bit like a voyier. >> but it was fun. >> it was fun and interesting and fun to think of them as these young people in love and separated by the war. >> and then you were born, your mother lost three other babies, which was a great tragedy in her life, and then with you were pregnant with barbara and jenna, you were very frightened. >> that's right. my mother last three babies after me, the second baby, that's really my first memory is looking through the glass at the nursery at the little western clinic in midland, and i didn't see -- i don't remember seeing a baby. i just remember thinking that's

where my baby was, where that little baby was, and i was very aware that this was the big disappointment of their life, that they didn't get to keep those three other babies panned have a family of four children instead of an only child. and -- or, you know, just -- not just one, but four children. and so i was sad too about it, and that was always my wish on a star, of to have a brother or sister. >> there's a wonderful picture of you at your first birthday, when you all get the book, if you don't have it, what happens next after that picture? >> this is where i'm standing for the photo with the cake and i bend over and just bite into it and barbara and jenna did tatoo and then when we removed the tapes, they licked the coffee table. and i think they'd never had sugar. i mean, i know they hadn't, you know, their first birthday. >> so it was good to turn one.

>> yes. >> but you had to go to dallas. >> that's right. and i struggled to get pregnant and then finally when i did, i was so 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 i -- it was a high risk pregnancy, i was 35, you know, it was a twin pregnancy. so close to the end of the pregnancy i got pre-eclampsia, fox toxemia and was sent to dallas, in the intensive care unit, because they thought the babies would need intensive care and at the didn't, they were 4 and 5 pounds, which is big for twins, but it was worry the whole time and i was worried the

whole time because of mother's losses. >> george bush lost that race for congress and -- but then you got involved in the 19 -- you got involved in the 1980 campaign, and then suddenly his father is vice-president. and you talk about celebrity by association. i love that term. suddenly you were somebody. >> that's right. in mid land, we were somebody. so that i would be working out in the yard, thank you very much, and see cars drive by really slowly and you could tell somebody had their friends in from out of town, so they were driving by the vice-president's wallison's house. >> but then when he republican for president, you all moved up here as you were saying here earlier. >> mr. skwrao: we moved here in 1987 to work on mr. bush's

campaign, it was after the price of oil had fallen, so much again, midland just was a boom and bust town, because it was a one industry town, the oil business, so with the price of oil was high in midland, everybody was in high cotton, i guess. >> or high oil. >> in high oil, and then when it went down, then midland would go through a bust, and there was one shortly of about that, so george was able to sell his oil company and we moved up here to work on the campaign, on mr. bush's campaign, and that was really fun and he was the first time in the 10 years that george and i had been married that i was ever really with his mother a lot, every other time, i would visit her, it had been in maine when all the other kids were there, when the grandchildren was there, when she was i know, highly stressed with all that many people around. >> i love, take the aspirin

instructions. >> her line about when things get really tense, grab the bottle of aspirin and do what it says on the bottle, take two and keep away from children. >> but when we lived up here that year, and they were running for president, i mean, they were gone of course, all during the week, but they made sort of rule to be home on sundays together and we had sunday, hamburger lunch, which was their tradition, every sunday and i got to know bar then really for the first time and she got to know me. she had five children and i expected her to welcome me with open arms like mother welcomed george because he was her only other one, but then we really got to know each other and love each other and love the same things. she loves to read and that year

that we -- year and a half that we lived here, we'd get up in the morning on a saturday morning and we'd read a review of an art show that was here at the smithsonian or somewhere else and she'd call me and we'd jump in the car, because she was the vice-president's wife be we could get in 30 minutes early, have a tour by ourselves, but it was really a wonderful chance for george and me both to have this relationship with his parents as adults. we were adults, and they were too, and they baby-sat for barbara and jenna, even though they were running for president at the time, and it was really -- i'm really so grateful that i had that chance to live in the same town with them, because it made a huge difference in our relationship. >> but by the end of this presidency, you write that you were -- you were seeing things on television and reading things about him, that just were not true, and that were just such mischaracterizations of him, and then your husband goes and runs for governor, were you

distressed that -- more politics was going to be in your life? >> not really. we had loved that one race for congress, that we had, you know, really politics is a family business, you know this. >> i do. >> and when you -- when you have a family member in politics, and everyone is in it together, and you have opponent, so it doesn't have to be each other, and you know, you're really in it together, so that orthat george and i traveled in west texas, with he ran for congress, was really great. we did everything together, where -- rode in the car together every day to places and 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 if you win, that's great and if you lose, life goes on. you know, it's not the end of your life if you lose a political race. and i knew that, and so when

george wanted to run for governor -- i used to say of after people would say after that congressional race, do you think george will ever run again for an office and i used to kind of joke and say yeah, maybe when we're 50, and we were kind of close to 50 when he ran for governor. >> it seemed a long time away. >> but that was my hess tags when he wanted to run for president, you know, running for governor, that's a big job, but the media and the scrutiny and the criticism and the, you know, attacks are not near what they are when you run for president. >> and you knew that because you had been -- most people really are taken by surprise. so the fact that you had been involved in those campaigns. >> we really knew it it, especially watching mr. bush, especially in the 1992 campaign but the 1988 campaign as well. >> >> of after your husband was elected governor, your father

got terribly sick, and you saw your mother in the role of caretaker. and i wondered how you reacted to that, as being distant from her, and seeing her having to take on that role. >> well, that was hard for me. my father got alzheimer's, and slowly the alzheimer's progressed and he got worse and worse. he didn't ever get so bad that he didn't know me -- >> he didn't know george bush. >> that's right. on the last thanksgiving before he died, which was after george had been elected governor, but before the inauguration, we went to midland and spent that thanksgiving with them, and at one point, daddy said, who's that over there? and i said dad, that's my husband, george bush and he said you married george bush and i said yes. and he said i think i'll ask him for a loan.

and then he laughed. that was so funny. >> but as first lady, you started a few things in texas that you were, thankfully for us in washington, panel to bring here, starting with the book festival. >> i started the texas book festival, i think it's now in its 15th or 16th year and it's hugely successful, it's very popular with authors, authors love to get invited to austin of course, and it's really fun, and that -- and it's held inside the texas capital building, and the only way we got to do that was because george was governor and the speaker of the house, the house of -- texas house is the group that oversees the capitol building and they don't let anyone else meet in the texas capitol and of course, i understand that, but they still have allowed us to have the book festival in the capitol, so for one weekend a year, the texas capitol is turned over to literature and i think that's pretty great, so the readings are in the senate, you know, on

the senate floor and in the house floor and then in the committee hearing rooms and in the auditorium, so there are a lot of sizes of venues. the authors who won't draw great big crowd and be in a committee airing room and it's just been very successful. then we so many the books outside the capitol grounds, because you can't sell things on the ground. we sell things outside the capitol grounds and we've made the book festival into a fund raiser for texas public library, we've given grants to every single texas public library in our -- >> that's great. [applause] >> but you know, you also got involved with the arts and education and family and protective services, and you came here as first lady, and immediately worked to get a book festival going, the national book festival, which thankfully, we still have going, and you

were very involved in the literature, you had those wonderful readings at the white house, and then early wild childhood education, all the things you had really learned a great deal about while you were in texas, you started to concentrate on as first lady, and of course, were at the capitol on september 11, 2001, ready to testify before the senate education committee on early childhood education and tell us what happened there? >> i got in my car that morning,ists going to the brief the senate education committee on early childhood education and so i'd been -- i didn't have the tv on that morning, i was looking at my briefing and i was nervous, very nervous, i mean, this was september of the first year george was president, in 2001, and so just as i was getting in the car, the secret service agent liened 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 andy balm ball who was my chief of staff at the time and we had no idea what would transpire and when we got in the car and went on to the capitol, we assumed that, you know, it was just some weird accident, some terrible accident that a plane had flown into the trade center, but on the way to the capitol, we get the message about the second plane, so we know then that it's a terrorist attack, but i go on and go to senator kennedy's office, he's waiting for me actually with i get out of the car, and we go to his office, and he starts to give me a tour of his office and shows me all his momentos on his wall, including a letter from his brother jack, that jack had written to their mother when they were little, and had written that teddy was getting fat and he was still amused after all these years at this

cute letter but the whole time i kept up this small talk, and i thought about it over and over and wondered, you know, if that was a defense mechanism for himself, because he'd had so many shocks in his hone life, that he just, you know, kept up this 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. and so he was just trying to, you know, keep everything, you know, in this sort of pleasant small talk way. we did go out, senator judd greg joined us then, who is one of our closest friends and who had been tehran much that summer, because he was the one who had played al gore for the debate press, and -- >> another wallison o son of a . >> exactly.

so judd joined us and he and i would look at each other as we were looking over senator kennedy's shoulder to look at the television, it was the small television, it was back in the corner of the office and we were sick. i mean, we felt sick. i thought judd looked sick, i'm sure he thought i looked sick too because we couldn't imagine and really i think it was sort of a blessing that senator kennedy kept up this small talk, because it gave us a way to try to process what we were seeing and what had meant. and then the three of us went out and spoke to the press and said, that we were postponing the briefing. i mean, already, it was sort i n defines of the terrorists, we were weren't going to cancel the briefing, it was just postponed, and as we were saying we were postponing the briefly, lawrence mcquellan from "u.s.a. today"

said mrs. bush, what do we say to the children and that's with i got the idea of what do we say to the children? and i said then, you know, that parents need to assure their children that they're safe and turn off the television and don't let them watch over and over and over those buildings falling, but then it really gave me the direction of what i did in the days to follow, including the letters that i wrote to high school students and then to younger -- another letter for younger students about what had happened and what they could do for each other, and how we needed to take care of each other at a time like this. >> but it also led you to your great passion for the women of afghanistan. an you have been there three times, you've been to 70 countries as first lady, and you are still working on that issue, and plan to continue to work on that issue. talk to us about that. :

>> she could write other presidents of universities, and say, can you give afghan young women full scholarships and include everything, so they can come over here and be educated and go back home and help build or country and she did. and she has students, still to this day, in a number of universities and i spoke to the

first graduating class of afghan women at that university, and her husband's university, four years later. and that is just one of so many different ways american women thought they could mentor afghan women and help them in some way to make sure they could be able to one day enjoy the freedoms that we all enjoy. >> one of the reasons they even knew to do it was because you were out there advocating for them, and right after the invasion, you -- the first person other than a president, to have gone to the microphone and for the president's weekly radio address, and you used it to defend the women of afghanistan. and say, women's rights are human rights. and you tell the story of being in the department store after that and someone, really didn't understand it, and of course i love the fact that you told me at one point ladybird johnson said to you i have a podium and

i'm going to use it. >> i'm going to use it and that is what she said and she did use her podium. she really did. speaking of ladybird johnson, i always admired her so much because she was a texas first lady. and, i knew the -- what an impact she had on our 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 ladybird really started the whole use of native plants in the landscape and we can thank her for the daffodils that bloom on rock creek parkway now, still, in washington, and for all of those blue bonnets on the side of the road in texas that i just saw last week, because they are all blooming there now. but, toward the end of lady johnson's life, her daughter called me and said her mother was going to make one more trip to washington and lyndon --

they knew 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 she had -- by then had had a stroke and no longer spoke. but she still had the wonderful twinkle in her eye, and, very expressive movements and so when she would see a painting or something that she would remember, she'd put her hands together and gasp and, when we went to look at president johnson's portrait, she kind of put her arms out to him. and it was really, really very sweet and i was so glad to have that chance to show her the white house and to walk around the white house with her and in fact i -- we had done the room on the ground floor where a lot of the most recent portraits of the first ladies are, and her portrait is over the fireplace there, and she's wearing a yellow gown, and when we went

into the room we adjusted the paint color in the room to be the yellow that was the color of the gown that she was wearing. i was at texas when london johnson died. i was at the university of texas in graduate school and laid bird and linda and lucy, his body lay in state at the lbj library there and they stood and shook everyone's hand and i stood in line to walk through and pay my respects and to shake their hand, never imagining then i would ever meet them again. >> it's time to go to questions. >> yes. >> but i want to ask one, one last thing of my own, which is that, you know, so you did this work for the afghan women and did all of the work on aids in africa, you then became passionate advocate for freedom in burma, writing op-eds and going to the white house briefing room and, you know, grabbing the microphone there. the first time that has ever