love happened to mention that he didn't like broccoli so the mother of america had to go out there and reassure all the children that broccoli is good and good for you. and you'll notice that she did that with the oval office right in the background which i thought was pretty cheeky. after the election president bush was honored at an armed -- by the armed services at a salute at ft. myers, and it was an incredibly moving event. there wasn't a dry eye anywhere to include miraculously the press that was -- that had tears running down their eyes. but then life takes funny turns, and we have governor bush and governor bush and president bush and who knows who the guy in the background, what he's going to add to it.

and life goes on. this is after the election at kennebunkport. the president is going off to work, which brings me back to the wellesley speech which i have read over and over again, and i think one of the -- also one of the other things that mrs. bush said in that speech, which we don't want to forget paraphrasing ferris bueller that life is fast-paced. you have to stop and look around or else you'll miss it all and then most of all to remember to find the joy in life. thank you. [ applause ] >> good afternoon. i'm susan sterner. just thank you to everyone for being here. it's a really hard -- i just really drew the short end of the straw i think, but i thought i

would start -- remember the click. i thought i would start with my last day of work with mrs. bush. my last 48 hours of work with mrs. bush was in the spring of 2005 when we went on an unannounced trip to afghanistan, and a little bit of background. i started at the white house right after a two-year fellowship in brazil where what i was doing was living and working with families and looking into how government policies affected the lives and status of women, and i thought that i had learned everything or i didn't think that i had learned everything, but what i learned i thought was the great lesson of my life, and then i turned around and went into the white house and had fundamental things like the vocabulary that we use every day challenged, words like white house, east wing, west wing, state visit, peace talks, and most importantly the word government. that it stopped me in the course of my time at white house, it stopped being this giant hovering blob of organizations

and really became individuals. and relationships. what stuck with me after my time there was the power of gestures, large and small. so here we are in afghanistan walking with president hamid karzai right outside of the presidential palace. we were there for just a short time. over the course of our visit, i was really struck and touched by how people responded to us in the streets, how informal meetings were set up with the solemnity and gravity for everyone of the moment. i was struck by a visit we took to a dormitory for a university for young women and how they were awe-struck by mrs. bush, mesmerized by her. i kept trying to process what it meant to them to have her there listening to them talk about their dreams and their goals.

that circles back to what i was mentioning, that it comes down to relationships. relationships behind the photo ops. i think everybody has been beaten up in china, carol. just really learning from mrs. bush about what it means to listen and engage and do that with grace in the private and public sphere, to acknowledge the effort that goes into these meetings. here they are in normandy on the beaches, which was such a beautiful moment and so powerful i think to everybody that was there that day. these are the cherry blossom princesses coming in their matching pink suits. they were mortified. their ten seconds with mrs. bush, preparing to say hello. the generosity of taking five minutes for a photo op in the

heat of the sun in texas. but it was relationships that happened around moments like this. this is in the spring of 2003 when the president of uganda was visiting and he brought with them the uganda children's choir, which is made up of children orphaned by aids. they set up chairs in the rose garden. i have it -- i call it a syndrome where i can't not cry when kids are singing. i'm trying to photograph while they're singing. we do the official photo op and the president had to go back into the oval office, but mrs. bush stayed. the kids swarmed her. she hugged every one of them. it was this incredible moment of love and joy and she led them upstairs to the state floor where they had a treat of juice and cookies and they brought out barney to play with them. i think back to these kids, to the women in afghanistan and even to the cherry blossom princesses and think about the ripple effect that this moment,

this chance to have a relationship had on them. those were the moments powerful for me, a real privilege to witness. this is one that just sort of blew my mind. when i think about it, it's kind of rad, especially the day after elections in russia yesterday. this is during the national book festival. here is mrs. bush. she's gotten out of the limousine with mrs. putin and holding hands walking across the national mall at the national book festival, an event dedicated to the idea of an open access to information and freedom of speech. being able to be there and witness that sort of moment was very humbling. i learned a lot about what it means to be respectful and present in the moment. mrs. bush always had this great talent for creating a very special aura around the people who she was meeting this. here she is with a navajo elder in arizona. this little boy, kent morrison

from the make-a-wish foundation, his wish was to meet with mrs. bush. and it was the sweetest little moment, just playing with kaleidoscopes in the diplomatic reception room with his little sister rachel. visiting the wounded in walter reed. as a white house photographer, i was always aware of the fact that i was part of the gray area between public and private and i was there as one of the witnesses, and to honor. but i was also sometimes an intruder. i felt very responsible for how i went about trying to document and what i did with the privilege of being there in those private times. i tried really hard to get it right and to show the multi-faceted people and to make the pictures about the individuals who were there. here is the president blowing a kiss to mrs. bush as we leave to go back to the united states and he stays with his delegation in mexico.

just a quick moment after the state of the union with family. flying home for christmas, when your guard is down. coming back from europe with jenna. i would say that it's not always a seamless thing to be a white house photographer. nobody tried to strangle me, though. it's not a seamless thing. i don't believe that you're ever a fly on the wall as a photographer. you go in there to look and to shape an image and you have a camera and sometimes you're crawling around where you shouldn't be. so you change the balance. again, that's all about those relationships. i think you really have to have a good sense of humor and a heavy dose of humility. in the photo office we had this sort of small running jokes of pictures of who had been thrown out of which meeting which way. when you inadvertently become part of the event and you really shouldn't. that's sort of a photographer's nightmare.

here we're about to go out on the east lawn, and the president just said no more pictures. or stepping out of the limos and having the dogs rush me. i didn't know what else to do except lift my cameras to protect myself. or talking to the president and the first lady into a dawn photo op and having the dogs go in an unmanaged way. but it was fun. it's also a lot of fun. you're around everybody for so much time. >> that's a good shot, isn't it? >> you're around everyone for so much time, that it's just about the relationships. it was an amy mazing firsthand education for me to witness and document the relationships that have become our collective memory and that are the government, that are the white house, that are the east wing, that are peace talks. it shifted everything in how i think about what i do. it's had a huge impact.

the ripple effect on me has affected the way i work, the way i parent. it was a great time. i was a first-time mother when i was in the white house. it was amazing to kind of do whatever mrs. bush said to do in her policy speeches, and the way i participate in our democracy and the way that i really even think about the future. thank you. [ applause ] >> thanks to all of you for sharing examples of your extraordinary body of work. susan, i want to pick up on what you just talked about, the life-changing experience that is being a white house photographer. you were all old hands, all pros at the art of photography. i wonder, did you have to change the way that you approached your job being in the white house? after all, you are recording history, and it is for the public record.

so does that change the way you approach the art? >> eventually it does. when i first started, i came in wanting to make the document of the century. and then i realized i needed to take a deep breath and slow down and just watch and be really attentive and do my homework. i think it made me a better and more deliberate photographer. >> carol? >> i think it took me -- it takes you a while to get up your nerve. my first assignment was to drive with mrs. bush from the national observatory where the vice president lives to the white house and then to photograph them moving into blair house -- not the white house, to blair house. i think i took three photos i was so nervous. it just -- you don't want to intrude on their private time, but you do have to intrude on their private time because it is for all of us. eventually you have to think ten years, 20 years, down the road. this is telling history.

>> david, you had won the pulitzer prize at age 25. you were in the white house several years later. did you have to approach the job differently upon landing in the white house? >> i had -- i got to know the fords before the day -- the day i photographed soon-to-be president ford, the day spero agnew resigned. i can say that in this room and most of you know who i'm talking about. i give a lot of lectures at schools and it's a little dicy. i even have to explain who president ford is sometimes. but i had an ongoing relationship with him starting -- the first "time" cover i ever had was of him when he was designated by nixon to be the replacement for agnew and then "time" had me covering them. i got to know the family really well. i went skiing with them, taking

pictures. that was back in the day when the magazine would pay for my skiing lessons, the good old days as we would call them. but i got to know them really well. by the time he became president i had really got along well with everybody, including the kids. mrs. ford was always a big proponent of having me work in the white house. the night president ford was sworn in, he had been president for about eight hours. my background is, i'm from a little town in oregon, no background in journalism or anything else. my dad was a traveling salesman. how i got to that night sitting with president ford, the only person in the room, and he wanted to talk to me about the job, but he hadn't offered it to me. he said, how do you see the white house photographer's job? i thought, shouldn't he be

talking to kissinger? yoichi okamoto, lbj's photographer, was an absolutely role model, total access to the president and all that and ollie atkins, the second civilian white house photographer, really didn't have much access at all. it's not what nixon wanted. it's all about your relationship with the president. i thought about that. i thought what am i going to say if he asks me. two things i want, one is total access and to work for you directly. not for the white house chief of staff or the press secretary. he was puffing on his pipe and he looked at me and said, you don't want "air force one" on the weekends? it started well. it started well and it never let up. i was so respectful and loved those guys. they gave me a tremendous opportunity and i'm a pro. i worked 16 hours a day, they let me into their life and i

respected that to this day. i really am blessed to have been able to do that. >> alita black was talking earlier about the fact that we just get lucky sometimes in american history. i think we were extraordinarily lucky to have the three first ladies that were in the white house while you all were in your jobs. like lady bird johnson, betty ford took the role of first lady under extraordinary circumstance, david -- >> a good title for a book, actually. wait, it's the title of my book. >> a shameless plug. >> all benefits going to ut austin, center for american history, dolph brisco center for american history. >> you were there at the ford house in alexandria, virginia, the night that president ford took office and really the first night that mrs. ford became first lady. that was an extremely unusual situation. talk about being in their house that evening and what america was feeling and what the fords were feeling at that time.

>> i think they were just -- one of the reasons i got along with them, i've never met more normal people. president ford respected i had been in vietnam. i had been a combat photographer for two and a half years. he was in the pacific as a navy officer. you know what? looking back on that -- he was only like 60 years old when he took that job. but i thought he was like 93. my dad was only 21 years older than me. i always referred to him -- even in private conversations. to this day, either mr. ford when he was in congress or mr. vice president or mr. president. he never said you can call me jerry. i would never have dreamed of doing it. it was formal to the degree i

had respect for my elders. 60 years old is nothing now. i think that was it. we hit it off. it was the kind of relationship you can't explain. you couldn't create that kind of relationship. each white house photographer -- by the way, those were terrific photos because you get a sense of who they are, and that's why we're there. you're right. we're kind of the eyes in the situation where you can't go normally. hopefully we bring a true picture back. that didn't answer your question entirely. but needless to say, i was in the loop the whole time and never was out. >> same with the bushes. for 41 i think he was very cognizant of the fact and he looked down the road and he saw that he knew he would have a library and he knew they would have an archive. they were both incredibly open

to us documenting their lives and never once, never once said, for me anyways, stop, that's enough. get out. why are you here? it was always an open situation. >> carol, you talked about the wellesley speech that mrs. bush gave. that really was a defining moment in a lot of ways for mrs. bush's tenure as first lady. give a little context to that speech and why it was so important. >> i think it's multilayered. every time i go back and read it, it's just so incredible because of the time -- what i called and i think what mrs. bush also referred to as the brouhaha over her speaking and what the -- what the ladies there thought was a successful woman. i would love to go back 20 years later and talk to like a half dozen of them and find out where they're at and what their ideas are now about what a woman's

role is and what's more important for your family, for your -- it starts with your family. i think mrs. bush embodied that. i think that's the message that she was trying to get across ' was, yes, we want diversity. yes, you want to go out and live your dreams according to who you are. but unless you love yourself, your family first, you can't really do for anybody else. >> right. susan, certainly 9/11 was a defining moment in mrs. bush's tenure in the white house. >> uh-huh. >> talk about -- she speaks -- writes very eloquently about how her role changed post 9/11. tell us about your experience on 9/11 and what you returned to when you came back to the white house. >> when i started with the white house i was six months pregnant. my son was born in mid july. when 9/11 happened, i was at home with the television on.

i had family in town and i watched everything live. i was as stunned as could be and paralyzed. and i didn't know how to respond. paralyzed. and i didn't know how to respond. i just wanted to hold on to my baby. i just wanted to -- making lots of phone calls, making sure family members were safe that were supposed to have travelled that day. and that sort of thing. and either the next day or the day after, i called into the photo office. and i spoke with a woman named marilyn. and i said marilyn, tell me what to do, because i wasn't scheduled to come in. do i need to come in? do you need help? what is the work load? i was worried about everybody. and she said no, you need to be home with your baby. so i stayed home. i stayed home. and i was -- it was a real emotional time to both not be there and then to go back. and one of the first thing i got

to do going back was to travel to crawford, and i photographed mrs. bush as she was delivering the radio address on afghan women. and i think everything had changed. how can everything not have changed after 9/11? but what was so amazing and wonderful was sort of the power that came from that to recognize that women, discussions about women's rights need to be part of our discussions about democracy and moving forward. and that had a big shape. and it was all leading towards going to afghanistan, and working with women's health and status. >> one of my favorite quotes is from groucho marx, which might make me a marxist, but the secret to life is sincerity. once you can fake that, you've got it made. but it seems to me that one of the most difficult parts of being a first lady is you have to always be on and in the moment. and you've spoken about the laura bush bubble. talk than a little bit, susan.

>> well, i think, for those of you who have had a chance to be with mrs. bush, it's a wonderful thing, because when she is talking to you, she is talking to you. she is listening. everything from the letter that she sent out to families and children, which was so moving. i met so many people who really felt that that letter was written to them. and then in the individual moment, i just have to say the second time i was pregnant -- i spent a lot of time pregnant in my job. but the second time i had -- sort of a nightmare, other than dogs rushing me from the limo or the chinese security, i was at home trying to get cuff links into a maternity blouse when my is off and my pager just started going off and going off. and i picked it up and it was mrs. bush's aide saying where are you? i said well i'm at home getting dressed. and she says you have a photo op in three minutes in the diplomatic reception room. i threw everything up. my husband had to drop me off. i grabbed my cameras, went

running in and tried to act like i meant to be there just like that. but what was so sweet was mrs. bush could tell that i was flustered. we got through the photo op and everything was fine. and that day she took me upstairs just to the kitchen, and just looked at this little catalog of new baby furniture that was out, you know, just kind of 45 seconds calmed me right down. okay, we took care of the photo op. it's all done. here is what the priority is. how are you, susan? check in, it's okay. let's go forward. and it's great. >> carol, what is -- you've seen the first lady up close, the role of the first lady up close. what do most people not appreciate about the role of first lady? >> oh, gosh. >> what might surprise us about the role, those of us looking at a distance at the first lady and

her role. what would we most be surprised by? >> well, one thing is the amount of work, the amount of travel, the number of speeches, the shaking hands, the meeting with people. first of all, sorry, i'm talking about my first lady there is nothing better than a hug from barbara bush. i had to plug that. but it's so hard. just being a photographer, i was exhausted. it took me a year to recover. mrs. bush never tired, never. 5:30 in the morning, she would be out swimming. but i don't think people realized that -- and for a photographer, people say oh, were you like hanging out in the residence with them. it's a very structured job. these are the events. this is what you have to cover. this is what you have to take care of. so it's a balance between how

incredibly intense it is and how hard you work, and then the fun parts. and mrs. bush made it incredibly fun. >> we have about three minutes left. and i want to ask you all an impossible question. but if you had just one photograph that you could take from your days as white house photographers, what would that photograph be? and we don't have the photographs themselves, but maybe you can give us that in a thousand words or less, because we have a limited time. i'll start with you, david. >> tried to define it to put it in there, but i couldn't. and we were going to indonesia or some place over the timeline. and she was given a king neptune crown. and it was so much her personality. it was on air force one, and she

is kind of poking her head out. when i think of mrs. ford, i think of somebody who had a lot of difficulty in her life and so much for people. we know her story. i've always thought her in the cabinet room table pictures, the fun-loving, mischief person that she was who did so much good for particularly women and equal rights across the board, and having a loving husband who not just put up with her, but was her partner. but when i see her face, i see a smiling, happy person. >> carol, what would your image be? >> i think the final day was day would be for me saying goodbye. it was so hard on everybody. and mrs. bush just made sure everybody understood that life

would go on, that we had wonderful times, that she did such a fantastic job, but she just kept us all moving forward. >> it was such a graceful exit. >> it was, yes. >> susan? >> i have a series of pictures that i'm thinking of where we flew out to arizona and we met with the family of and met with family of lori piestewa, the first woman killed in iraq war. it's actually a really joyful picture. and it's a really joyful picture because it's mrs. bush being mrs. bush with her family and with the kids. and it's a sweet moment that was bittersweet. >> i want to thank all of you, again, for your recollections and you're great work. and i want to thank the two first ladies for not only being here, but their service to this nation. thank you all very much.

>> thank you. bravo! good job. >> you did it. each weekend on american history tv on c-span 3, learn more about the presidents, their policies and legacies through historic speeches and discussion with leading historians. this sunday at 8:30 a.m. eastern and again at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m., a look at the presidency and civil rights during the fdr, truman, and eisenhower administrations. and for more about other programing, schedules, and online video, visit c-span.org/history. i seem to have earned a certain place where people will listen to me. and i've always cared about the country. and the greatest generation, writing that book, gave me a kind of a platform that was completely unanticipated. so i thought i ought not to squander that.

so i ought to step up as a -- not just as a citizen and as a journalist, but as a father and a husband and a grandfather, and if i see these things, i ought to write about them and try to start this dialogue, which if i'm trying do with this book about where we need to get to next. >> in his latest, "the time of our lives," tom brokaw urges americans to redefine the american dream. and sunday live in depth, your questions for the former anchor and managing editor of "nbc nightly news." in his half dozen books, he has written about the greatest generation, the 1960s, and today. in-depth, sunday at noon eastern on c-span 2's book tv. the smithsonian's national museum of american history in washington, d.c. has been featuring an exhibit on the contributions of first ladies to the american presidency and white house. the exhibit's curator spoke to us for a few minutes about the gowns and dresses of first