picture i think, kind of a pict gallant moment.this is this is the night of the inaugural. and then six first ladies at the reagan library dedication with pat nixon. i think this was the last public appearance that mrs. nixon made before she died with lady bird, and then at the george bush th d library opening. at th this is -- hillary is first lady, and they were all watchina the presidents talking and at the ford funeral where president bush and those three first ert. ladies. this was in palm desert. thank you. >> great job. >> well, this is unfair that i have to follow you, david. >> i intended it. thank you so much.

>> clearly one of the most memorable events for mrs. bush was her commencement address at wellesley. aside from all the brouhaha and protests that were stirred up. it was a great success. i'm sure everybody remembers the quote that at the end of your c. life you'll never regret not quh having passed one more test, non winning one more verdict, closing one more deal, but you will regret time not spent with a husband, child or a parent, and i think this is a code that she lived by. there she is with mrs. gorbachev who came with her to the event and gave her own remarks. in the kremlin with mrs. yeltsin on the left. mrs. yeltsin took us through an impromptu tour of the imperial t apartments in the kremlin which were absolutely incredible because they were covered floor to ceiling with these beautifuln religious icons, and i don't

think the apartments had ever been open to the public before, so that was a real treat to see. on our first foreign trip we re were -- went to china here at we tiananmen square.tiananme i was still learning my way, ana i had a slight scuffle with chinese security, and i kept ll telling them that i was with hew and it was okay because i was an official photographer, and thena figured out later that all ablyf photographers in china are probably official and it meant absolutely nothing. our first foreign trip, after rs that we went to seoul, korea with mrs. roh tae wu and i love the juxtaposition there of east and west and holding hands, and in tokyo in the imperial gardens we took a stroll with empress michiko, and i think mrs. bush was told to wear some hink m comfortable shoes.

as you'll note the u.s. keds. they are the same color this time. them. president and mrs. bush also met with mr. and mrs. lech walesa and here at gdansk at their home, they had lunch with them, and it was a really exciting time because solidarity had just won a landslide election in parliament. and then we went to ten downing street with mrs. thatcher. you'll notice mrs. thatcher is pointing her finger, and i think what she's saying is who is that woman with all the cameras around her neck and why is she in my living room? i had barged my way through, ast i was learning to do, thinking a that i was going to end up in a holding room somewhere when ias ended up in mrs. thatcher's living room. but then mrs. thatcher came to

our territory here at camp david, looking out through their cabin with millie on the side there joining in. and the first day of desert storm was announced, this is in the residence which you would call i guess the family room of the white house. i'm watching the president announce the beginning of the rm operation with her daughter doro and press secretary anna perez, and the bushes had invited the reverend billy graham to join them. in the camis. this was in the saudi desert ons thanksgiving day before the start of operation desert storm. i think mrs. bush was on her thi fifth thanksgiving dinner at that time.

and then once the campaign started it was non-stop.d then here we were at a beauty salon in new hampshire, and that is -- that is not helen thomas under k the hair dryer. i know it looks like her. i'm not that cool. greeting well wishers in pennsylvania, bowling for votes in ohio. and on the campaign plane with marvin bush who is always fun to have around. here with marvin also. a whi we were on a whistle stop tour through georgia. this was several weeks before the election, and after the third debate, after the crowds all come around and everybody shakes hands and takes pictures,

mrs. bush bee-lined for ross perot because he had made some accusations that the campaign had maligned his family and hiss daughters and mrs. bush wanted t to set the record straight, that that just was not true.opted here she is with her newly tim. adopted son, soon to be adopted son, still governor at the time. now it's customary after the election that the first lady gives a tour to the newly ur to elected first lady in the white house, and here she is with mrs. clinton in the queen's bedroom.omewhere going over some notes before a speech in a hotel room somewhere in america, somewhere yet one o more hotel room. sorting through children's books

that she was giving to her grabbed children. that's at the staff hotel in kennebunkport. and on a bus tour through illinois and wisconsin. obviously a late night trip home. somewhere we had been given 3-d glasses and just being silly on the plane.nd wis i like the guy on the right who obviously missed his pair but gl was willing to join in anyways. every christmastime mrs. bush visited children's hospital in h washington, d.c., and here she is holding the young cancer patient, and i love the look on her faces.ame she must have gotten great comfort from that little girl who was probably about the same age as robin. now, millie in kennebunkport relaxing obviously with

mrs. bush. had already become a successful authoress. she had written her book, and she generously donated all the profits of her book to the barbara bush foundation of family literacy, and because she is a thoroughly modern millie and wants it all, she had these guys.e had which brought great joy to the . white house. now some are braver than others. [ laughter ] and we traveled to almost every state in the united states to tm include hawaii where we went fos the day and back to promote thea family literacy.y mrs. bush obviously, as you know, tirelessly promoted ading. reading.nce of

i love the exuberance of the little girl on the right-hand side there. and mrs. bush holding an aids d. baby. now, have you to remember at that time for a lot of people didn't understand that you could hold a baby, hug a child with aids and that it wouldn't -- you wouldn't catch it, but there wa' this stereotype, so mrs. bush in her role went out to grandma's house in washington, d.c., and, unfortunately, that poor guy only lasted another couple of weeks.broccoli broccoli, yeah. now, someone we all know and l w 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. the b

and you'll notice that she did that with the oval office right in the background which i thought was pretty cheeky.ac 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 anywherea 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 mrs. bush said in that speech, e which we don't want to forget paraphrasing ferris bueller that life is fast-paced. have you to stop and look around or else you'll miss it all and then most of all to remember to find the joy in lifeyo. to reme thank you. >> 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 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 it right after a two-year fellowship in brazil where what i was doing was living and anisa 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 n,inga learned everything, but what i learned i thought was the great lesson of my life, and then i a turned around and went into the white house and had fundamental things like the vocabulary thatf we use every day challenged, words like white house, east kei wing, west wing, state visit, peace talks, and most importantly the word government. that stopped me in the course of my time at white house, it stopped being this giant hovering blob of organizations and really became individuals.th 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 so karzai right outside of the

presidential palace. we were there for just a short time.r just a 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 meo their dreams and their goals. that circles back to what i was mentioning, that it comes down to relationships. the relationships are what happens 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 o with grace in the private and public sphere, to acknowledge the effort that goes into these meetings. there they are in normandy on the beaches which was such a y beautiful moment and so powerful i think to everybody that was there that day. to the mundane. these are the cherry blossom princesses coming in their ss 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. this is in the spring of 2003 when the president of uganda was visiting and he brought with him the uganda children's

choir, which is made up of children orphaned by aids. they set up chairs in the rose garden.ofen. 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 andn the president has had to go back into the oval office, but mrs. bush stayed. the kids swarmed her. ds swa she hugged every one of them.gge it was this incredible moment on love and joy and she led them cr 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 t even to the cherry blossom boutt 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., a re this is one that just sort of al 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 ional 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 wast very humbling.ry humbl i learned a lot about what it means to be respectful and to b present in the moment. mrs. bush always had this greatl talent for creating a very special aura around the people who she was meeting with. here she is with a navajo elder in arizona.fr this little boy, kent morrison from the make-a-wish foundation, his wish was to meet with mrs. bush.h it was the sweetest little moment. playing with kaleidoscopes in the diplomatic reception room with his little sister rachel.

or goofing around with troops in tampa. or visiting the wounded at ng te 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 was there as one of the witnesses, and to honor. but i was also sometimes an intruder. i felt very responsible for howr i went about trying to document and what i did with the privilege of being there in osev those private times.ied real i tried really hard to get it right and to show the and t multi-faceted people and to mak the pictures about the individuals who were there. here is the president blowing a kiss to mrs. bush as we leave tt go back to the united states an. 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.uld say i would say that it's not always a seamless thing to be a white house photographer. t nobody tried to strangle me,ri though. it's not a seamless thing. i don't believe that you're evet a fly on the wall as a otogra photographer.phook an you go in there to look and to shape an image and you have a r camera and sometimes you're e y crawling around where you shouldn't be.out thos 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 d part of the event and you really shouldn't.t. that's sort of a photographer'sr 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.ng the d

i didn't know what else to do except lift my cameras to protect myself.otect my or talking to the president and the first lady into a dawn photv 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. a >> 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 amazing firsthanded 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 west wing, n that are the east wing, that are peace talks.g 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 o 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 u life-changing experience that is being a white house ence t photographer.ha you were all old hands, all pros at the art of photography. i wonder, did you have to chango the way that you approached youh job being in the white house?te, 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 ofe the century.cument 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.was to my first assignment was to drivi with mrs. bush from the nationan 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. house i think i took three photos i th was so nervous. it just -- you don't want to us- intrude on their private time, e but you do have to intrude on ei their private time because it is for all of us. eventually you have to think ten years, 20 years, down the road.y this is telling history. down >> david, you had won the ory. pulitzer prize at age 25. you were in the white house d ya several years later. did you have to approach the jog differently upon landing in the white house? >> i had -- i got to know the

fords before the day -- the dayr 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 io replacement for agnew and then "time" had me covering them. i got to know the family really well.cover i 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.ame s 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.e nigh the night president ford was or sworn in, he had been president for about eight hours. backgro 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 th pe wanted to talk to me about the job, but he hadn't offered it tt 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 total photographer, was an absolute role model, total access to the president and all that and ollie atkins, the second 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.di i thought what am i going to sao if he asks me. am i i said, two things i would like, one is total access to all meetings all the time 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 f he looked at me and said, you don't want air force one on the weekends?th it started well.l. it started well and it never let up.espectfu i was so respectful and loved ts those guys.me a tre 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 6 hour respected that to this day. i really am blessed to have been able to do that. >> alita black was talking able earlier about the fact that we just get lucky sometimes in american history.just i think we were extraordinarily. lucky to have the three first ladies that were in the white ea house while you all were in

your jobs. like lady bird johnson, betty ford took the role of first lady under extraordinary circumstances, david. >> a good title for a book, actually. jobs. wait, it's the title of my book. >> a shameless plug.actual >> all benefits going to ut , is austin, center for american history, dolph brisco center foh 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 housen 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. in vi

president ford respected i had been in vietnam. i had been a combat veteran 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. i look at the pictures. my dad was only 21 years older than me.e pacifi i always referred to him -- even in private conversationsmy d 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.in con it was formal to the degree i y. 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 relationshipe 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 e situation where you can't go normally. bring 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 thef cognizant of the fact and he looked down the road and he saw that he knew he would have a lia library and he knew they would have an archive. they were both incredibly open to us documenting their lives and never once, never once saide for me anyways, stop. that's enough. get out.d, why are you here?

it was always an open situation. >> carol, you talked about the wellesley speech that mrs. bush> gave.a lot of that really was a defining moment in a lot of ways for mrsr bush's tenure as first lady. give a little context to that speech and why it was so t 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. to go i would love to go back 20 yeart later and talk to like a half ot dozen of them and find out whero 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 inl9 defining moment in mrs. bush's tenure in the white house.e whi >> uh-huh.>> >> talk about -- she speaks -- w 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.hite >> when i started with the whitt 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 in o watched everything live. i was as stunned as could be and paralyzed. and i didn't know how to an respond.