ms. laura bush. center eight years as first lady of the united states, ms. bush has continued her active involvement in key issues including education, health care and human rights. she recently hosted a conference on the needs of women at the newly opened george w. bush institute in dallas, where she directs her global and women's initiative project. mrs. bush's early career as a teacher and librarian in a particularly partial to that because my own wife is a teacher. her early career as a teacher like her and has helped shape her lifelong interest in literacy and education. during her tenure in the white house, she focused on early childhood development and is an enthusiastic proponent of teacher recruitment programs such as teach for america, the new teacher project and troops to teachers. and as first lady, mrs. bush helped launch the very popular library of congress first national book festival 2001, which continues over here and attracts hundreds of thousands of people to the mall every september. in 2006, she took her passion for nearly 40 nations for

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