Former First Lady Barbara Bush Has Died at 92

Barbara Pierce Bush, who was First Lady of the United States from 1988 to 1993, has died at the age of 92. In a statement on Monday the family announced that Bush had “decided not to seek additional medical treatment” for an unspecified life-threatening illness, and would “instead focus on comfort care.” She is survived by her husband, George H.W. Bush, and five children, including former president George W. Bush.

In January of 2017, both Barbara and George Bush did not attend the inauguration of Donald Trump, with their family spokesperson citing age “and all that entails.” Last month, though, Barbara Bush submitted a letter to the alumnae magazine for Smith College, which she attended for one year before dropping out to marry. “I have had great medical care and more operations than you would believe. I’m not sure God will recognize me; I have so many new body parts!” she wrote in the letter, adding, “I am still old and still in love with the man I married 72 years ago.”

Born Barbara Pierce in New York City in 1925, Bush counted 14th president Franklin Pierce among her ancestors. She attended boarding school in Charleston, S.C. before meeting George Bush at a Christmas dance at a Greenwich, Conn. country club. They married in January 1945, after she dropped out of Smith; in later interviews she said, “The truth is, I just wasn’t interested. I was just interested in George.” Her life in Washington began in 1966, when George Bush was elected to the House of Representatives from Texas. When Bush became vice-president, and later president, she devoted herself to literacy causes; according to The New York Times she attended over 500 events related to literacy in her eight years as the wife of the vice-president.

“Rarely has a first lady been greeted by the American people and the press with the approbation and warmth accorded to Barbara Pierce Bush,” states the White House Historical Association on its website. She referred to herself as “Everybody’s Grandmother,” with hair that had turned prematurely white and proudly fake pearls. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, her granddaughters, Jenna and Barbara, joked from the podium that their grandmother was so unhip, “She thinks ‘Sex and the City’ is something married people do but never talk about.” Bush herself had a better line when asked about the joke on Fox News. “I don’t know, what is ‘Sex and the City?’ she said. “Same as in the country, isn’t it?”

She was unpretentious (“People who worry all the time about their hair, frankly, are boring”), she was fiercely loyal, and, according to Jenna, who interviewed her on Today on the occasion of her 90th birthday, she was fierce. “Why do you think we call you the Enforcer?” Jenna asked her. “Because I enforce,” Bush replied.

In that same interview, she told her granddaughter, ““I've been the luckiest woman in the world, truthfully. And I know it.”

White House Holiday Traditions Over the Years