Barbara Bush The mother of current U.S. president George W Bush was also the First Lady of the United States from 1989 until 1993 when her husband, George H W Bush, was the forty-first president of the United States. Barbara Bush, who was born on June 8, 1925, as Barbara Pierce, is also the mother of Jeb Bush, the Florida Governor, and is the descendant of the New England colonist Thomas Pierce, an ancestor of Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth U.S. President. Barbara Bush was born in New York City to Pauline Robinson, who was killed in a car accident in 1949, and to Marvin Pierce, who died in 1969, but had become the president of the famous McCall Corporation, which publishes McCall’s and Redbook magazines. She was raised in Rye, a small New York town, and attended Rye Country Day School and later South Carolina’s boarding school, Ashley Hall. Barbara met George H W Bush at a Christmas dance when she was just seventeen and the two were married about two and a half years later, in early 1945. George was a student at Phillips Academy Andover and later at Yale University. In between, he served as a Navy torpedo bomber pilot in World War II.
George and Barbara have six children: George W Bush, Pauline Robinson Bush, who died soon before her fourth birthday (named after Barbara’s mother), Jeb Bush, Neil Mallon Bush, Marvin Pierce Bush, and Dorothy Bush Koch. George worked in the oil industry and founded Zapata Corporation and worked in various government jobs before landing the “big job” as the president of the United States for a short term, from 1989 to 1993, causing Barbara to become the first lady of the United States during that period. Today, Barbara and her husband alternate between living in Houston, Texas, and at their Kennebunkport, Maine estate, the “Bush Compound.” She heads up the Barbara Bush Foundation, serves as a member of the boards of the Mayo Clinic as well as AmeriCares. In addition, Barbara has many buildings named after her, including three primary schools, two middle schools, one library, and The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital. Barbara is also well-known for her quick, witty, tart, and sometimes even controversial remarks, in particular regarding vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro in 1984; against Matt Groening’s satirical cartoon sitcom The Simpsons; regarding the war on Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, among others. As first lady of the United States, Barbara was preceded by Nancy Reagan and succeeded by Hillary Clinton. Prior to her stint as first lady, Barbara was second lady of the United States from 1981 until 1989, preceded by Joan Mondale, wife of Walter Mondale and by Marilyn Quayle, wife of Dan Quayle.
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