Laura Bush life and biography

American first lady Laura Welch Bush, born November 4, 1946 in Midland, Texas, United States, the wife of United States President George W. Bush, has been one of the most low-key presidential wives in recent years, but supporters have praised her for her quiet strength. Bush was reluctant about her husband's foray into national politics, but remained supportive. "Despite the high profile of her position, first lady Laura Bush manages to smoothly navigate around all the shoals that accompany being first lady," wrote CBSNews.

Early Life

Laura Welch was born an only child in Midland, Texas, the daughter of Harold and Jenna Welch. Her father was a homebuilder and her mother kept the books for his business. In her speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention, where her husband was nominated for the first time, she called Midland "a place where neighbors had to help each other because any other help was too far away." Bush enjoyed reading as a youth and credited her second-grade teacher, Charlene Gnagy, for inspiring her interest in education.

"Education is the living room of my life," she told the convention. "I first decided to become a teacher when I was in the second grade. Neither of my parents graduated from college, but I knew at an early age they had that high hope and high expectation for me. My Dad bought an education policy, and I remember him telling me, 'Don't worry, your college education will be taken care of.'" Determined to chart a teaching career, she practiced teaching her dolls, lining them up in rows for their day's lessons. "Years later our daughters did the same thing," she said. "We used to joke that the Bush family had the best-educated dolls in America."

Bush was involved in a fatal car accident at age 17. According to Ann Gerhart, author of The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush, she drove past a stop sign and her Chevrolet struck a Corvair and killed a friend, 17-year-old Michael Douglas. "Killing another person was a tragic, shattering error for a girl to make at seventeen," Gerhart wrote in her book, as printed on the CBSNews.com Web site. "It was one of those hinges in a life, a moment when destiny shuddered, then lurched in a new direction. In its aftermath, Laura became compassionate, less inclined to judge another person.... What made the crash even more devastating was that the boy Laura killed was no stranger but a good friend of hers, a boy from her crowd." Police did not press charges. Years later, Laura Bush described the incident as one of the most tragic of her lifetime.

Bush earned her bachelor's degree in education in 1968 from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and her master's in library science in 1973 from the University of Texas at Austin. After college, Bush was a public school teacher and librarian in the Houston, Dallas, and Austin school systems in Texas. "When I taught school in Houston and Austin, many of my second, third, and fourth grade students couldn't read," Bush told the Republican convention in 2000, "and frankly I'm not sure I was very good at teaching them. I tried to make it fun by making the characters in children's books members of our class. We saved a Web in the corner for Charlotte."

On November 5, 1977, three months after they met, Bush married George W. Bush. George W. Bush, also from Midland, came from a political family. His father, George H. W. Bush, would become U.S. president from 1989 to 1993 and before that, vice president for eight years under Ronald Reagan. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U.S. Senator from Connecticut and a successful Wall Street investment banker. One year after they were married, George W. Bush ran for Congress, winning the Republican nomination but losing the general election. They generally campaigned around western Texas in his Oldsmobile Cutlass.

Balanced Home Life, Husband's Politics

Laura Bush in 1981 gave birth to twin daughters Barbara and Jenna, named after their grandmothers. "Her 1981 pregnancy with the twins was troubled and dangerous," John Hachette of the Gannett News Service wrote in USA Today. "Toxemia threatened her kidneys, and a Caesarian delivery was performed five weeks before her due date."

She learned to juggle home life with her husband's budding political career. "The quiet, inward librarian from Texas knew what to expect when she married into the loud, opinionated Bush clan," Tamara Lipper and Rebecca Sinderbrand wrote in Newsweek. "George W. got into politics soon after the two met." Laura Bush, though, always drew a sharp line separating family and politics; the children, to her, were not props. "We never wanted to use them," she told the Newsweek writers. "And we never did." She effectively shielded Barbara and Jenna through their adolescence, while their father served two terms as Texas governor and charted his path to the White House. "Everyone deals with it in different ways," Laura Bush said at the 2000 convention. "But I told George I thought running for president was a little extreme." Meanwhile, she prodded her husband into giving up drinking, which he did in 1986 after suffering an overwhelming hangover from celebrating his 40th birthday.

She became the nation's first lady after her husband won the disputed presidential election in 2000. A recount of the Florida vote gave him the 25 electoral votes and with them the election over the Democratic candidate, Vice President Al Gore. George Bush won the electoral vote, 271-266, despite losing the popular balloting by nearly 540,000 votes.

For the first eight months of her husband's presidency, Laura Bush kept a low profile. She kept her ties to Midland, for instance, reuniting with childhood friends for wilderness and swimming trips. She reads cookbooks, but follows through on few recipes. Essentially, she was the anti-Hillary, a counterbalance to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the headstrong previous first lady who has since won a Senate seat from New York and is said to harbor her own presidential ambitions.

Steadied Influence During 9/11

Little did she know how her life would change on September 11, 2001. Two hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York, killing about 3,000 people. Another crashed into the Pentagon building across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.; a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, possibly headed for the White House. That morning, Laura Bush was en route to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington to testify at a Senate education hearing. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, who chaired the committee, said Bush looked "so alone" as she approached him in the corridor. "As she tried to reach her daughters, mother, and husband, she was struck by the fact that she was watching, with Senator Kennedy, the worst tragedy since his brother John was assassinated," Margaret Carlson wrote in Time magazine. Bush and Kennedy addressed the media, attempting to ease fears. "You take the measure of a person at a time like that," Kennedy said, according to Carlson. "She is steady, assured, elegant."

Later that night, Bush and the president were at home after the Secret Service sequestered them. At one point an agent barged into their room, saying there was an unidentified plane in the air. "I couldn't see a thing without my contacts, so I held onto my husband to go down to the basement," Laura Bush said, as Carlson quoted her. "Before they could get the lumpy foldout couch made up, they identified the plane. I got back to sleep, but I can't say the president did." After 9/11, Laura Bush appeared more frequently on talk shows and on news magazine programs such as CBS TV's 60 Minutes. "These last three years since September 11, have been difficult years in our country's history," she told the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004. "We've learned some lessons we didn't want to know...that our country is more vulnerable than we thought, that some people hate us because we stand for liberty, religious freedom, and tolerance. But we have been heartened to discover that we are also braver than we thought, stronger, and more generous."

Presidential Wives Roles Changed

During the 2004 presidential campaign, the media magnified the roles of the candidates' wives. Reporters frequently emphasized the "study in contrasts" story angle, with Laura Bush opposite the outspoken Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Democratic candidate John Kerry. The nastiness of the campaign spared neither spouse. "Kerry and [vice presidential running mate John] Edwards didn't have to marry a frumpy librarian from Midland, Texas, to feel like somebody," the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Garry South, a former senior adviser to California Democratic Governor Gray Davis, after Heinz Kerry drew criticism for her assertiveness. About two weeks before the election, Heinz Kerry had to apologize for questioning whether Laura Bush had ever held a "real job." She said, according to Cable News Network's Web site, CNN.com, "I had forgotten that Mrs. Bush had worked as a schoolteacher and librarian, and there couldn't be a more important job than teaching our children.... [I] am sincerely sorry I had not remembered her important work in the past."

Diane Salvatore, editor-in-chief of the Ladies' Home Journal, compared the two wives in an interview with co-host Matt Lauer on NBC News' Today Show, saying: "Laura Bush does not say anything that she hasn't thought through a long time. Teresa Heinz Kerry speaks from the heart. There's no filter between her heart and her mouth." Some of the media coverage of the wives drew criticism as overly shallow. Sheila Gibbons, in Media Report for Women, criticized CNN's experienced political reporter, Judy Woodruff, for pigeonholing political women: "controversial Hillarys," "glamorous Jackies," and "demure Lauras." She added, "In the present strained geopolitical climate, isn't there much more to say about presidential partners? And at the beginning of the 21st century, what are Family Circle [magazine]'s female editors doing orchestrating a bakeoff between candidates' wives, anyway?"

In a campaign in which both parties targeted female voters and the Bush daughters even helped, George Bush won re-election in November of 2004. "It looks like Jenna, Barbara, and Laura beat [Kerry daughters] Alexandra, Vanessa, and Teresa," Lynn Sweet wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times. And, during 2004, the first lady became more outspoken about her favorite issues, including embryonic stem-cell research and the Swift boat veterans controversy involving Kerry's background, attacking these issues with a little more edginess. Among Laura Bush's charitable endeavors are teacher training programs in Afghanistan and educational campaigns to combat breast cancer and heart disease. She also helped start Preserve America, a national preservation initiative. She is the only first lady to conduct a presidential radio address, discussing the problems women and children face under Taliban rule.

The Laura Bush Legacy

Bush's measured calm belies her strength. "She's poised. She's cool. She's smart. And you sense a feistiness just beneath the surface," Republican pollster Whit Ayres said during the 2004 campaign, according to USA Today.

Following her husband's re-election in 2004, the First Lady continued her advocacy of women's rights and her support of education. In 2005 she called for greater voting rights for women in the Middle East, at a World Economic Forum gathering at Dead Sea, Jordan. In May of 2006, Bush and media executives announced a $500,000 grant for school libraries along the U.S. Gulf Coast that were devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

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