In the summer of 1985, Dad received word that in the midst of the famine in Africa, thousands of Ethiopian Jews were stranded in the Sudanese desert after a secret Israeli rescue, Operation Moses, had collapsed. The Israeli operation ended when Washington Jewish Week broke the story, and the government of Sudan rescinded its support. Thousands of refugees were stranded as a result.
Meir Rosenne, Israeli ambassador to the United States, went to see Dad and asked him to intervene with the Sudanese government. Dad said yes, and by that fall, he went even further—he committed to a secret emergency airlift to take the stranded Jewish refugees out of the Sudan and bring them to Israel. The CIA was involved in what was dubbed Operation Joshua, and an estimated eight hundred Jews were saved.
“These were Ethiopian Jews, not American citizens,” Ambassador Rosenne explained to the press afterward. “I know of no precedent in modern history when a country did what the U.S. did in this case. The debt of gratitude we owe to the U.S. is immense.”
Rudy Boschwitz, then a senator from Minnesota and later U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, commented, “For the first time in history, a large group of blacks had been taken from the African continent not for slavery, but for love.” Years later, when he was president, Dad asked Senator Boschwitz to negotiate a second airlift as well, named Operation Solomon, in which an additional fourteen thousand Ethiopian Jews were rescued by the Israelis within twenty-four hours.
“It was quite a foreign policy and humanitarian victory,” said Senator Boschwitz, a Jewish immigrant who fled Germany in World War II and lost many relatives to the Holocaust.
“He was a good vice president because he so complemented Reagan in the skills he brought to the table, especially in foreign policy experience, which Reagan did not have,” Boyden Gray observed. “He added a great deal to Reagan’s presidency in terms of governance. But he never wanted to get credit for it, because he knew that wouldn’t go over well. He was completely self-effacing about it.”
On January 25, 1986, a cold, clear day in Washington, Dad gathered in his West Wing office with Tim McBride to watch the space shuttle Challenger and its seven-member crew—including a married schoolteacher and mother of two children, Christa McAuliffe—lift off on a new mission. A minute after clearing the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, however, disaster struck. With millions across the country, including schoolchildren, watching on live TV, a faulty O-ring in one of the solid rocket fuel boosters ignited a massive explosion.
To that point, a total of seven Americans had died in our space program. In a fiery, shocking instant, that number was doubled.
President Reagan immediately asked Dad to go to Florida to console the families, who had gathered at the site of the liftoff. “Within a few hours, we were on Air Force Two, heading down to meet with the families. That was probably the first major event in which I witnessed your dad’s role as a comforter on behalf of the nation,” Tim remembers.
Dad still keeps in touch with June Scobee Rodgers, the wife of Challenger Commander Dick Scobee, who died that day. “I do remember speaking to the spouses of the crew,” says Dad now. “They were all in one room, sobbing and grief-stricken. It was tough since, as you know, my tears flow easily. I did manage to get through it.”
In the wake of the Challenger disaster, President Reagan gave a memorable speech to the nation where he said farewell to the astronauts who had “slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.” For his part, Dad went to comfort the families in person, hugging widows and children in tears.
There were other crises at home. The AIDS epidemic was just starting to be understood by the public, and violent crime was on the rise. Drug abuse was the top issue according to the polls, remembers Boyden Gray, who said that the drug issue led to the first use of the phrase “Trade Not Aid.” Encouraging third-world farmers to grow legitimate crops—instead of marijuana or cocaine—became part of the free trade agenda of the administration, and later was the spark for the North American Free Trade Agreement, to which Dad was very committed later during his presidential years.
Admiral Dan Murphy, Dad’s original chief of staff before Craig Fuller, helped Dad oversee the South Florida Task Force, which President Reagan then asked Dad to expand nationally into the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System. It brought together many agencies—Defense, CIA, Customs, to name a few—and later became the model for one of Dad’s first initiatives as president, the creation of the office of the “drug czar.”
My father’s experience from his CIA years came in very handy. John Magaw, Dad’s Secret Service agent, noticed that when they’d alert Dad to some crisis that had come up through the intelligence reports—whether a threat to him or not—he often already knew about it.
“He understood all kinds of intelligence—whether things came through an informant, or a highly secure source, or a black source,” John added. A “black source” is one that is not traceable, yet John says often Dad would know exactly who the black source was because of his CIA experience. “He knew when the intelligence came in, how to evaluate it. He knew the right questions to ask.”
Hard-core drug use was rampant by the mid–1980s: cocaine use was at an all-time high in 1985 and ’86; and use of a new form of the drug, crack cocaine, was skyrocketing. Boyden remembers, “There was one White House briefing on crack and why it was such a debilitating, addictive drug. There were a lot of people in the room, and they had the leading drug specialists from New York, all the best experts they could find. At one point during the meeting, the vice president asked the experts, ‘Now, why is crack so addictive? What is it?’ And one person said, ‘Well, sir, it’s like four orgasms all at the same time.’ To which the vice president replied, ‘Well, let’s not all rush for the door at once!’”
In the midst of his work on big issues such as drug abuse, deregulation, and the Cold War, Dad still remembered that little things mean a lot—especially to his grandchildren. He sent a memo to his personal assistant, Patty Presock, along with a few small toys, telling her to “save these for me to mail to George P. at camp when he gets there. He’ll be lonely and this will cheer him up.”
But then, on George P.’s first day at camp—before he ever received the gifts—he wrote to Dad:
Dear Gampy,
Here’s a poem I made up:
When I look out the window I see my friends
And when they come back Jeff intends,
What are you doing George.
Oh, I’m just writing to my best friend (that’s you!)
When one of George W.’s twins, Barbara, was little, Dad took her and Jenna to the circus and bought Barbara a stuffed animal that she named Spikey. One night, when Barbara stayed at the vice president’s residence for a sleepover, Mom was putting the twins to bed when young Barbara “threw a total fit,” she remembers now. Spikey was nowhere to be found. They looked everywhere in the house, and then Dad organized a search party, including a few Secret Service agents and dogs, to search the grounds.
By the time they returned empty-handed, Barbara had fallen sound asleep. Spikey was recovered unharmed the next morning.
Barbara’s mom, Laura, also recalls losing a contact lens down a bathroom drain at the vice president’s house early one morning, before the housekeeping staff arrived for the day. Dad came in with some tools, and to her delight, opened the trap beneath the drain and rescued the contact for her. We know he didn’t like leaks, but we didn’t realize how good he was with drains!
With the 1988 campaign looming on the horizon, Marlin Fitzwater developed a new press strategy for Dad. The plan called for my father to spend more time with the Washington press corps, giving as many interviews as possible, so that a good base of understanding could be established on both sides.
“They all wanted him to say something bad about President Reagan, and he refused to do it,” Marlin recalled. “I remember when I first took the job, one of the things he said to me was, he never wanted Presi
dent Reagan to look over his shoulder and wonder if he was supporting him. If I ever leaked anything to the press or ever in any way contributed to any criticism of the president, I would be fired. And so it was pretty clear what the rule was. Indeed, that’s the way he conducted all of these interviews. God bless him, he did something like seventy-five interviews in the two years that I was with him, and I swear seventy-four of them were critical of him. But he kept right at it. And I think it paid off in the end.”
Marlin and Dad were on the road one day in 1986, waiting for Dad to be introduced in front of a crowd in a high school gymnasium. The holding room was actually a girls’ locker room that had been cleared for the occasion, with pink walls and giant mirrors with Hollywood makeup lights all around them. As they waited, Marlin’s phone rang. It was a newspaper reporter asking for a reaction to a story that had just broken—that President Reagan had approved trading arms for hostages in the Middle East, and the proceeds had gone to finance the Contras in Central America. Marlin and Dad didn’t know anything about it, and so they decided not to comment.
“I’ll always remember the juxtaposition of facing an issue that I knew was going to be with us for a long time—because it was just one of those things that kept unraveling and you don’t know what it’s about—and having it start off in a pink dressing room with makeup bulbs glaring in our face. An incongruous beginning,” Marlin remembered.
Iran-Contra, as it came to be known, always seemed to me to be blown out of proportion, particularly among the Beltway press corps. The revelations unfolded over many years, always like a light drizzle of rain in the background rather than a downpour, as Watergate had been.
Once the story broke, President Reagan appointed a blue-ribbon panel known as the Tower Commission—headed by Senator John Tower, with Senator Edmund Muskie and General Brent Scowcroft—to investigate the allegations.
In its final report, however, the commission cleared Dad of any knowledge of the scheme: “There is no evidence that the Vice President was aware of the diversion. The Vice President attended several meetings on the Iran initiative, but none of the participants could recall his views.” To most people, the Tower report closed the book on the whole incident, but not to the press. Reporters continued to hound Dad about it for a long time.
In 1985, Billy Graham visited our family in Maine, at the invitation of my parents. While we had all met Dr. Graham before—he’s been a friend of our family for years—Dad invited cousins and friends to join us in meeting Dr. Graham for an evening, and then asked Dr. Graham to answer questions and speak to us informally. He graciously accepted and thus began an evening many of us will never forget.
His message of Good News was clear that night, and what made the difference was how humbly he spoke about it and his life of service. I have always been an admirer of Dr. Graham and his genuine and unabashed love of Jesus Christ. His work is done in such a way that many people of other faiths admire his sincerity and determination. There is a gentleness and love that reminds me of my own dad.
I have carried that meeting in the back of my mind ever since, and I think it left a lasting impression on many members of our family. My brother George, for one, has spoken about his encounter with Dr. Graham many times and the far-reaching difference it made in his life.
No one was more thrilled with Dr. Graham’s talk that night than my grandmother Dorothy Walker Bush, who was a pillar of strength to us in her faith. Of all the visitors that have come to Kennebunkport, I think Dr. Graham meant the most to her. My dad made this possible for us, and it was one of the greatest experiences that have come with being one of his children.
I have found Reverend Graham to be a great teacher—he brought my religious beliefs to a personal level. In grade school, I had attended the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., on the grounds of the sixth largest cathedral in the world. Billy Graham taught me that the majestic God of the cathedral was also my own God, and that I could personally know Him through a relationship with Christ. It was a life-transforming moment for me.
As for my father, I would describe his faith as quiet but deep. He is less likely to speak about his faith but has no trouble living it. My brother George observed, “He’s not the kind of guy that sits around and says, ‘Well, let me tell you about my faith.’ He’s like a lot of these kids who went to World War II—his faith was probably enhanced when he was in danger. I remember walking into his bedroom one time and he was reading his Bible. It surprised me. He’s like all of us—he’s figured out in life that your faith is a walk. But he felt uncomfortable talking about it in the political arena.”
While still in college, I started dating a boy from Maine named Billy LeBlond. We met in Kennebunkport, where he worked during the summers—when we were in our sophomore year—and we started dating during the 1980 campaign. I was attending Boston College while Billy, a big, strong, gentle guy from a family of ten kids, was a hockey star at Boston University.
After we graduated, we got married, and not long after we had two beautiful children, the first of whom, Sam, was born on August 26, 1984. I was living in Connecticut at the time, and Sam was delivered at Greenwich Hospital. He weighed ten pounds and was the most perfect baby I had ever seen.
The day after Sam was born, I was lying in my bed resting when the nurse who was attending to me said casually, “That’s funny. There are some German shepherds in the driveway, and police cars, and lots of other cars trailing behind . . .” I knew instantly that it was my dad stopping by for a surprise visit. I was overwhelmed with joy that he had come. He had been out campaigning for the ’84 elections and had spontaneously decided to come see his new grandchild.
It was at this moment that I suddenly realized I looked like I’d just had a baby! I immediately tried to get up, rush to the bathroom, and get cleaned up—but it was too late. There was a knock at the door, and in Dad came.
“I’m here to see our new baby,” he said. So off we went (catheter in tow) down the hall to see Sam. Dad greeted all the doctors, nurses, and new mothers along the way—having photos taken and signing autographs. We reached the nursery, and there we were—Secret Service agents, staff, Dad, and I peering through the glass looking at a giant baby sleeping away.
Dad thought he was as beautiful as I did.
Dad also brought along White House photographer David Valdez to snap some photos, but the nurse on duty would not let Dad and David in the viewing room. Dad, intent on getting photos of the baby, got a Secret Service agent to distract the nurse while David quickly took some photos.
Earlier, I had asked Dad his opinion on names for his grandson, and here’s what he wrote in a letter to me. Funny to read today:
Names are important. If I were you I would not go for “Herby”— that’s a nickname normally and though I would of course be pleased personally, it isn’t right to put the emphasis there.
Walker—well, maybe. I was called that when they first shipped me off to Country Day at age 5. Mum thought it was better than Poppy. It lasted about 10 days—then it shifted over to Poppy—a burden I bore heroically until, thank God, we went to war with the Japanese and I went to the Navy and I left Poppy pretty far behind. No, Walker LeBlond is a little formal somehow—though don’t rule it out entirely.
George. I see your point. George W is one of a kind and it wouldn’t do at all to have George L be under the undue influence of Uncle “W.”
Hey, Doro, we’re going to love the kid no matter what you call him/her. I for one can’t wait.
Devotedly—with love to Bill,
Dad
We named our son Sam, which, technically, I could credit to my great-grandfather on the Bush side, Samuel Prescott Bush. However, the truth is, Sam was named after our cat. We liked the name Sam and decided if the baby was a boy, we’d steal the name from him (we renamed the cat). To this day, Sam still says, “Can you believe my parents named me after a cat?”
When our first daughter was born two years later, we named her
Nancy Ellis LeBlond for Dad’s vivacious sister and my favorite aunt, Nancy Bush Ellis. As for the name Walker, Marvin and Margaret named their second child, and only son, Walker Bush, which sounds much better than Walker LeBlond.
By the end of 1987, shortly after Ellie was born, it was becoming evident that my marriage to Billy wasn’t working. At some point, Mom noticed that things weren’t going so well and sensed that a separation was on the horizon. She sat me down and said, “I have some advice for you.” Mom proceeded to tell me about a divorced couple with a daughter, and how the mother took every opportunity to denigrate the father. The little girl grew up and realized that the father wasn’t the monster the mother had made him out to be, and turned against the mother.
It does nobody any good to do that, Mom said, and I took her words to heart.
As it was, no one in my immediate or extended family that I knew of had ever been divorced before, so we were heading into uncharted waters. To add to it all, my father was the vice president of the United States. Most of all, I remember feeling I had let my family down, especially after I saw a sensational piece written about the divorce in one of the tabloid papers. But as always, Dad supported me with unconditional love.
Mom and Dad’s first concern, of course, was for our children. Sam and Ellie spent lots of time with them. After I was divorced, I moved to Washington, and whenever Dad went to Maine, he took Sam and Ellie with him so they could spend time with their dad, who was living in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
Dad’s second concern was Billy. After our divorce in 1990, he asked Billy to play golf and made sure that Billy knew he was welcome in our house anytime.
By example, my parents taught me to handle a tough situation in the best possible way. I’ll never forget when I later started dating Bobby Koch. Dad invited us over to the White House to have dinner with Sally and Dick LeBlond, my former in-laws, who were in town. I was nervous about the dinner, but somehow Dad made all of us feel welcome. We had a wonderful time, and it helped me stay connected to the LeBlonds, a family I love and admire.
My Father, My President Page 23