It was the Fourth of July, 1939, and my father had just turned fifteen years old. He was on summer vacation, listening over the radio in Kennebunkport, Maine, when first baseman Lou Gehrig stepped up to the microphones in Yankee Stadium. Facing a terrible death from ALS—now known as Lou Gehrig’s disease—Gehrig said with tremendous grace and courage, “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”
It’s no coincidence that Lou Gehrig is my father’s hero. Dad played baseball—first base, in fact—just like the Iron Horse. I remember Dad saving the postage stamps with Gehrig’s image on them, on the first day of their issue, for his grandchildren. For as long as I can remember, he’s had the same philosophy as Lou Gehrig: he considers himself the luckiest man on earth. He enjoys every minute to the fullest. I’m sure you’ve seen the photos of him skydiving, playing “speed golf,” and traveling halfway across the world with his former political rival Bill Clinton to raise money for tsunami victims.
My father has lived a remarkable life and has lived it with great humility. And it is a uniquely American life. Long before he became president, he lived through a large measure of modern American history, and he kept his moral compass throughout. It’s true that no one chooses their family, but he was tremendously blessed to be the son of Prescott and Dorothy Bush, just as I am lucky to be the daughter of George and Barbara Bush.
As his only daughter, I’ll do anything in the world for him. Anyone who’s met him knows how infectious his enthusiasm is . . . how he draws you into whatever his project is at the time . . . how hard it is to say no to that twinkle in his eye.
And so I couldn’t turn him down when, in March 2005, he sent me the following e-mail. He had just returned from a meeting at the Bush Library at Texas A&M University with Patty Presock, perhaps his closest assistant when he was president.
Dear Doro,
Today, Patty Presock came to our Library Advisory meeting. She made a suggestion that she thinks is exactly right for you.
When she worked for me she kept some very personal, very special files. She told me she did this because some day she thought you might want to look these files over and then write a book about what is in them.
I have not seen the files. But I suggest, if you are at all interested, that you call Patty. It would be a fun project. This may not interest you at all but if it does I would be thrilled for you to undertake it. Bobby’s sister-in-law, Tricia, could be your researcher.
Just a thought from your devoted Dad
I wrote him back right away, immediately accepting the project. After I hit the “send” key, however, at once I felt excited and worried.
I was excited to help bring to life a side of Dad that most people don’t know. The idea of writing a book about his life around never-before-seen private files was instantly enticing. It just felt right.
I was also worried that I wouldn’t do Dad justice—that somehow I would let him down, and let down my mother and brothers as well.
For many years, even before my father’s presidency ended, people who knew and loved him urged him to write his memoirs either for history’s sake or for the sake of his own “legacy” (a word that makes him wince ever so slightly). Invariably, Dad would just shake his head, smile, and say something like, “I think I’ll leave that to the historians.”
Ben Bradlee, the distinguished editor of the Washington Post, once referred to news coverage as the “first rough draft of history.” No doubt every president feels that the draft was rougher in some spots more than others. The man my mother married and the father my brothers and I grew up with is a man of uncommon grace, humility, humor, and wisdom, but this was not always conveyed in the pages of the morning newspaper or on the nightly newscasts.
Even when cast in a positive light, the image of Dad captured by the media was never three-dimensional—and as a result, the man we knew was not the man that the vast majority of Americans saw. After all, there is more to a president’s life than what happens behind the desk in the Oval Office or in front of the cameras.
My Father, My President is written from the perspective of not only a daughter but also of our family and Dad’s legions of friends. Captured in these pages are insights and stories from the people who know my father the best and who shared so many dramatic, historic, and poignant moments in his life.
Within a week of my e-mail exchange with Dad, I sent hundreds of letters to his associates, contemporaries from the world stage, and even his political opponents. The response was overwhelming. In fact, the reaction was so tremendous that I received a response to my letter before I even sent it out! I had shared a draft of the letter with Dad, who couldn’t wait for the final version before distributing it to a ton of people. The next thing I knew, the first of many letters arrived with a story quite literally from the end of the earth: Arthur Milnes, a reporter who met Dad during a fishing trip to the remote Canadian Northwest Territories, described how a guest fishing column my father wrote had affected his career.
What followed were several trips to the Bush Library to review his personal papers and other files that no one had ever seen. Together with my sister-in-law Tricia Koch, I also interviewed over 125 people and collected hundreds of letters.
Working on this book project is the most meaningful thing I have ever done. It gave me a legitimate excuse to spend more time with Mom and Dad—to call them and e-mail them. I also spent most of the summer of 2005 in Maine with them—not tough duty, I confess. There I got in the habit of getting up early and walking next door to my parents’ house, having a cup of coffee with them, and starting my day visiting with Dad. I would tell him of my progress going through the stacks of material that I was amassing.
At first, Dad was very enthusiastic about the project and we had great fun reminiscing about the past—both that of the country and of our own family. But as the days wore on, I began to sense that he was losing his enthusiasm. I wondered to myself why he was reacting like this, but couldn’t bring myself to ask him. What if he had changed his mind about the book and couldn’t bear to tell me?
I thought of Jean Becker, his chief of staff, who is like a sister to me. “Let’s run it by Jean” is a phrase often uttered in the Bush family. So I went to her and said, “Jean, I’m really worried because Dad was completely enthusiastic about the project and now I sense there’s some hesitation there.” She told me not to worry, that she would look into it and get back to me.
The next day, Jean approached me. “Your father loves the project. He still thinks it’s a great idea. But he’s worried about one thing.” She paused for a moment, her voice grave but her eyes twinkling. “He’s just worried the book is going to be too much about him.” After a stunned silence, we both broke out laughing. It was just so typical of him. If nothing else, Dad is humble, a trait he inherited from his mother.
As president, Dad didn’t care much about his image. Coming from the “greatest generation,” he was more concerned with action and results—not flowery words or a made-for-TV wardrobe. Advisers routinely counseled him how he should dress in neutral tones and present himself; but to be candid, my father didn’t think it mattered whether he wore a red or a blue tie during a debate.
Historians seek the truth as they see it, but the viewpoint they offer isn’t necessarily the whole picture. True, a daughter may not have either the expertise or the objectivity of a historian, but a historian doesn’t know a father the way his daughter does. For those parts of Dad’s life that took place before I was born, or while I was away at school, I reached out to people who could fill in stories from those years. Many of their experiences with Dad were consistent with mine, but they added a new perspective.
You’ll hear the voices of his friends throughout the book, and my hope was to include as many of them as I possibly could. My Father, My President is not the whole story, but an important piece of it. My story is partial, in both senses of that word, but it’s the story I’ve witnessed—one that I have lived. It won’t be objective—how could it be?—but it will be true, I promise you that.
I am deeply grateful to my father for this rare opportunity he has offered me—to delve into his remarkable life. He used to call his own mother “one of God’s most special people,” and the phrase easily applies to him as well. To that, let me add a special word of thanks and love to my extraordinary mother, without whom neither this book nor Dad’s life would be nearly as colorful, meaningful, or fun.
Doro Bush Koch
Bethesda, Maryland
April 2006