Former First Lady, and matriarch of Bush family, Barbara Bush dies at 92
Barbara Pierce Bush, the former first lady whose cloud of white hair and strands of fake pearls became her signature, died at her Houston home Tuesday after a long struggle with congestive heart failure and pulmonary disease. The down-to-earth matriarch, who could trace her ancestry to the Mayflower and saw both her husband and son win the White House, was 92.
“I am still old and still in love with the man I married 72 years ago,” the former first lady wrote in a note published this month in Smith College’s alumnae magazine, still showing her characteristic humor. “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!”
Her death was announced by Jim McGrath, spokesman for former president George H.W. Bush.
A funeral service is scheduled for Saturday at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, a few blocks from the home she and George H.W. Bush built after he was defeated for re-election in 1992. Then a motorcade will carry her body through Memorial Park, where she often took walks with her beloved dogs, and on to the George Bush Presidential Library Center in College Station, on the campus of Texas A&M University. There, she will be laid to rest near the grave of a daughter, Robin.
Her husband, the nation’s 41st president, is now 93 years old and struggling with a Parkinson’s-like disease that has confined him to a wheelchair and made it difficult for him to speak. Son Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, is slated to deliver his mother’s eulogy.
