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RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
MEACHAM: "About a decade ago I was on the Washington mall for the national book festival on my way to give a talk about a book I'd written. When a woman ran up to me, which doesn't happen enough, believe me. And she said, oh, my God, it's you. And I said, well, yes, you know? Kind of hard to argue with. She said, I just admire you so much. I love your book, it meant a lot to me and my family? Would you wait here, I want to buy your book and have you sign an and I said, yes, ma'am, and let me confess this this setting, I was feeling kind of full of myself. When she came back with John Grisham's latest novel.
[Laughter]
MEACHAM: "It gets worse. That had been on a Saturday in September and I was on my way to Maine to see the 41st president of the United States and Mrs. Bush. And I was feeling rather sorry for myself. And I told this story and Mrs. Bush looked across the table, looked me in the eye, and I was thinking here comes some motherly sympathy."
[Laughter]
MEACHAM: "It's called telegraphing. Here it comes, and she said, well, how do you think poor John Grisham would feel?"
[Laughter]
MEACHAM: "He's a very handsome man. So I was 0 for 2. But it was a fair and funny point. As were so many of the points that Barbara pierce bush made in her long and consequential life. Known as Barbara, as bar, as mom, as mother, as ganny as the silver fox and enforcer. She was candid and comforting, steadfast and straightforward, honest and loving. Barbara Bush was the first lady of the greatest generation, as the fiancee and then the wife of a World War II naval aviator, she waited and prayed in the watches of the night. During the war, she worked at a nuts and bolts factory in port Chester, New York, and she joined George H.W. Bush in the great adventure of post-war Texas, moving to distant Odessa in 1948, 70 Summers ago. From Mrs. Bushes mother, she would send boxes of soap and detergent from her mother on the grounds that they probably didn't have that kind of thing in west Texas. Mrs. Bush raised a family, endured the loss of a daughter to leukemia, and kept everything and everyone together. And as the wife of one president and the mother of another, she holds a distinction that belongs to only one other American in the long history of the republic, Abigail Adams, who was present at the creation. From the white houses, to camp David, to walker's point, in hours of war and of peace, of tumult, and calm. The bushes governed in congeniality, and grace. Instinctively generous, Barbara and George Bush put country above party, the common good above political gain, and service to others above the settling of of scores. The couple had met at a Christmas dance in greenwich in 1941, not quite three weeks after pearl harbor. She was wearing a red and green holiday dress. He endeavored to get introduced. She was 16, he was 17. He was the only boy she ever kissed. Her children, she remarked, always wanted to throw up when they heard that."
[Laughter]