A local dance instructor is remembering a precious moment with President George H. W. Bush when she and her dance group performed for the 41st president.
One of her little dancers got presidential recognition captured in a photo that speaks a thousand words.
“It’s one of those things that is imprinted in you forever, and we’re just blessed to have a photo of it, but the memory’s in our heart,” said Cookie Joe, owner of Cookie Joe’s Dancin’ Studio in Sugar Land.
This photo went national. Dancers at Cookie Joe’s Dancin’ Studio had the honor of performing for Bush in 1990.
“The event was after the economic summit,” Joe said. “They wanted to bring in multiple cultural programming. Diversity was a key word at that time.”
Joe’s Fortune Cookies dance group got the chance to be a part of a show for the president. No doubt, security was tight.
“We’re talking about 3-year-olds walking through metal detectors and being frisked,” Joe said. “We were told explicitly, ‘Do not ever approach the President.’ All the security and all the Secret Service (agents) wore very dark glasses, headphones, little wires in the ear. They were emphatic, ‘Do not approach the president, even if he talks to you. You do not approach the president.'”
However, Bush, a former U. N. ambassador and chief liaison officer in China, could not help but make his own plan.
