He was polite, genteel, intelligent and thoughtful.
George H. W. Bush, who died on November 30 aged 94, was a lovely man. He was polite, genteel, intelligent and thoughtful. He was careful, considerate and kind.
We called him “41” because he was the 41st American president – between 1989 and 1993. As a faculty member at the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M University for ten years, I met him several times. The first time was December 2005, when he arranged a lunch to meet us. He asked each member of the new faculty to stand up and introduce ourselves.
At the end, the Secret Service asked us all to remain at our seats while the former president exited the room. But he didn’t just sweep out. He stopped to chat with several board members, faculty and staff along the way. I was still surprised when he stopped at me. He put his hands on my shoulders, and said: “Hi, Gina! Welcome to the Bush School!”
I started to thank him, but he interrupted me to say how excited he was that I was bringing my work on decision making and foreign aid to the Bush School. He asked if he could drop by my statistics class some time to tell the students the importance of the skills I was teaching them. He gave me a quick hug and moved on.
In that moment, I saw clearly the human being behind the statesman and public servant who had served as president during the uncertain years around the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I had heard it said of George H. W. Bush that despite his reputation as a nerdy or wishy-washy president, one only needed to be in the same room with him once in order to realise how and why he was elected. That was true.
This man had represented the state of Texas in the US House of Representatives.
