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Fascinating details
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- Laura Bush was formerly an elementary school teacher and librarian.
- Served on the boards of the University of Texas Graduate School of Library and Information Science Advisory Council and the Reading Is Fundamental Advisory Council.
- When George W. Bush was governor of Texas in 1994, Laura worked with her mother-in-law Barbara to raise statewide literacy.
- Admitted in a pre-inaugural interview that she opposed overturning Roe v. Wade despite her husband’s support.
- Launched the national initiative “Ready to Read, Ready to Learn” and formed the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries.
- Praised by the New York Post for being “the First Mom, comforting and reassuring the entire nation” post 9/11.
- Stood in for President Bush during a weekly radio address in November 2001, the first time a first lady has done this, to speak out against the Taliban’s oppression of women and children in Afghanistan.
- Laura gave multiple public speeches on Afghanistan, visiting seventy-five countries in eight years speaking out about women’s rights and promoting substantive health improvement.
- She also traveled to the Mae La refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border to bring awareness to the repressive conditions and call on the international community to act.
- Laura Bush left the White House with a $1.6 contract for her memoir.
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