The Man I Knew by Jean Becker

Author:Jean Becker [BECKER, JEAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2021-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

As proud as he was of that aircraft carrier, the namesake closest to President Bush’s heart was the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, a master’s degree program that opened at Texas A&M University in 1997.4 President Bush hated what he called the “L word”—“legacy”—but he knew the school and her graduates would be one of his greatest legacies. All doubts of that were erased when he made the decision that he wanted the Bush School to receive all the “in lieu of flowers” donations when he died.

When Texas A&M lobbied hard for his presidential library, President Bush lobbied right back: As a companion to the library, he wanted a school of public service. He didn’t want an institute or a foundation or a center. As he once said to me: “I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. There are enough institutions and foundations doing good work.”

He wanted a school. As he said in many speeches about the school, “Public service is a noble calling, and we need men and women of character to believe that they can make a difference in their communities, in their states, and in their countries.”

That quote is now on his bust that sits inside the front door of the school. Former Bush School dean Bob Gates remembers that when he told President Bush the students rubbed the bust’s nose for good luck before tests: “He looked at me and, with a perfectly straight face, said, ‘Thank God it’s only a bust.’”

(I’ve been told that before takeoff, some of the pilots who fly off the USS George H. W. Bush rub a foot of President Bush’s statue on the aircraft carrier. I’ve never been told that spies rub the nose of his bust that sits in the main lobby of the CIA headquarters, but they keep a lot of secrets there.)

His dream was that his school would inspire, train, and provide tomorrow’s leaders. He was not disappointed. As of this writing, more than 70 percent of Bush School graduates are working in government positions on the city, county, state, and federal levels—including in the foreign service and at the CIA—or in the nonprofit sector.

President Bush loved interacting with the students. Once, just a few days before we were leaving for Maine for the summer, someone from the school called to ask if some of the students and professors could have a photo session with President Bush for a new school brochure. President Bush was incredibly busy, but I knew he would want to do this. I told the caller they had fifteen minutes on his schedule. He spent two hours with them, just visiting, answering questions, asking questions. Every time I went into his office to pull the plug, he gave me the look that said, “Not now, not yet.”

The night he died, the students spontaneously showed up at the statue that sits on the campus of the Bush School, holding a candlelight vigil for the man this group of students unfortunately never met.

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