thanks to both of you for being here and taking our calls and questions throughout the evening. we're going to close with some thoughts about the memories of the bush family. the president and their two daughters on their mother, first lady laura bush. thanks for being with us. >> i do not want to steal barbara's -- i feel like i always steal her energy when i go first. >> you go first this time. >> probably her work for women. all over, really. we were so lucky because our parents took us to travel to africa, so we got to see clinics and schools and meeting people whose lives will be forever changed. i would say her work for women. and my dad, too, i am very proud of him for that. >> i would definitely echo that. after 9/11 -- i am going to cry. in front of all the people. i think the work that she did after 9/11 and how comforting she was to everyone in the country is an incredible legacy and was really critical to the country healing after 9/11. [applause] >> if i were doing a series of first ladies, i would be probing this question. could the first lady handle the pressure? if the answer is no, then the life of the president will be miserable. laura was calming and a pillar of strength in the midst of all the noise and finger pointing and yelling and all of the stuff that goes on in washington. she was a great first lady, really great first lady. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] ♪ >> monday night, the first lady michelle obama. she was born in chicago and attended public schools and graduated with a law degree and harvard. she was assigned to mentor another young harvard trained lawyer, barack obama. she remains politically active, giving campaign speeches will taking on causes to combat childhood obesity. join us for a look of the life of first lady michelle obama monday night at 9 p.m. eastern. we are also offering a special edition of the book present he --a a buyer for biography. $12.95.ailable for next, former first lady lady laura bush discussing her upbringing, meeting and marrying her husband george w. bush, their life together before the white house, and her time as first lady. from the george w. bush presidential center in dallas texas. this is one hour and 20 minutes. >> what was your initial reaction the first time your husband said, i think i am going to run for president? >> i cannot remember exactly what my initial reaction was. i think it was a little bit slower than saying, all of a sudden, i am going to run for president. he was governor. he had been governor for one term and reelected. slowly, i think we both started talking about it. he talked about it and other people were talking to him about it. and i knew what it was like. i knew already what it would be like to run for president. i knew what it would be like to live in the white house. george and i had an advantage that only one other family has had so far, the john quincy adams family, we have seen somebody we loved in that office and we visited them very often. we lived in washington, in fact, in 1986, or 1987, rather, to work on resident bush's -- president bush's campaign. they still had time to benefit -- to babysit barbara and jenna on saturday night when george and i would want to go out to dinner. president bush was elected in november of 1988. it was a wonderful bonding time for our family, the only time i ever lived in the same town with my in-laws. my mother-in-law and i had a chance to bond. our little girls had a chance to get to know their grandparents in a way that they had not really. their grandfather had been vice president for the most part in their lives. they were born right after he was elected vice president. i knew what it would be like. my whole hesitation was because i knew what it would be like. in politics, you can be defined in a way that you are not. that is what we saw with president bush. it was so distressing for us in 1992 when he lost. because he was characterized in a way that we knew he was not. that is just the risk you run. it is also what you know it is going to be like, i think, which makes all the difficulty of it, the difficulty of being defined in a way you are not or being criticized by your opponents or even your friends. you know, something that you can live with because you know that is just how it is in america. and one of the great things about our country is that we can say whatever we want about the people who run for office. and even about our president. >> is it tough to develop that thick skin? >> it is. and of course, it always bothers you. on the other hand, i know george and i know what he is like. just like his dad. we know what he is like as well. the criticisms, in a lot of ways, just are criticisms from people who do not know and are not with you everyday, like i was with george everyday. >> how do you grow into the first lady role? >> it took me a long time to grow into it. i had watched my mother-in-law, which was a huge advantage as well. i knew a lot of things that were minor things about living in the white house. i knew that you needed to keep a christmas theme in march, be ready with the christmas decorations. for the white house christmas card, you needed to start quite early, especially if you want to use an american artist. those were things i already knew and it was a huge help to know those. not only did i know how to do those things that the first lady, or at least i wanted to be involved in, but i also knew everyone that worked there. we knew the butlers, the ushers, the white house florist, all of the people who served there for president after president. that was a huge advantage for us. when we moved in that first day, there were lots of hugs with the the butlers and the ushers that we had known before. of course, president bush and barbara bush were there on our first night in the white house. all of us were in the house together that first night and we knew all the people there. in 1981 -- 1988, rather, when president bush was inaugurated, january of 1989, the white house florist met little barbara and jenna, who were seven. when they got too cold at the parade and wanted to come into the white house before we had left the parade and president bush and barbara had left the parade, nancy clark, the white house florist, met them at the door and took them down into the florist shop to make a little bouquet for their bedrooms where they were staying in the white house. for us, it was a wonderful sense of security to already know everyone who works there and have a friendship with them. >> laura welch in midland texas in the 1950's, did you ever imagine a life that you have had? >> never. i never would have ever thought that i would live in the white house or expected to marry someone who would become president. i think that is what happens to a lot of people. things happen in your life that you do not expect. a lot of them are great and wonderful. some are not. but i would have never expected to live in the white house. and i will have to say, i was a teacher, a librarian. that is what i always wanted to do. when i was in the second grade, my favorite thing to do, reading, i did expect that. that is what i worked for always. i went to graduate school or undergraduate school for an education. that is what i did expect in my life and that is what i would not have thought would have helped with my husband -- when my husband became governor and then president. it was really great preparation for a life in politics, to have worked in public schools, to have taught in public schools and to have been a public school librarian. it was a great advantage to know what it was like to work in the schools, because education is such an important issue. both for a governor, but also for president. that was very helpful to me. and then, of course, having read a million stories to kids all those years was good experience for speech giving. >> in your book "spoken from the heart," you talk about your grandmother and your mother and their talents. >> my mother and my grandmother were both naturalists. my mother is 94. she is alive and she lives in midland, texas. she is doing very well. i try to go out there every few weeks to see her. she is not traveling anymore, but she is doing great. my mother and my grandmother were both naturalists. they were very interested in gardening. they were interested in lance. -- in plants. my mother became a birdwatcher. she really got a lifelong interest in bird watching. that was something that informed my life. that love of the outdoors, the whole idea of how beautiful the natural world is, especially plants in the landscape. when lady bird johnson was the first lady of the united states, i was always proud that the texas first lady saw the beauty in the natural world and encouraged people in all parts of our country to plant wildflowers on the highways, both because they do the best there because it is their natural habitat, but also because they are beautiful. every year in washington, when the daffodils bloom on the george washington parkway, i am reminded of lady bird johnson, because i know she wanted it to be that way. when we plan the bush library, we wanted our 15-acre park that surrounds the bush center to be like a prairie that would have been exactly like the settlers would have found when they came through here. we worked with the lady bird johnson wildflower center to plant the plants that we had all around the library. it is a mixture of five native texas grasses, mainly buffalo grass, which stays low, but others as well. this is the first big application of it as native turfgrass. and also, they do not need to be watered very often. >> how did you get to smu from midland, texas? >> i went to look at a number of schools with my mother. i looked at tulane, texas tech, which is where my dad went, in lubbock, not far from where i grew up, and i looked at the university of texas. with one of my really good high school friends, we both said, let's go to smu. that is what we decided to do. i watched a lot of smu football players like don meredith and a few others at the high school and i knew about smu from their football program. also, they are southern methodist and this is a methodist school. >> what was it like growing up in midland, texas in the 1950's? >> it was a wonderful place to grow up. midland is very safe and eight very loving community where you knew if you did anything wrong and some neighbor saw you, they would tell on you. we were free to go everywhere in midland. we rode our bikes to the little shopping center to eat lunch at the pharmacy. the drugstore, i had lots of really good friends and i am still very close with the people i grew up with in midland. in fact, i hike every year with a group of four other midland friends of mine. we see each other all the time. it is really terrific now to be with them. now it takes five of us to remember somebody's name. we also know each other's history and all of our old boyfriends and all of the same things about each other because we were in elementary school, junior high, and high school together. there is great security in having friends that were your friends when you were a child and having that kind of history of friendship and george also grew up in midland. the bushes lived in midland until we were in the eighth grade, when they moved to houston. from elementary school, those same great friends of mine were in the first grade and second grade with george. his grandson -- his friends that he played baseball with were my friends. we used to invite all of them to the white house. we had a very thrilling valentines dinner once with all of those friends of ours and one of my friends who came from that dinner had breast cancer and she was dying. she died in april after that. it was really wonderful to have the chance to be with those friends and to know that they were our friends for our whole life and they would be our friends for the rest of our life. >> you even went hiking with that group of friends when you were first lady. >> that is right. we hiked for years before george became president. we entered the lottery to hike in the camps of yosemite for about three years while george was governor. our names were never drawn. as soon as he was elected, i called him and said, guess what? we won the lottery. in 2001, we hiked in yosemite, one of our most beautiful national parks. we did not displace anybody because we were always a day ahead of the other people that came into the camp. we hiked one day before the upper camp opened. that was really fun. we hiked in all of the big national parks. the grand canyon was the first national park we hiked in together. many years ago. when george was president, we all took our girls. barbara, one of my daughters, was in africa, working in a hospital. she did not get to go, but jenna, that was a lot of fun. we still get to go. we have been back to glacier and yellowstone and probably not too yosemite because it is just too hard for us at our age. >> have you been stopped and recognized? >> we always do. we have one party as a fundraiser. a lot of the western parks have friends groups. this summer, we had a big party at the superintendent's house for all the supporters of yellowstone national park to come. that was fun. >> what do you enjoy most about being texas first lady? >> i love being texas first lady because i love my state and i know my state so well. i have always lived here. i have traveled all over our state. i do not think i made it to every single county. i think there are 253 of them, but i did make it almost every one. in many cases, it was nostalgic. being a part of the state that i visited with my parents. we would go on summer vacations or a part of the state where my grandmother had lived in el paso or lubbock, where my dad's mother lived. so i love that. i also loved getting to see the very best of your state. and in the most unlikely corners of your state. i would see the most terrific programs that texas had founded. a lot of really great programs, just groups, women's clubs started to support either child protective services for protection of children who were abused, were in foster families that needed special care or literacy programs that were founded so that anyone could come in and be taught how to read. in our state, we have a lot of people who do not read in english. and want to learn english and read in english. those programs were great to see. out in far west texas, where people are very rural eyes -- ruralized, i saw terrific rogue -- programs that go around so people can be tested to see if they have breast cancer. just to get into the biggest hospital is a long drive. >> would you consider yourself a natural campaigner, a natural public person? >> i think i would now. i would not have thought that to begin with. after all, i am a librarian. i am an introvert. i am married to an extrovert, which i like. i wanted to be married to someone who could entertain me for the rest of my life, and he has, for sure. i think there is a place even for introverts in politics. it made me grow to not be the kind of shy person i thought of myself as. >> do you remember the first time you had to give a public speech? >> george and i, he promised i would never have to give a political speech. about three months into our marriage, there i was on the steps of the courthouse giving this speech because he could not come, with all of the other candidates for the congressional race he was running for, 2 democrats and 3 republicans. george had some obligation so he could not come. the candidates themselves were shaking their heads to me, you can do it. that was sweet. all the people on the front row. people are very kind, especially to the spouse of a candidate in our state. >> do you still get nervous before speeches? >> not that much anymore. i also know i have to have a speech and be prepared, know what i am going to talk about. as long as i have this speech that i think is a good speech, i am not that nervous. >> as an older child, what was it like marrying into the bush family? >> it was terrific. when i was little, i wanted brothers and sisters. my mother lost several pregnancies and i knew that was their great desire, that they wanted a lot of children. i wanted brothers and sisters, and that is what i felt like i got when i married george and got his brothers and sister and their spouses, of course. his sister and her family and one of his brothers and his family live in washington dc, so we saw them all the time. there is great emotional support having your family members around you live at the white house. i would notice that his brother would, when times were tough, would call and say let's watch the game this weekend. they would not talk about politics. george and marvin could sit and watch a game in a way that only you can with your brother or your sister. i worked out several times a week with my sister-in-law, margaret. she would drive in from alexandria to the white house early in the morning so we could work out together. that was a lot of fun and also great emotional support for me. they all came to camp david with their children. they had a standing invitation, george told them. many times, when we were going to camp david for the weekend, they would come and have a lot of fun. we went to church at the chapel at camp david and they would be there with us. >> how important, during your presidency, was the ranch at camp david? >> it was very important to us. we did not go that often. almost every year that george was president and that was going to be there with them, president bush and barbara, where they were. we did not go after hurricane katrina. we had not gone that summer as we were scheduled in a way that we could not go. so we did not go at all that year. part of going there in the summer was just to be with them, president bush and barb. and to get that emotional support that you get from being with your parents, especially in such a familiar location that george had gone to his whole life with his parents and grandparents. the ranch was very important. that is where we vacationed when we took the weeks off in august, when congress had gone home for a vacation. we went to our ranch. that was our home and our furniture, the house we had built. that was our property. in a way, it was a break from living in the white house, being in our own home. we also used it to entertain a lot. i think we asked more than a dozen people to the ranch and it gave us a chance to show them what our life was like and give us a chance to entertain them in a way that was very personal. not that entertaining at the white house was not also personal. of course, all of the world leaders wanted to come to the white house. some of them had already visited president clinton at the white house. to come to our ranch was a special thing that we had and they appreciated it. we are doing a big prairie restoration at our ranch. we started in 2000, when we bought the property. that is one of the reasons i wanted to do this prairie at the bush center because i wanted to let people in texas know what our state was like before it was grazed and built over and paved in many parts. at the bush center, we are right by a central expressway. we are by a big freeway. to be able to see what this part of the state would have been like. that is what we have done at the ranch. we had a chance to show our guests, the heads of state that came to visit, what a central texas prairie would have been like. for a lot of it, i remember the australian prime minister that came. the whole aussie party wanted to talk about it because they were the same way. they had this very large, wide-open country, like ours was. they talked about how they restored their grasslands as well and what they did to do that. >> what was your approach to entertaining in the white house and how do you go from one day being the first lady of texas to entertaining foreign leaders? >> that was really a very enjoyable part of it could -- part of it. there is a huge team that works on entertaining. obviously, the state department, you are working with them on the plans for the state dinner, on the invitation that goes out to the world leader to ask them to come. the white house social office the white house social office and secretary as well and the white house florist and the white house chef, everyone involved in trying to plan a dinner that would be the most american but also respect the culture of the world leader who you are entertaining. it was really fun to work on those and make all of those plans. we always did a tasting of the food that the chef had proposed. many times, we would ask members of congress to come to the tasting and tell them they were guinea pigs for the state dinner they were hosting. of course, they would be very forthright and say, i do not think you should do this. i don't know if this is that tasty. they would be more forthcoming than our friends would be, who would just say, that is great, whatever you've got. that was fun, really. we would spread it out over a number of nights to do tastings and talk about what we would have. of course, we would try to get entertainment that represented the united states in a wonderful way, like the new orleans jazz band that we invited to one of them. that was to show the heads of state what important to us and what american music was important to us. we would usually travel the day after the state visit with the head of state. our very first state dinner was september 6, 2001. it was right before september 11 and it was with mexico, president fox and marta fox. that was the relationship we expected to spend the most time on. we were from a state that had a long border with mexico and it was of particular interest to us, all of the border issues. the next day, marta fox and i traveled to chicago. we went to a show of mexican-american art that was at the museum. we invited all of the artists to a luncheon afterwards. which was interesting, this chance to be able to show both our art, american art, but that originated in her country, in mexico, to the first lady. luis jimenez, a favorite of mine, traveled to us and came to the state dinner. he had worked in that show. i forgot where george took president fox the next day. when the prime minister from japan came, he happened to have a great glove for elvis presley. -- love for elvis presley. and we knew that. for our state gift, we gave him his own jukebox it was built with elvis presley 45's. he was thrilled to get that. the next day, we took him to graceland and priscilla presley was waiting on the front porch to welcome the prime minister. we never forgot that. it was so much fun. we wore gold framed elvis presley sunglasses and ate at the rendezvous afterwards, the famous restaurant there and had a little elvis impersonating band that the prime minister sang with. it was really fun. >> besides barbara bush, what other first ladies have you studied and have adapted their style or not adapted their style? >> you really do study all of the first ladies when you live there. you live with their decorating choices, their furniture, the effects of their lives at the white house. certainly, in times that are tough, like ours after september 11, you think about the other families and how they coped with what was happening then. certainly, lincoln is the one you think about the most, the worst time in our country's history, when brother fought against brother and mary todd lincoln was very unhappy. her brothers fought for the confederacy and she wished them dead and they did die. and then they lost a child while they lived there as well. you can imagine what it was like for her to have those tragedies and you knew what it was like for him as well. the president at a time when our country was at war with itself. one of the things that is comforting about living there with all of the history that you live with is that you see how we have overcome, in our country, the challenges that we faced. you think about the long years of world war ii and eleanor roosevelt and other times in our history and how difficult it was for people and how we overcame those challenges. so there is a certain comfort in knowing that, while peace is not forever, neither is war and we will be able to overcome these types of terrorism. time passes and things change. i do think, in our country, that things get better. that is a reassuring idea while you are living there. >> you write in "spoken from the heart" about growing up in the era of civil rights. what was that like for you? >> it was very involved, really, at least emotionally. i graduated from college in 1968 and i had to teach. when i got a job in dallas, an institution in austin in inner-city schools, because i wanted to work in inner-city schools, because i thought african-american children were being left out. that is what i did in houston. i was a predominantly african-american school, almost every one of the children i todd was african-american. i felt that was one way i could be involved in the civil rights movement. i also grew up in a town in texas that named their new high school that was new when i started, named it robert e lee. i remember thinking that that was not appropriate. it never occurred to me to go to the school board and say anything. i was a child, i thought. i did not think i had that. at the time, i discussed it with my mother and she thought there was one school board member who wanted to name it robert e. lee. all of the other school that we went to when we were in elementary school were named for texas heroes. james bowie, sam houston, davy crockett, heroes of the alamo, really. the junior high schools were named for the battles. the alamo, san jacinto, the battles of the texas revolution that led to texas being a country, the republic of texas, for 10 years and finally being annexed to the united states. somehow, i did not think robert e. lee fit in that group of texas heroes, but who knows. anyway, that is what my school was named. and we were segregated. george washington carver was the name of the high school. when we hosted the reunion, my high school reunion at the white house, we had kids -- not kids, they were 60 years old by then, from lee high school and george washington carver. that was the first time we met the students that were our age. >> did it surprise you when you first became first lady at the platform you are given and the voice you had? >> i knew that intellectually because i had seen my mother in law and the platform that she had to talk about literacy, which was her interest. i had seen lady bird johnson and how she influenced me at home in texas because of her interest in native plants. i did not really know it until i made the presidential radio address in the fall of 2001 after the terrorist attack to talk about the way women and children were treated by the taliban in afghanistan. >> good morning. i am laura bush. i am delivering this week's radio address to kick off a worldwide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al qaeda terrorist network and regime it supports in afghanistan. that regime the is in retreat and the people of afghanistan, especially women, are rejoicing. they know through hard experience what the rest of the world is discovering, the brutal oppression of women is a singular goal of the terrorists. >> right after that, i did the radio address from our ranch and then i went to austin, where jenna was a freshman at the university of texas. jenna went shopping at a department store and the ladies who sold cosmetics said, thank you so much, mrs. bush. thank you for speaking for the women of afghanistan. >> not only because our hearts break for the women and children in afghanistan, but because in afghanistan, we see the world the terrorists would like to impose on the rest of us. all of us have an obligation to speak out. we may come from different backgrounds and faiths, but parents the world over love their children. we respect our mothers and sisters and daughters. fighting brutality against women and children is not the expression of a specific culture. it is the acceptance of our common humanity. >> that is the first time i realized that people heard me and that what i said, people listen to. i knew from then on -- although, i think you never really know until maybe after you leave and see what the platform is. but lady bird johnson had that saying that she had a podium and she was going to use it. and she did. >> do you think you used yours? >> i hope so. i tried to use it. i talked a lot about the women in afghanistan and i still do. i am worried now. i was there three times when george was president. i would like to go again. but i am worried that once we draw our troops down, that their rights, which are fragile, will be jeopardized. >> another issue, literacy. you started the national book festival september 8, 2001. >> that fall was when i felt like what i was working on was getting going. the first state dinner for mexico and the first national book festival. i started the texas book festival when george was governor. i thought it was just natural to have a national book festival on the big national mall, and it still goes on and still draws lots of people and is still hugely popular. that was the weekend before the tuesday morning of september 11. even on that morning, i was on my way to capitol hill to brief the senate education committee on early childhood education. i hosted a summit on early childhood education that summer and i was going to brief the committee on early childhood education, when i was getting into the car and my secret service agent leaned over to me and said, a plane has just flown into the world trade center. we went ahead to the capital, got in the car. we just assumed as we started driving that it was some strange accident. by the time we got to the capital, we knew the second plane had hit and we knew what it was. so i joined senator kennedy, the chairman of the senate education committee in his office. in just a few minutes, senator judd gregg from new hampshire joined me. he was the minority chairman of the committee. the three of us sat in senator kennedy's office. he talked the whole time and told stories about things that were in his office. he showed me and laughed. a letter that he had framed that his brother, jack, had written to his mother. it said, teddy is getting fat. he thought that was funny. i often wondered if that was his reaction to something as shocking and horrible, because that was the way he had to deal with it. of course, he had many shocks in his life. or if he thought i would fall apart and he thought that the way he could keep things going was to keep small talk and talking and keeping things going. anyway, in a few minutes, i left and went to a secure location. >> how did you leave? >> the secret service came to get me and said, it is time to -- at first, they wanted to take me back to the white house. they had to figure out where i should go because obviously, the people at the white house, the staff at the white house was getting word to run. people in my office who worked for me were kicking off their high heels and running from the white house. i know they expected to have glamorous, really interesting jobs at the white house. no one ever thought they would have to run from the white house like they did. anyway, the secret service came to get me and senator gregg and senator kennedy walked me out the door and then i drove to where i went with the secret service, the building that had been reinforced after the terrorist attacks on our embassies. after the oklahoma city bombing, a lot of the federal buildings had been reinforced and that one had been, so that is where i went and spent the day. >> had you talked to your husband? >> i cannot remember. i have the logs from the day to remember, but i did talk to george once i got there and the girls, and of course, my mother was the one i really wanted to call. i wanted my mother to say everything is going to be all right. of course, i called her and said, everything is going to be all right. i wanted her to say, certainly. >> you had been first lady about seven months when 9/11 happened. could you describe how, here in dallas, 50 years ago, jfk was shot in the city. where were you and what do you remember about jackie kennedy? >> i was in my class at robert e. lee high school. i was in a philosophy class and you had to have certain scores and grades to be able to take. it was just one class that a history professor taught. he came in and told us that president kennedy had been shot. i went home for lunch that day and i went home to where my parents were. i was with them then. after that, the funeral that followed, i remember just lying on the couch with my mother and dad and we were watching that. i was amazed, really, at her strength. she was very young, really young. i think she was only 32, if i am not mistaken. she really had such strength. not only did she have the strength to be able to withstand it with such grace and poise, but she was also able to plan a state funeral after the most unexpected thing that could ever happen to a first lady, in a way. i think our whole country was so beautifully and so memorably planned that i think it helped in a lot of ways, everyone in our country, as he watched. and she did too with her strength. >> did you find yourself becoming a role model or somebody that people look at after 9/11? >> i do not know that, really. i guess so. i got letters that said that from people. i did not expect to do that. i am sure it was just like, well, she did not expect to be a role model. you did not expect that people would watch you do that. you might expect that people would look at your clothes or how you entertained. i did not think it occurred to first ladies that you would be a role model in that way, the grace you have, strength you have, to be able to handle and live through in a way that gives other people strength, the shocks that come in our history. >> you write in "spoken from the heart" about a difficult period, november of 1963, and a loss of faith, your faith. why? >> i was in a car wreck that i wrote about extensively in my book. the whole time, i was in the hospital, not injured really. i mean, i had a cut on my leg and a broken ankle. i was praying that the other person in the car would be ok and the other person in the car was one of my best friends, which i did not know. i did not really recognize that at the time of the crash. his father came up. they lived just past where the corner where the car wreck was and i recognized his father, but i did not understand that that was mike that was there. because i prayed over and over for him to be ok and he was not, i thought, nobody listened. god was not listening. my prayer was not answered. i went through a very long time of not believing and not believing that prayers could be answered. and it took me a long time and a lot of growing up to come back to faith. >> have you recovered your faith? >> i have recovered my faith. my faith is very helpful to me in those years. to george and me when we lived in the white house. i cannot imagine living there without a strong faith. faith in the goodness of the lord and life. that was the quote that i used in the christmas card that first year. it was in the lectionary the weekend that we went. everyone came. the cabinet was there with us as well. and condi, they were all there that weekend. and our camp david chaplin, who happened to be a methodist minister, had chosen "i shall see the goodness of the lord in the land of the living." that was the little program for camp david that weekend. so i use that for our bible verse in our first christmas card, because that is what i think we saw. we saw americans lined up to give of themselves by lining up to give blood after september 11. >> how do you think you grew or changed in the role of first lady after 9/11? >> i guess what happens to a lot of people is you grow just because you are strong. you already were strong. and i was and george is. i did not know that, maybe. i did not know the kind of emotional strength i had and physical, really. physical strength that i had, the stamina that i had that i knew george had, but i was not so sure i had. i think the way i grew is the way that i found out that i had that strength and that i could go on. not only go on, but go on and help any way i could, the people that were around me and the people that were affected, the families that lost somebody on september 11 or our whole country as we came to terms with the idea that we were vulnerable, that we could have this kind of attack that we did not expect. that was the shock for us. we never had anything on our homeland like that, except for pearl harbor. and that seemed remote to us then because it was world war ii, a long time ago. that is the big adjustment for all of us in our country, to imagine that that could happen to us. >> you talked about stamina. were their days at the white house when you are so tired that you wanted to quit, you wanted to say no more? >> no. there really were not many. there were days when i was physically and emotionally tired and drained after many of those occasions, the times when we met with the families of the fallen, the troops who had died. we met them over and over for the whole time we lived in the white house. i never thought i wanted to quit. i never once thought i wanted to quit. i know george did not either. also, we go to bed early. we always just intuitively have known how to take care of our health. we love to go to bed early and get up early, we worked out. george exercises. we do all of the things that i think are what you need to do for emotional health as well as for your physical health. >> did you work out in the white house? >> i had a trainer that came to the gym upstairs at the white house and my sister-in-law, margaret, came and worked out with me. at the very end, the last couple of years, i had a yoga instructor, and that is what i do now. >> you do yoga here in dallas? at a class? >> i have an instructor who comes to my house. >> makes it easier? >> yes. >> you have been involved in education as an issue, no child left behind. has that been a successful program? >> i think it has been really successful. the important part is the recognition that it is really a civil rights issue. the kids who do get left behind are the ones who are in the poorest parts of town. the ones whose parents do not speak english. they are the ones that get shuffled through. that is why it is very important to know how every child is doing. that is the part that a lot of people complain about, the testing. but you have to have that. how else would you diagnose any problems? you would never go to your doctor and say you cannot do a test on me to find out what is the matter with me. you have to have accountability. i think it is very important for school districts and teachers and principals and states who design the curriculum and the programs that they want their children to have in their state to realize that accountability is a very important part of it. one of the things you can tell if you do testing is which schools are successful and which are not. a lot of times, you find out the ones that are not are the ones in the poorest parts of town. and you need to address that. school districts and parents need to be an advocate for their children and make sure that every school is successful and every child in the united states gets a great education. it is our obligation as adults in the united states to make sure that every child does get a great education and we know it and we know all of the results, we are reading them right now about how american students are 20th out of the 20 biggest economies in math and science. we need to change that. and we can change that. we can make sure that students get a really good education. >> how many hands did you shake as first lady? >> i do not know. lots. how many pictures did i take? millions. >> you had a full-time photographer. all first ladies do. did you get used to having your picture snapped at all times? >> i guess so. there were probably a million terrible pictures of me out there, but it is just all a part of it. you really do get used to it, but you know all of those people very well. the photographers that traveled with me, i know them and i know their children and their lives. it is not so much like you are with strangers all the time. you are with people that you know very well, that you like, that you remain friends with. some of those people have come with us here and work at the bush institute and the bush center. i stay in touch with many others all around the country. when we just had the dedication of the bush library last april, all the first ladies staff, on and off during those eight years, came and we had a big party for the first lady staff so i could see everybody and i actually have a book that one person made of all of the babies that had been born since 2001, since that first staff, all of the first lady children that they have had since i first met them. >> you also had two teenage girls and a large bush family. how do you keep the public and the private separate? >> upstairs at the white house is your private space, the private apartment. i did not bring furniture because i knew there was wonderful furniture to choose from to decorate with and use upstairs. i did bring one chest of drawers that belong to george's grandmother. that was for sentimental reasons. and as soon as we got there, we went and picked out everything and tried them out in spots to see if you wanted to keep them at see if they wanted to be recovered and we got things recovered. that was private money. money that goes in the white house historical association. it is a big foundation. it was started by jackie kennedy.

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