Over 1,500 guests are at a private funeral for Barbara Bush at the nation’s largest Episcopal church in Houston.
First lady Melania Trump, former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, and former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, are among those expected to attend the by-invitation-only service at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston. Burial will follow at the Bush Library at Texas A&M University, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) northwest of Houston.
The burial site is in a gated plot surrounded by trees and near a creek where the couple’s 3-year-old daughter, Robin, who died of leukemia in 1953, is buried.
In a statement released Friday, the family said Barbara Bush had selected son Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, to deliver a eulogy along with her longtime friend Susan Baker, wife of former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, and historian Jon Meacham, who wrote a 2015 biography of her husband.
Thousands of people on Friday paid respects to Barbara Bush, wife of the nation’s 41st president and mother of the nation’s 43rd. Bush died Tuesday at her Houston home. She was 92.
Also, Friday evening, officials said around 2,500 people stopped by to pay their respects to Barbara Bush, wife of the nation’s 41st president and mother of the nation’s 43rd. Among them was Houston social worker Varney Johnson, who like other mourners said he wanted to honor her work supporting literacy. “This woman dedicated her life to educating children,” he said.
Barbara and George Bush were married longer than any other presidential couple when she died Tuesday at their home in Houston. One of just two first ladies to have a child elected president, Barbara Bush was widely admired for her plainspoken style and her advocacy for causes including literacy and AIDS awareness.
“Whether you’re Democrat or whether you’re Republican, whether you’re young or old, she is the matriarch of America,” said 52-year-old Houston resident Jamie Sumicek. “That’s what moved me to visit.”
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