Margaret Jane Benson

Transcription

>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. >> Good morning and welcome one and all to the 10th Annual National Book Festival [ Applause ] >> We're thrilled to be celebrating this milestone-- excuse me-- which we're calling a decade of words of wonder, and we're delighted to have all of you here celebrating it with us, and I expect many of you have been here for several of the festivals before. It gives me extraordinary pleasure this morning to introduce the person who was instrumental in bringing this unique and amazing event to all of us. I'm, of course, referring to Laura Bush who was First Lady-- excuse me-- brought the concept of the National Book Festival to Washington from her home state of Texas where she had conducted it with great [inaudible]. [ Applause ] >> She co-hosted the National Book Festival throughout her years here on Pennsylvania Avenue. She's a former librarian, a champion of literacy. [ Applause ] >> She's a teacher. She's an author of multiple books including her latest, Spoken from the Heart. Madam, former First Lady, you speak to the heart of all of us. She'll do a reading from her book, then take questions. Microphones are on either side. Please keep your questions brief and on point. She's honors us by taking a time out from an extraordinarily busy schedule continuing, involving her United Nations role, her role with UNESCO, her championship of reading and many other good causes. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the woman I've been able to call, I think, with full force and with genuine conviction, Reader-in-Chief of the United States of America. [ Applause ] >> Thank you all. Thank you so much. Thank you very much Dr. Bellington. Thank you for all your good work. Thank you for being such a great partner for the National Book Festival. And thank you for continuing to build this National Book Festival. This is the 10th National Book Festival which I think is so terrific and I can see looking around this tent and all around the festival that it's hugely popular with people from all over our country. So thank you all for coming and thank you for the warm welcome. I especially wanna thank David Rubenstein, who is sitting here on the front row, for your generous gift to the Library of Congress which will ensure that the book festival will continue. Thank you very much David. [ Applause ] >> I love the National Book Festival and I'm very happy to be here this year as an author. I spent most of my life surrounded by books. I was an avid reader as a child. My mother and I were regular fixtures at the Midland County Public Library which was a magical place not only because it house thousands of books but because it was in a basement which was a very exotic place for west Texas. Going to the library was the only time I ever got to go underground. I continued my love of books through college, through elementary school teaching in Dallas and Houston, through graduate school and library science, and then as a public librarian in Houston and a school librarian in Austin. I made a career out of my love for books. And to help spread that love, I helped to found the Texas Book Festival and then the National Book Festival. But while I love reading, I never thought I would write a book, certainly, not one about myself. But as George's eight years in office drew to a close, publishers began calling, asking me when I was gonna write a memoir and I realized that there was, in fact, a lot I wanted to say. Our years in Washington, the first decade of the new century were as consequential as almost any other time in our history. We lived through the most vicious attack on our homeland in the history of our nation. I was on Capitol Hill on the morning of September 11 and in a minute, I'm gonna read you something about that. George and I cried with the grieving families and we prayed with the nation and we never forgot that day for the rest of his time in office, and we'll never forget it for the rest of our lives. I met so many of the brave men and women who volunteered to defend our country and who risk and give their lives so that the rest of us might-- may never know terror again. And I've met the Voices for Freedom like the former Czech president, Vaclav Havel, the great intellectual and playwright, who for years was imprisoned by the communist, but who never gave up his hopes for freedom. When the Iron Curtain fell, he stepped up to lead his country and he's still speaking now on behalf of the oppressed. I met the Dalai Lama from Tibet and female candidates for parliament in Kuwait who ran for office in 2006, the first year that women there were granted the right to vote. And I met women in Afghanistan who under the Taliban could not leave their houses along, who could not get an education, who would have their fingernails pulled off if they so much as wore a coat, a fingernail polish. Now, their lives are changing. In my book, I wanted to give voice to all of these remarkable people and to share these experiences with others. And I wanted to remember the many wonderful people I met here at home, the volunteers from the Red Cross and the Baptist men who drove all night to the storm-ravaged gulf coast after Katrina to cook meals for those in need and who stayed for months helping the people there rebuild, or the brave Coast Guard volunteers who rescued some 30,000 people stranded after the hurricane struck. I wanted to tell of the days I spent with the young men in our cities and towns, many of whom were ex-gang members and who were trying to turn their lives around. I was never prouder than when, as part of my own helping America's youth initiative, I was able to welcome a group of ex-gang members from L.A. to the White House, the same house where we hosted the Queen of England and the Pope on his birthday. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had some great stories to tell even about the great Easter egg caper at the 2006 Easter Egg Roll where-- well, if you wanna know what happened in that story, I think I'll let you wait and read it in my book. I had so many wonderful memories to share, memories about the White House, stories about our life there and about our families. And of course, many of my happiest and most enduring memories are of the National Book Festival. I remember something from each of the eight festivals I attended during our time at the White House. I remembered talking with some of my favorite authors with hosting Ludmila Putin at the 2nd Book Festival, with the National Basketball Association players who are our partners, the beautiful gala dinners, the wonderful authors coffees at the White House on the Saturday mornings, and so many more happy, happy memories. But I especially recall that first National Book Festival, September 8, 2001. It was a magnificent day, sunny with a beautiful blue sky, just the kind of weather we had hoped from. Friends had come from around the country to stay with George and me at the White House. Over 40 friends came from Austin all who had worked with me on the Texas Book Festival. I remember how patiently the festival goers had waited in line to meet their favorite authors. That first festival was everything we had hoped for and more. Three days later, our world changed. And since we're here in the history tent, I thought I'd read from my book a little bit that day that changed our world. [ Pause ] >> Tuesday morning, September 11, was sunny and warm, the sky brilliant cerulean blue. My friends who had come for the National Book Festival had all flown home and even George was gone in Florida for a school visit. George H. W. Bush and Bar had spent the night buy they'd already left on a 7 a.m. plane to catch an early flight. >> And I had what I considered a big day planned. I was set to arrive at the Capitol at 9:15 to brief the Senate Education Committee chaired by Edward M. Kennedy on the findings of early childhood development conference that I'd held in July. In the afternoon, we were hosting the entire Congress and their families for the annual Congressional Picnic. The south lawn at the White House was already covered with picnic tables awaiting their fluttering cloths. And Tom Perrini from Buffalo Gap, Texas, was setting up his chuckwagons. Our entertainment would old-fashioned square dancing and Texas swing music by Ray Benson and his classic band, Asleep at the Wheel. I finished dressing in silence, going over my statement again in my mind. I was very nervous about appearing before a Senate committee and having news cameras trained on me. Had the TV been turned on, I might have heard the first fleeting report of a plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center. Instead, it was the head of my Secret Service detail Ron Sprinkle who leaned over and whispered the news in my ear as I entered the car a few minutes after 9 a.m. Andi Ball, my chief of staff at the White House, Domestic Policy Adviser Margaret Spellings, and I speculated on what could have happened. A small plane maybe, a Cessna, running into one of those massive towers on this beautiful September morning. We were driving at Pennsylvania Avenue when word came that the south tower had been hit. The car fell silent. We sat in mute disbelief. One claim might be a strange accident. Two planes were clearly an attack. I thought about George and wondered if the Secret Service had already hustled him to the motorcade and begun the race to Air Force One to return home. Two minutes later, at 9:16 a.m., we pulled up to the entrance of the Russell Building. In the time it had taken to drive the less than two minutes between the White-- two miles between the White House and the Capitol, the world as I knew it had changed. Senator Kennedy was waiting to greet me. We both knew when we met that the towers had been hit. And without a word being spoken, we knew that there would be no briefing that morning. Together, we walked the short distance to his office. He began by presenting me with a limited-edition print. It was vase of bright daffodils, a copy of a painting he had created for his wife Victoria and given to her on their wedding day. The print was inscribed to me and dated September 11, 2001. An old television was turned on in the corner of the room and I glanced over to see the plumes of smoke billowing from the twin towers. Senator Kennedy kept his eyes averted from the screen. Instead, he led me on a tour of his office pointing out various pictures, furniture, pieces of memorabilia, even a framed note that his brother Jack had sent to their mother when he was a child in which he wrote, "Teddy is getting fat." The senator who would outlive all his brothers by more than 40 years laughed at the note at he showed it to me, still finding it amusing. All the while, I kept glancing over at the glowing television screen. My skin was starting to crawl. I wanted to leave to find out what was going on to process what I was seeing, but I felt trapped in an endless cycle of pleasantries. It did not occur to me to say, "Senator Kennedy, what about the towers?" I simply followed his lead and he may have feared that if he actually-- if we actually began to contemplate what had happened in New York, I might dissolve into tears. Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the committee and one of our very good friends, Judd had played Al Gore for George during mock debates at the ranch that previous fall, arrived just as I was completing the tour. Senator Kennedy invited us to sit on the couch as he continued chatting about anything other than the horrific images unfolding on the tiny screen across the room. I looked around his shoulder but could see very little, and I was still trying to pay attention to him and to the thread of his conversation. It seemed completely unreal sitting in this elegant sunlit office as an immense tragedy unfolded. We sat as human beings driven by smoke, flame, and searing heat, jumped from the tops of the twin towers to end their lives and as firemen in full gear began to climb up the tower's stairs. I've often wondered if the small talk that morning was Ted Kennedy's defense mechanism. If after so much tragedy, the combat death of his oldest brother in World War II, the assassinations of his brother Jack and Robert, and the deaths of nephews including John Jr., whose body he identified when it was pulled from the cold, dark waters off Martha's Vineyard. If after all those things, he simply could not look upon another grievous tragedy. About 9:45 after George had made a brief statement to the nation which we watched clustered around a small television that was perched on the receptionist desk, Ted Kennedy, Judd Gregg, and I walked out to tell reporters that my briefing had been postponed. I said you heard from the president this morning and Senator Kennedy and Senator Gregg, and I joined his statement in saying that our hearts and our prayers go out to the victims of this act of terrorism and that our support goes to the rescue workers, and all of our prayers are with everyone there right now. As I turned to exit, Laurence McQuillan of USA Today asked a question, "Mrs. Bush, you know, children are kind of struck by all this. Is there a message you could tell to the nations?" I didn't even wait for him to finish but began, "Parents need to reassure their children everywhere in our country that they are safe." As we walked out of the briefing room, the cellphone of my advance man, John Meyers, rang. A friend told him that CNN was reporting that an airplane had crashed into the Pentagon. Within minutes, the order given to evacuate-- an order would be given to evacuate the White House and the Capitol. The Secret Service had decided to take me temporarily to their headquarters located in a nondescript federal office building a few blocks from the White House. Following the Oklahoma City bombing, their offices had been reinforced to survive a large scale blast. Outside our convoy windows, the city streets were clogged with people evacuating their work places. In the time I reached my motorcade, Flight 93 had crashed into a Pennsylvania field in the west side of the Pentagon had begun to collapse. In the intervening years, Senator Judd Gregg and I, and many others were left to contemplate, what if Flight 93 had not been forced down by its passengers into an empty field; what if shortly after 10 a.m. it had reached the Capitol dome? Walking through the hallways at the Secret Service building, I saw a sign emblazoned with the emergency number 911. Had the terrorist thought about our iconic number when they picked this date and planned an emergency so overwhelming? For awhile, I sat in this small office area off the conference room silently watching the images on television. I watched the replay as the South Tower of the World Trade Center word was sound and then collapsed into a silent gray plume, offering my personal prayer to God to receive the victims with open arms. The North Tower had given way live in front of my eyes sending some 1,500 souls and 110 stories of gypsum and concrete buckling to the ground. Inside Secret Service headquarters, I asked my staff to call their families and I called my girls who had been whisked away by Secret Service agents to secure locations. In Austin, Jenna had been awakened by an agent pounding on her dorm door. In her room at Yale, Barbara had heard another student sobbing uncontrollably a few doors down. Then I called my mother because I wanted her to know that I was safe and I wanted so much to hear the sound of her voice. Late in the afternoon, we got word that the president was returning to Washington. At 6:30, we got in a Secret Service caravan to drive to the White House. I gazed out the window. The city had taken on the cast of an abandoned movie set. The sun was shining, but the streets were deserted. We couldn't see a person on the sidewalk or any vehicles driving on the street. There was no sound at all except for the roll of wheels over the ground. By 7:30, we ran our way up to the residence. I have no memory of having eaten dinner. George may have eaten on the plane. He tried to call the girls as soon as we were upstairs but couldn't reach them. >> Barbara called back close to 8 p.m. and then George left to make remarks to the nation. We did finally climb into our own bed that night exhausted and emotionally drained. Outside the doors of the residence, the Secret Service details stood in their usual post. I fell asleep, but it was a light, fitful rest and I could feel George staring into the darkness beside me. Then I heard a man screaming as he ran. "Mr. President, Mr. President, you've got to get up. The White House is under attack." We jumped up and I grabbed the robe and stuck my feet into my slippers, but I didn't stop to put on my contacts. George grabbed Barney and I grabbed Kitty. With Spot trailing behind, we started walking down to the PEOC. George had wanted to take the elevator, but the agents didn't think it was safe and so we had to descend flight after flight of stairs to the state floor, then the ground floor and below while I held George's hand because I couldn't see anything. My heart was pounding and all I could do was count stairwell landings, trying to count off in my mind to how many more floors we had to go. When we reached the PEOC, I saw the outline of a military aide unfolding the ancient hideaway bed and putting on some sheets. At that moment, another agent ran up to us and said, "Mr. President, it's one of our own." The plane was one of ours. For months afterwards at night, in bed, we'd hear the military jets thundering over head traveling so fast that the ground below quivered and shook. They'd make one pass and then three or five minutes later make another low-flying loop. I'd fall asleep to the roar of the fighters in the sky, peering in my mind those words, "One of our own." There was a quiet security in that and knowing that we slept between the watchful eyes of one of our own, and then just a little closing signets from the 2nd Book Festival in 2002. Many moments from that day stayed with me. But a particular note where the closing remarks by the historian, David McCullough, in which he described John Adams' quest for knowledge in quotes, "The greatest gift of all he was certain was the gift of an inquiring mind." McCullough quoted Adams saying and I quote, "I have the liberty to think for myself." And then David McCullough added, "We face a foe today who believes in enforced ignorance. We don't." [ Applause ] >> Thank you all. Thank you. Now, we have time for questions. We have a few minutes for questions. I like your Charlotte's Web T-shirt. >> Well, we've met. You know I am the grandniece of E. B. White who wrote Charlotte's Web. >> Oh, really? >> Yes. >> Great. >> And-- [ Applause ] >> And two years ago when you-- and Jenna were signing your books, we talked and you both signed my book and I do E. B. White presentations, and I always bring your book and show them and talk about on your page where you referenced Charlotte's Web. And I thank you so much for that children's book. It's wonderful, but this is also a wonderful, wonderful book and thank you for writing it. [ Applause ] >> Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> What was your exact feeling when you found out that you were attacked by one of your own? >> No. We weren't attacked by one of our own. We were covered by one of our own. They were protecting us. This was the plane that I was talking about where the military kept that flew over Washington. They were United States military. So we were protected by them and that gave me a great feeling of security. >> What was your favorite part about being the host of the National Book Festival? >> Well, I love seeing so many happy people here, so many people that love to read. And I think there's something that book lovers all share. And no matter what our political views might be or what our differences might be of any kind, we all love books and we all love reading, and we especially appreciate that we have so many tremendous American authors. We have such a huge body of literature to choose from our own writers and then, of course, from writers around the world, but especially children. We have a really wonderful huge body of children's literature in the United States and as an old retired children's librarian, I'm really proud of that. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. >> One more I think. >> Good morning. Who are your-- some of your favorite authors of the last 5 or 10 years and what are you reading now? >> Right now, I'm reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. He was a Texas Book Festival before with one of his books. I don't know if he-- has been a National Book Festival writer, but it's terrific. It's a great book about twins but also about Ethiopia. Then I read and this was one of the books given to me by Booksellers on my book tour, My Name is Mary Sutter, historical fiction about the Civil War, really great by Robin Oliveira and so I recommend both of those. George is reading the new biography about Bonhoeffer. That's the title, Bonhoeffer. And I can't wait to get my hands on it and read it next. So I'm usually reading the newest books by Book Festival authors. I'll be at the Texas Book Festival in late October for the-- also and so I hope that any of you that have a chance can also come there for the Texas Book Festival. Thank you all very much. [Background applause] I think my time is up. I appreciate it very, very much. Thank you all. God bless you all. Thanks a lot. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov