{"id":352062,"date":"2018-12-01T14:36:13","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T19:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=352062"},"modified":"2018-12-06T13:11:15","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T18:11:15","slug":"brave-kind-and-modest-senior-speechwriter-remembers-george-h-w-bush-352062","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/brave-kind-and-modest-senior-speechwriter-remembers-george-h-w-bush-352062\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Brave, kind, and modest\u2019: Senior speechwriter remembers George H. W. Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

Curt Smith is a senior lecturer in the Department of English. He was a speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush in the White House from 1989 to 1993 and wrote more speeches for Bush than anyone else.<\/em><\/p>\n

George Herbert Walker Bush was a son, husband, father, grandfather, pioneering businessman, global diplomat, forty-first President of the United States, Commander in Chief of a great liberation, war hero in America\u2019s Greatest War, and last President of America\u2019s Greatest Generation\u2014and friend. He also embodied the way the world has historically seen America.<\/p>\n

George Bush was brave, kind, and modest. He was generous, loyal, and honest. He knew sorrow\u2014daughter Robin, dying at four, of leukemia; wife Barbara\u2019s recent death. He also knew a lifetime\u2019s joy of priorities: \u201cfamily, faith, and friends.\u201d His mother taught him to treat people equally\u2014\u201cNow, George,\u201d she said, referencing the great hymn, \u201cnone of this \u2018How Great Thou Art\u2019 business.\u201d Raised in an age of Tom Mix and Andy Hardy, he really did<\/em> become The All-American Kid who lived the All-American Life.<\/p>\n

President Bush said his three years in the Navy did more to shape his life than anything before or since. He was seventeen the day Pearl Harbor was attacked: December 7, 1941, a Sunday. Friends were among the 2,403 Americans who died. Next day he tried to enlist. Too young, he joined the day he turned eighteen\u2014the Navy\u2019s youngest aviator, almost dying when his plane was shot down. Many thought of that at Pearl\u2019s half-century anniversary, in 1991, when President Bush courageously gave an emotional speech he feared he could not complete without breaking down.<\/p>\n

\u201cMay God bless the United States,\u201d he ended, whispering the words, \u201cthe most wondrous land on earth.\u201d \u00a0For ninety-four years George H. W. Bush blessed the United States of America. May God bless him, and He will.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Curt Smith, senior lecturer in the Department of English and speechwriter for George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, remembers the former president as a man who “embodied the way the world has historically seen America.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":752,"featured_media":352072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[456],"tags":[16962,20542,3396,16072],"class_list":["post-352062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-culture","tag-curt-smith","tag-department-of-english","tag-obituaries","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Brave, kind, and modest\u2019: Senior speechwriter remembers George H. W. 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