My  Best Friend, Babs, or,

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bushes



By Connie Corcoran Wilson, M.S.



I am
fond of calling Barbara Bush “my best friend, Barbara,” even though I
only met the woman for a nano-second (one of those “brushes with
greatness” that Letterman features on his show) and all she did was
pump my hand twice and say, “It's so nice……what you do.” (It turned out
that she was saying that to ALL the girls. And boys. Fickle. That's all
she said, all day long. It was sort of like dealing with a Stepford
Wife or one of those animatronic dummies at Disneyworld.



You may wonder why she was saying this to me. No? Well, does it seem like you're going to find out, anyway? Yes!



I never
made it to “point of light” status under the Bushes, and, Lord knows,
after my work appears on this blog, I probably will just be declared a
Subversive Star by the IRS….[I think they were working on a special
category for me way back then…something along the lines of “pin-prickly
point of pain” or “sparkly sprite,” but, since I defied description,
then and now, they gave up on me after a while, and, so, my hopes of
achieving pin-point (of) light status were hopelessly shattered,
more-or-less like Humpty Dumpty].



During
my years as founder, owner and CEO of the second Sylvan Learning Center
in the state of Iowa, in Bettendorf, Iowa, I won two Bi-State Literacy
Awards. Since I never turned away a poor kid (“never met a poor kid I
didn't like”), we had the most active scholarship program in the
nation, out of nine hundred centers. This won us a Bi-State Literacy
award in 1993.  (We won another one, earlier, but nobody famous
gave us that one.) And guess who came out to present the one during the
Bush/Clinton election year, personally, just about the time that George
Herbert was sinking in the polls opposite that charismatic kid from
Arkansas? You guessed it: my best friend, Barbara!



When she
arrived at the Quad City International Airport, the First Lady's
limousine broke down on the way from the Moline (Illinois) airport to
the Davenport (Iowa) ceremony. That was just about all that the
newspapers printed about that day's awards. No big list of winners on
the front page. No kudos to the many who had labored long and hard in
the cause of literacy. Nope. More interest in the broken limo. Barbara
then pumped everyone's hand onstage in her “It's so nice, …what you
do…” fashion, and then stirringly proclaimed, “You are the real
literacy heroes.” (My eyes got all watery at that moment. I could just
tell that she was so sincere and so “into” this.)



None of
us knew that Barbara…(later to be dubbed “my best friend,
Babs”)…was coming to present the award in person. It was a closely
guarded secret (read fluke). I only found out the Sunday night before
the Monday award's ceremony, which was to be held at a place that makes
tractor seats. The honorees (i.e., me and my family members) were going
to have to arrive literally hours early, so that the Secret Service
could search us and have us go through metal detectors. (And, possibly,
later, attach our life's savings for George's campaign.)



I
immediately alerted my mother in Iowa City, then an elderly but feisty
eighty-something bridge-playing senior citizen, who still had that
awful photo of Dukakis in the tank wearing the helmet thingy on his
head on her refrigerator door.

 

“Mom…Barbara Bush is going to come give me an award. Would you like to come see her? “



Slight pause. Her response: “No.  I don't think so.  I'm a Democrat.”

 

Good old Mom. Always thinkin'!



Anyway,
I thought it was a travesty that the only newsworthy thing about Babs
printed in the next day's paper after we were all given these literacy
awards was that her car had broken down on the way from the
airport.  I set out to rectify that dearth of information, by
running ads that said, “This summer: hang out with heroes!” Barbara and
I, onstage together, smiling, pumping hands, acting chummy.  It
was April and our busy summer season was coming on, and it seemed like
a good idea at the time.



I
remember sitting down with the Quad City Times advertising folk after
the event but before the ads appeared, and our discussion of whether
Barbara, as First Lady, was “in the public domain,” and my commenting
that these words were, indeed, what Barbara had said, to me (and
everyone else), in a public forum, from the stage. Heck! The White
House even provided us with the videotape, (which my company
subsequently borrowed, used at their Miami national conference, and
lost).



So, we
went for it.  No guts, no glory! A favorite refrain. Even the
Times guys thought the odds of anyone in Washington, D.C., seeing
anything in the Quad City Times of Davenport, Iowa, were really, really
remote. I agreed. The ads were placed.



So, the
ad was running (my best friend, Babs, and me, plaque in hand, pumping
away), and just when things were going really well, I was sitting in my
office with a placemat salesman guy, when the downstairs secretary,
came huffing and puffing up the three flights of stairs to my office,
and almost cardiac-arrested on my doorstep, saying, “THE WHITE HOUSE IS
ON THE PHONE!”



There
was a certain urgency in her voice. Or maybe that was just the sound of
someone about to pass out. But, nonetheless, I must admit it got both
my attention and the placemat guy's attention.



This is not something you hear ever' day.



In fact, this is not something I have ever heard since. And it's probably just as well.



The
woman on the phone, Anna Perez by name, (Ms. Bush's then-press
secretary) was really, really nasty!  She made Joan Collins on
“Dynasty” (Alexis) seem like Mary Poppins. She went on and on (and on)
about “getting that ad out of the paper.” She was like a Nazi Storm
Trooper Lady.



I
pointed out that that should be easy, since it had run for the last
time that very day. Fait accompli! She still went on and on (and on),
with vitriol so intense that, finally, I pulled myself up to my full
five-foot-three inch height (or would have, if I hadn't been sitting at
the time), and said, “Look…you don't need to kill a mosquito with a
baseball bat!”



Then I hung up on the White House.



The
placemat guy was agog! He left my office in utter shock! I don't know
if he was more shocked that the White House had actually called me,
while he sat there observing, or that I had hung up on them when they
did.



All I
know is that, when I read Al Franken's account in his newest book of
meeting my best friend, Babs, on a plane, and trying to be friendly,
and Barbara waving him off, saying, “I'm done with you,” and being
really, really nasty, I could relate. I sat right down and wrote Al,
who never responded. But I warned Al, in my letter, that we should both
be careful that our “best friend, Barbara's” Press Secretary didn't try
to strangle us with her pearls next time we all might meet.