A seldom-told story about Barbara Bush and her daughter, Robin

Former first lady Barbara Bush died on Tuesday, Apr. 17 at the age of 92. She is only one of two first ladies who was both a wife of a US president and mother to another. The other was Abigail Adams who died 200 years ago.

Sifting through numerous tributes that flooded the internet, I came across a story that was seldom told – one of Barbara and her daughter, Robin, that I found extremely touching. Following is the story recounted by Dr. Paul Kengor who wrote a biography of her oldest son:

It was the fall of 1953 when George W. Bush was only seven years old. His parents’ green Oldsmobile pulled in front of Sam Houston Elementary School in Midland, Texas. The moment that he saw the car, he set down the phonograph and sprinted ahead to his teacher. “My mom, dad, and sister are home,” he shouted. “Can I go see them?”

The little sister was Robin. To this day, George W. Bush swears he saw her. He says he caught her small head barely rising above the backseat. His parents had been in New York, where they were tending to George’s little sister. He knew Robin was sick, but had no idea how sick. The 3-year-old was dying from leukemia.

George’s parents returned with an empty back seat and emptier news. “I run over to the car,” said Bush almost half a century later, “and there’s no Robin.” She was not coming home. “I was sad, and stunned. I knew Robin had been sick, but death was hard for me to imagine. Minutes before, I had had a little sister, and now, suddenly, I did not.” Bush says that those minutes remain the “starkest memory” of his childhood. When asked about the incident in an interview, his eyes welled with tears. He stammered his response.

Pauline Robinson “Robin” Bush started to show symptoms in February 1953, just after the birth of her baby brother Jeb. She simply wanted to lie down all day. Mysterious bruises began appearing on her body. The Bushes took her to Dr. Dorothy Wyvell, renowned in West Texas pediatrics. Wyvell was shocked by the test results. She told the Bushes that the child’s white blood cell count was the highest she had ever seen, and the cancer was already too advanced. She recommended they simply take Robin home and allow nature to take its course, sparing all of them the agony of futile treatments.

The Bushes couldn’t do that. George H. W. Bush had an uncle in New York who was president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering cancer center. They agreed to do everything they could in the hope of some breakthrough.

As for Barbara Bush, she was constantly at Robin’s side during the hospital stay. Her husband shuttled between New York and Midland. Each morning of Robin’s New York stay, her father dropped by the family’s Midland church at 6:30 a.m. to hold his own private prayer vigil.

Barbara was the strong one throughout the affair. When Robin received blood transfusions at the cancer center, her mother held her hand. Her father had to leave the room.

Robin never had a chance. Eventually, the medicine that labored to try to control the evil metastasizing in her frail frame quickly caused its own set of problems, and George H. W. was summoned from Texas immediately. He flew all night to get there, but by the time he arrived Robin had slipped into a coma. She died peacefully.

“One minute she was there, and the next she was gone,” remembered her mother. “I truly felt her soul go out of that beautiful little body. For one last time I combed her hair, and we held our precious little girl. I never felt the presence of God more strongly than at that moment.”

It all happened so fast. By October, Robin was dead, only weeks from her fourth birthday.

“We awakened night after night in great physical pain—it hurt that much,” Barbara recalled.

Alas, it is said that this was the reason Barbara Bush turned prematurely gray. There was a story—quite a story—behind that trademark hair of Barbara Bush. The story’s name was Robin.

May Barbara Bush rest in peace, reunited at long last with that little girl.