Family is always first, and never lose sight of how you treat others.
Those are the lessons Columbus native John Brown is remembering from working as a staff member for the George H.W. Bush administration and Barbara Bush, the former first lady who died Tuesday at age 92 at her home in Texas.
Brown, a 1977 Columbus North High School graduate, was hired by then-Vice President Bush in 1982 to work on the presidential advance staff. He had been working for then-Lt. Gov. John Mutz in Indianapolis when receiving an offer to join the Bush administration. A few years out of Ball State University, Brown jumped at the chance.
He received an email Tuesday night from the Bush family sent out to all former staff members, informing them of Barbara Bush’s death.
“When I got the staff email, it was like — everyone was expecting it, but you’re never quite ready for it,” Brown said in a Wednesday telephone interview from his home in North Carolina.
“Just for me to be a part — just a little sliver — of that whole life of the Bush family, it’s so special for my family to have experienced that,” Brown said. “It taught me that family is the most important thing.”
Brown’s work for the vice president and his wife included being a personal aide, traveling with them and making necessary arrangements along the way and discussing with them what was coming up on the schedule each day.
Through that, he got to know the couple well, he said.
“The first time I met her (Barbara), I was on my very first advance trip,” Brown said.
He was careful to never lose sight of the fact that despite the friendship, Brown said he could never forget that the Bushes were important people.
But Brown also found them to be down-to-earth and family-oriented, something he appreciated and admired.
“Meeting them, and meeting Barbara, I had the sense of ‘Welcome to the family,’ ” Brown said. “I was welcomed as a staff member into their small world.”
He instantly felt comfortable with Barbara Bush, a perception that others also developed in her travels as a part of the Bush delegation.
Known as “the enforcer” within the Bush family, Barbara Bush also kept the staff on the straight and narrow, he said.
“She was always gracious about it. She would never publicly scold anybody,” Brown said. “But she would make it known she wanted to speak to a staff member, and then take them into a hallway and remind them they needed to be a little more gracious,” he said.
Brown also remembered her dedication to literacy and her work to help fund cancer research, something he said ended up circling back to his own family later in his life. “Look at the foresight she had (on these issues),” he said.
He stayed on the Bush staff until 1985, when he decided his own family needed to come first and he needed to find a job in the private sector.
Brown found that job at Arvin Industries back in Columbus, working in investor relations, communications, marketing and government relations.
The Brown and Bush families stayed in touch over the years, even after the Bushes were out of office, responding in kind to the Brown family’s yearly Christmas letter with a notation that it was great to catch up on each other’s lives.
Continuing connection
From time to time, even after they were out of office, the Bush family would request that Brown assist them with a trip.
Brown said they asked him to accompany them on a trip to Hong Kong in 1996, asked by then-President Bill Clinton to meet with officials there about the transfer of the former British colony back to Chinese control.
He remembers it being a different atmosphere than when George Bush was in office, with there being more time to talk about things before reaching Hong Kong.
One of the funnier moments of the Brown family’s interactions with the Bushes came in the early 1990s during the George Bush presidency, when the Brown family took a trip to Washington D.C.
They decided to take a trip to the White House, and with their connections were able to get a visit to the Oval Office to show first-grade son Will where the president works.
“In walked Mrs. Bush with her springer spaniel Millie into the Oval Office, and my son, well he’s in first grade — my wife and I laugh about it to this day — we are in awe of where we are and Will just starts playing with Millie on the floor of the Oval Office. He was having a great time and Mrs. Bush was being so gracious about it. She thanked us for coming and said it was so nice to meet Will.”
It got even more humorous when young Will, who attended Parkside Elementary School, was asked as part of an assignment to stand and tell his classmates what he did on his spring break, Brown said.
“And he said, ‘Well, we went to Washington, D.C., and saw the Capitol and I was in the Oval Office playing with Millie, the president’s dog.’ “
The Brown family received a note home from the teacher asking for a parent-teacher conference. When they arrived, the teacher told them she thought Will had quite an imagination, explaining his version of his spring break activities.
“We had to tell her, ‘I’m sorry, that actually happened,’ ” Brown said. “At the time, nobody believed him.”
Brown, who is executive director of Carolina’s Independent Automobile Dealer’s Association in North Carolina (CIADA), said he always tells people that one thing most people don’t realize is that Mrs. Bush was the only woman ever in history to have two children who were governors, one child to date to become president, and a husband who was also a president.
“Think about the incredible influence she has had on her husband and her children,” he said.
Brown said he knew that every single day, former President Bush would say to his wife that he loved her, and that he would tell her that one day he would see her again.
“They were such spiritual believers,” he said. “It was always in the kindness they exuded, up to the very end.”
Brown, who has been a friend of Vice President Mike Pence since middle school, is hoping to see him this weekend when the vice president visits North Caroluina for a speech.
Brown said he considers himself one of the luckiest people in the world to have formed such relationships and to be able to keep them over the years.
“I’ve just been in the right place at the right time,” he said.
He plans to remember Barbara Bush as the lovely person she was, he said, describing her persona as one that was always welcoming and gracious.
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“Just for me to be a part — just a little sliver — of that whole life of the Bush family, it’s so special for my family to have experienced that. It taught me that family is the most important thing.”
— Columnus native John Brown, former Bush administration aide
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