What was the wellspring of that confidence, toughness, and resilience? Here is my answer: eleven remarkable women, not stained-glass mothers but lively doers who funneled boundless energy into these sons, mixing praise and discipline in equal measure. A word about why this book of presidents’ mothers begins with Sara Delano Roosevelt: the Roosevelt era was a watershed in history, the beginning of contemporary America and the modern presidency, the prize that can now be won only by men of supreme self-assurance who are willing to withstand the grinding process and microscopic examination not required of candidates in the bygone era of nominations decided in smoke-filled rooms. I cannot begin to express my gratitude-and pleasure-for those interviews. Bush took time from his own presidential pursuit to reflect on his muchloved grandmother. Half a dozen grandchildren who knew their grandmothers well added spice to the family lore, especially the two who edited their fathers’ memoirs, Margaret Truman Daniel and John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower, both distinguished authors in their own right Luci Baines Johnson provided thoughtful introspection about her father and his mother and Governor George W. Gordy Dolvin recalled girlhood days with her irrepressible sister Lillian.
Daughters-in-law Lady Bird Johnson and Nancy Reagan shared with me their unique perspective in what is always a delicate human equation, and Emily HIS Two younger sons, Senator Edward Kennedy and Edward Nixon, and two daughters, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Nancy Bush Ellis, enlarged this portrait of their family lives.
Most meaningful were the personal reminiscences given to me by three president-sons, Gerald Ford, George Bush, and Jimmy Carter, who talked lovingly about life with Mother. Information about them is finite and varies greatly-a considerable amount about those who lived to see their sons in the White House and little about those, equally crucial to their sons’ success, who had died long before. While much is written about the wives of presidents, I discovered that the stories of the mothers, the women who shaped the boys who became the men who became the presidents, are little known. Is a journalist’s book, born of years of covering presidents and hearing them again and again pay tribute to their mothers and, noticeably, not their fathers. Passionate Attachments / 420 Selected Readings / 439 Acknowledgments / 451 Index / 454Ībout the Author Praise Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher The Glue That Held It All Together / 112 5. bonnie angelo with a new chapter on First Mother, Barbara Bush
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