Jenna Bush Hager paid a loving and moving tribute to her grandmother by reading a letter she’d written to former first lady Barbara Bush, who died this week at age 92.
"Dearest Ganny, when we lost you, we lost one of the greats," Hager, 36, read on NBC’s "Today" show Thursday. "You were our family’s rock, the glue that held us together."
Hager described the letter as "a mixture of great gratitude for a life well lived'' in a phone interview on NBC.
"I hope you know in your final days how many people prayed for you, how many people told me they loved you," she continued. "It was like that my whole life — people stopped me everywhere — in airports, on the street and declared their love for you."
Referring to her grandmother’s nickname — the enforcer — Hager said, "It was because you were a force and you wrote the rules. Your rules were simple: Treat everyone equally, don't look down on anyone, use your voices for good, read all the great books."
Hager recalled that when she was 7 years old and her grandfather, George H.W. Bush, was president, she and her sister Barbara ordered peanut butter sandwiches from the White House bowling alley. The girls anticipated "what was sure to be the fanciest sandwich of our lives."
What they got instead was the enforcer, "telling us under no circumstances could we order food in the White House again. This was not a hotel."
Lesson learned. “You taught us humility and grace,” Hager said.
Hager observed that her grandmother’s final email to her said “You” in the subject line, with the message, “I am watching you. I love you. Ganny.”
“Well, Ganny, we have spent our lives watching you. Your words inspired us. Your actions — an example to follow,” she said. “We watched as you held babies living with HIV to dispel the stigma, as you championed literacy across our country, as you held Gampy’s hand.”
Hagar finished by saying, “We love you more than tongue can tell.”
Viewers were touched beyond words.
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