George H. W. Bush Rests Gentle on My Mind
In my hand I am holding a small pin bearing the Presidential seal and George H. W. Bush’s name written on the back. It was a gift for the work I had done on his White House advance staff. I met President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, just once. It was 1992, Bush had been President for four years and was in a campaign against Bill Clinton. I had spent a life time working for Republican campaigns and had slowly moved up the ranks from walking door to door for Goldwater in Greeley, Colorado to looking up names and making calls in Florissant, Missouri all the way to the state speakers’ bureau for Reagan/Bush and finally as an aide to the White House Advance Staff when there was a Presidential visit to the St. Louis area. I had a low-level security clearance, giving me “proximity” to the President. In most cases I was a gofer who knew how to change the toner in the copy machine and could navigate the occasionally bizarre St. Louis streets when on an errand.