'A real rock:' The one-of-a-kind warmth and steel of Barbara Bush
The first time Colin Powell met Barbara Bush, they were seated next to each other at a French Embassy luncheon. General Powell was an Army corps commander at the time – not yet a top Washington insider – and he was intimidated, a bit, by the formality of the situation. So he turned and said, “How do you do, Mrs. Bush? I’m very pleased to be with you.”
“Call me Barbara,” she replied.
“No, I can’t do that... you’re the Vice President’s wife,” Powell said, as he recounts the story in an oral history recorded by the University of Virginia.
“Call me Barbara,” insisted Mrs. Bush.
“My mother would kill
