The love letter was written on Dec. 12, 1943, but it has presently gone viral. Historians and journalists tweeted on Thursday a hand-written letter by future President George H.W. Bush that was sent to his then-fiancée Barbara Pierce.
Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, tweeted that young Bush was a U.S. Navy pilot at the time during World War II. The letter written on Navy stationery and begins: “My darling Bar.”
The only love letter Barbara Bush kept from George HW during World War II (the others were lost). It is dated December 12, 1943. “How often I have thought about the immeasurable joy that will be ours someday. How lucky our children will be to have a mother like you—“ pic.twitter.com/9n9GDx7lAM
— Carlos Lozada (@CarlosLozadaWP) April 18, 2018
The letter says that Bush is happy to have read their engagement announcement in the newspaper. He writes:
“I love you, precious, with all my heart and to know that you love me means my life. How often I have thought about the immeasurable joy that will be ours someday. How lucky our children will be to have a mother like you,” the letter read.
George and Barbara met at a Christmas dance. She was just 17 and he was 18. The future president was a naval aviator in training.
“I’m not much at recalling what people wear, but that particular occasion stands out in my memory,” Bush wrote in his autobiography. Bust recalled that the band was playing Glenn Miller tunes and he asked a friend from Rye, N.Y., if he knew the girl across the room in the green and red holiday dress. That friend introduced him to Barbara Pierce, a publisher’s daughter from Rye who was going to school in South Carolina. The next song was a waltz.
“Since I didn’t waltz, we sat the dance out. And several more after that, talking and getting to know each other,” Bush wrote. “It was a storybook meeting.”
The two were married Jan. 6, 1945, four months after Bush was shot down over the Pacific. He’d been the Navy’s youngest aviator when he got his wings and carried the name “Barbara” on his Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber.
Former First Lady Barbara Bush, 92, died on Tuesday after declining any further medical treatment and choosing “comfort care.”
Former President George W. Bush, called his mother “a fabulous First Lady and a woman unlike any other.”
The words the elder Bush wrote in a 1943 letter seem the most appropriate today: “This may sound melodramatic, but if it does it is only my inadequacy to say what I mean. Bar, you have made my life full of everything I could ever dream of — my complete happiness should be a token of my love for you.”
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