Sara Armstrong: From the East Wing to the boardroom

I love to kind of explore President and Mrs. Bush's approach to the presidency, and I think some of that starts with correspondence.

You mentioned it briefly there as you were listing some of the responsibilities that you had, but correspondence is a big deal.

Can you talk a little bit about that element?

Right.

Well, even in this world of everybody's online and sending emails to each other, a written response from a president or first lady is really a remarkable thing.

And I recall Mrs. Bush took her correspondence very seriously.

She would personally sign all the letters that were sent back to individuals writing in, students who would send in their flat Stanley and want to have a picture of Barney or Miss Beasley.

all of those responses she cared deeply about and would even ask you to tweak the response to ensure that we were properly responding.

There's no greater pressure than walking into Mrs. Bush's office and bringing her letters to review.

As a former teacher, you knew you were going to be graded.

And sure enough, I would oftentimes have little notes that were sent back to me on needing to respond a little bit differently to ensure that the child's questions were properly responded to in the way she wanted to.

So she took it very seriously and I don't know that everybody realizes that she read those letters and personally read through our responses to ensure that she was well represented in her response to those individuals.

quite fun.

And I think that reflects on who they are as people that respect other people.

We always talk about that they're always on time.

They're never late.

That's a well-known lore at this point, which is also about respect.

Can you talk some about how they treated respect just as far as the physical space in the White House, the White House as a workplace, as a home, et cetera?

They knew that they were temporary residents of this home.

And they really did respect the fact that it was the people's house.

This was a home for them, but it was also a working building.

And they knew that they were there for a short period of time and respected the concept of the history that it brought, but also keeping it...

in a position that it was going to be accessible and kept well for the future generations.

And so working very closely with the White House Historical Association, Mrs. Bush would ensure that artwork was brought in that reflected different types of artists from around the country, both new artists and well-known artists from the past.

She wanted to ensure that any renovations were very carefully done to ensure the historical components were kept in mind as any renovations needed to take place.