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First Lady Laura Bush Is Thrilled
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First Lady Laura Bush visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield last Friday morning. Although it was a private visit to which the public was not invited, a small group of local reporters was invited to attend and accompany Mrs. Bush whose motorcade arrived promptly at 11:30 a.m.
After spending some 30 to 40 minutes in the Little House Museum, Mrs. Bush moved next door to the Wilder home where she again took her time perusing the artifacts and carefully listening to descriptions of and stories about what she was seeing as she made her way through the home she said she has wanted to visit for a long time.
“It’s really a thrill to be here and to see where she wrote the books I most associated with as a child,” Mrs. Bush said, adding that she read the “Little House” books to her daughters, Barbara and Jenna when they were young.
“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” she said of her visit, adding that Laura Ingalls Wilder was one of her favorite authors.
“My mother read her books to me before I could read,” she said.
The first lady said she was especially fond of Laura in The Little House on the Prairie and that she most associated with her “because my name was Laura and I had brown hair like she did.”
After touring the home, Mrs. Bush paused outside to talk about her visit and to present a certificate designating the historic site as an official project of Save America's Treasures.
Presenting the certificate to Jean Coday, president of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum, Mrs. Bush said, “The Laura Ingalls Wilder house and museum are now an official Save America’s Treasures project and next we hope they will be receiving the Save America’s Treasures grant.”
That grant Mrs. Bush spoke of would be a major boost in funding an expansion of the museum and homesite where the Little House books were written.
Mrs. Bush spoke of reading as her greatest joy, and vowed to continue working in some official role with the United Nations on literacy projects after her husband’s term as President ends.
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