Contact: Michele Buc, 615-366-6444, michele@michelebuc.com 

MEDIA ADVISORY, Dec. 19 /Christian Newswire/ -- First Lady Laura Bush chooses to stay out of the spotlight when possible, says former White House staffer Jane Hampton Cook. Cook feels that today's revelation of a skin cancer removal by the First Lady's staff is because Laura Bush makes a choice to stay in the background in most cases. Cook recalls a time meeting with the First Lady about the whitehouse.gov website Cook was designing:

"Laura Bush had left me a voice message. I had been working with her staff on the pages for her section of the White House Web site, but she wanted to meet with me to review some of the drafts I had sent over.

The meeting was set up. I had drafted and developed material for Mrs. Bush in Texas, but this was different. I entered a room across the hall from their White House residence. She asked me to take a seat, and with a simple manicure-like table separating us, we went through her Web site drafts. 

When we came to one particular sentence, I caught a glimpse of how she approached her role. Because she was speaking and hosting events about President Bush’s education initiatives, I wrote a sentence that went something like, “President George W. Bush and Laura Bush’s education initiatives . . . ” She asked me why I had included her name in that sentence. I was too nervous to say what I was thinking: “You’re a former teacher, a champion of education, a librarian; of course you deserve credit here!” She said simply that this was the president’s initiative. I omitted her name from that sentence.

I thought about the incident later and realized that I wanted to give her recognition, but she demurred. She could have taken credit, but she didn’t want to. Life wasn’t about her. She approached her role in a selfless way, similar to the character of the Proverbs 31 woman."

(taken from the book, The Faith Of America's First Ladies, by former White House Staffer Jane Cook).

For more discussion on the topic from former White House Staffer Jane Cook,
Contact: Michele Buc, 615-366-6444, michele@michelebuc.com