August 1990

Spouses Tour Texas Medical Center

As members of the international media readied their cameras and a hush settled upon the audience of distinguished health care leaders and volunteers, The First Lady of the United States entered the Assembly Hall of The Methodist Hospital's Dunn Tower Building to a warm round of applause.

The long-awaited, two-and-one-half-hour tour of the Texas Medical Center by the spouses of the heads-of-state, foreign ministers and finance ministers in Houston for the 1990 Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations had just begun.

Mrs. Bush was followed into the Assembly Hall by Sachiyo Kaifu, wife of Japanese Prime MinisterToshiki Kaifu-, Mila Mulroney, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Danielle Mitterrand, wife of French President Francois Mitterand, and Livia Andreotti, wife of Italian President Giulio Andreotti. They were seated against a lovely, deep-blue backdrop featuring Texas Medical Center signage, the official White House logo of the Economic Summit and eight flags representing the participating nations.

The 11 spouses of the foreign ministers and finance ministers had entered a few minutes previously and were seated in the front two rows of the Assembly Hall.

After a welcome and brief overview of the Texas Medical Center by Dr. Richard E. Wainerdi, president of the Texas Medical Center, Mrs. Bush smiled as she told the attentive audience, "I couldn't think of a place that better exemplifies life here in Houston - the love and the caring and the constant striving for excellence."

Mrs. Bush said her and the President's experience with the Texas Medical Center goes back 31 years when their daughter Dorothy was born at Hermann Hospital. She still remembers the room number: 364. Both she and Mrs. Baker, wife of Secretary of State James A. Baker III, were volunteers at Texas Medical Center institutions.

After the brief, 15-minute welcoming ceremony was over, representatives of the Public Relations Advisory Council, Assistance League volunteers and leading health care officials from the various institutions escorted each spouse to a waiting motorcade for separate, individually tailored tours. The press, about 40 in all, followed in separate vans.

According to Linda Winter of the Assistance Center, 11 institutions provided 31 tours for 16 spouses over the next two hours during that historic Wednesday morning on July 11. Most of the spouses visited two institutions; Mrs. Mitterrand visited three. The tour ended at Hermann Hospital's Cullen Pavilion, where the spouses were treated to lunch before heading to the George R. Brown Convention Center to join their husbands for the issuance of the final communique.

The visits were short, but insightful, designed to give the spouses an overview of the institutions and a chance to meet some of the patients that exemplify the work being done there.

As Bunny Murdock of the Economic Summit staff pointed out, what they saw was "absolutely outstanding and reflected all the hard work on the part of the Texas Medical Center institutions to put this tour together."

"There's something about the Texas Medical Center," she continued. "The outpouring of care and understanding combined with basic Texas niceness just does you in. It was absolutely outstanding."

Mrs. Bush, for example, was particularly taken with the pediatric patients she visited at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. With a colorful, hand-painted sign welcoming her to their small classroom in the background, the First Lady shook hands and casually chatted with the youngsters as they colored pictures of dinosaurs, played with computer graphics and studied endangered rainforests.

She offered birthday greetings to seven-year-old Patrick Chapman, and kidded him about his missing front tooth; communicated as best she could with 15-year-old Soviet bone cancer patient Denis Loktev, whose English was a little rusty; and played a quick game of cards with the high-school age patients.

The patients, many of whom later said she reminded them of their grandmother, presented her with a book of dinosaur pictures and stories, a photo of a rose with flags in the background, and a box of bluebonnet notecards, designed by an M. D. Anderson patient. The First Lady, who lost a young daughter to leukemia in 1953, helped the hospital launch its 1980 Children's Christmas Card campaign.

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