Out in Greene County, Iowa

The surprising story of what former President George and Barbara Bush did on Sept. 11, 2001

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
March 23, 2003
STORM LAKE, IOWA

On this weekend of such international fury – when the Bush family of America is once again in the middle of a firestorm – let me share one of the most fascinating Bush stories I’ve ever heard.

It came out this past February 27 when former President George H.W. Bush, the father of our current president, was speaking at Coe College in Cedar Rapids.

Bush, now 78, was riveting as a speaker, both insightful and funny, a delight to hear. He spoke for about 45 minutes, then he answered questions from the audience for at least 45 minutes more – much longer than his Coe hosts expected. He was obviously enjoying himself.

One of the best moments came when he answered the last question of the evening.

Cari Long, a Coe junior from Cedar Rapids, stood at a microphone out in front of the former president and said, “I was wondering if you could give a little insight as to where you were on September 11 (2001), and what that time was like for your family.”

Bush’s answer stunned me.

I try to stay on top of the news, especially when it’s news as big as the horrific terrorist attacks that day on the U.S., but this was something I’d never read or heard anywhere. Lonnie Zingula of the Coe public relations staff has helped me re-create it here by giving me a transcript of that question and answer from the college’s videotape of the evening.

“September 11,” the former president began. “We spent the night before in the White House with the President and Laura. Barbara and I were flying to…Minnesota. We got the word in the air. We were in a private plane that some company had sent for us to take us out there, and we heard this news. Couldn’t fully understand it, obviously. And we were compelled to land in Milwaukee.”

They were met at the Milwaukee airport by Secret Service agents.

“The Secret Service are absolutely fantastic the way they treat presidents and former presidents,” Bush said. “They were waiting for us and they hustled us out to a motel outside of Milwaukee. We had never heard of the little town where we were staying,” even though “we knew a lot about Milwaukee.”

After they’d been in the motel “a couple hours,” the former president said, “the phone rang. It was the White House calling, so we answered the phone. ‘Dad! Where are you?’
I said, ‘We’re where you made us land out here in Milwaukee, son.’ ”

Oh somewhere in the Milwaukee area, there is a motel manager and clerk with quite a story to tell!

Bush did not explain whether he and his wife stayed only a few hours, overnight or longer.

I’ve been growing increasingly curious about it ever since I heard him tell the story at Coe.

So this week I contacted an old journalism friend, Steve Walters, now chief of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Madison Bureau, with whom I newspapered in Des Moines years ago. I asked him if he recalled reading or hearing about Bush’s forced visit to the Milwaukee area after the attacks.

“Yes, we ran a short of ex-President Bush being detained in Milwaukee then,” Walters said. “We ran a brief, and didn’t get very excited then, unfortunately.”

Needless to say, there was a whole lot of other news to deal with that day.

I did find, in an Internet search of the Journal Sentinel’s archives, that their TV & radio critic Tim Cuprisin had a related column item in late September, 2001. He noted that news director Grant Uitti of CBS-TV affiliate Channel 58 was saying that, in the aftermath of the attacks, the station “has been careful about its reporting.”

Uitti went on to tell Cuprisin that the station had video of former President Bush being delayed at the Milwaukee airport on Sept. 11, but that “we just felt, from a responsibility standpoint, with these terrorist attacks going on, that we were not going to show that. We ended up running that much later on, after we had talked with the Secret Service,” Uitti said.

I could not reach either Cuprisin or Uitti to ask if they by chance knew the name of the motel where Bush stayed during his unscheduled stop.

Meanwhile, the Coe student Cari Long, who asked the question that prompted the fascinating response, is “amazed that people are still commenting to me on my experience with President Bush,” she told me on Friday.

“I really wanted to ask him a question, and that was the first thing that popped into my head,” she said. “The reason that I wanted to know about it so badly was because I know how much families craved to be together that day, and I can’t imagine if your son was the president and you couldn’t communicate with him. I sort of wanted to get a feel for the commotion on that day for everyone involved.

“As for the President’s answer, I was amazed at how calm he seemed about finding out about the attacks and how easy it was for him to reach his son, or vice versa. I suppose they have connections we just don’t realize.”

There was another funny part of the exchange. When the former President turned to Long, who was standing in front of the microphone with a man standing behind her, Bush mentioned that her question would be the last one, “then I’m out of here. Going back to Texas tonight.”

So after asking her specific question about where Bush had been on Sept. 11, she blurted out, “And, for the gentleman behind me, he’d like to know if you would sign a baseball for his seven-year-old son.”

Bush laughed, told her, “You bring the baseball,” and waved her to the stage as he began his answer to her serious question. She wound up standing right next to him there in front of 1,100 people that filled Sinclair Auditorium.

“As for most of his answer,” Long said, “I was so much in shock that I was on stage, I really didn’t hear most of it and got a lot of it relayed to me by my family and friends.

“When I was up on stage, the President thanked me for my question and I was telling him that I had met his son previously. He was interested in that and where I met him and if I was a student. As I went to go get off stage, I sort of reached in to give him a handshake and he embraced me and then kissed me on my cheek.

“I was totally shocked and sort of embarrassed. I could hear the people in the front row gasp, which was funny. Afterwards, I had all of these people coming up to me – it was hilarious!”

Earlier that evening, Bush had talked at length about his anguish, concern and ultimate triumph in the first Gulf War. And he was surprisingly candid about his son, the current President Bush, facing the same Iraqi nemesis, Saddam Hussein, all these years later.

The most poignant moment was the former president’s closing of his actual speech, before he took the questions from the audience.

“Bottom line,” he said, “you’ve just heard from the proudest father in the United States, and please say a prayer for our son.”

We should all do that.

And then let’s all try to find that motel clerk in Milwaukee. I want to hear his or her story about the time the Secret Service showed up in the middle of the morning with some very special guests.