It was a sad day for me as I learned that former President George Herbert Walker Bush, known as Bush 41 has joined the love of his life, Barbara Bush who passed on my oldest daughter’s birthday, April 17, 2018. She was 92. Bush 41 passed on December 2nd at 94. They had been married for 73 years.

While I never had the pleasure of meeting Bush 41, I met his wife Barbara and his three sons, President George W. Bush, known as Bush 43, Neil Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Jeb’s wife Columba and their son, Jeb, Jr.

I came to know that this was one of the kindest and gentlest family in politics. In fact, it was my relationship with Jeb that was the catalyst behind my having the courage to leave the Democratic plantation and join the Republican Party.

Like every other Black person I had heard that the Bush family was filled with racists. Then I met Jeb Bush and discovered that I had been lied to. He was nowhere near the racist that Democrats and the liberal media had made him out to be.

I became so enamored with Jeb that I worked on his campaign to become Florida’s 43rd governor. I opened up his campaign office in Liberty City, the first Republican campaign office in a Black neighborhood in the country. It was not Jeb nor any Republican that showed hatred toward me, but the Black thugs who cut the power to our campaign office during the early morning hours of Election Day.

Thankfully, my relationship with top management of Florida Power and Light had us up and running less than two hours after the polls opened, so we barely missed a beat. We hired Black campaign workers from the community and helped Jeb win in November, 1998.

It was Jeb who introduced me to his brother, George W. Bush as he was running to become POTUS 43. It was such a great honor to meet the man who would become known as Bush 43 as he treated me like an old friend.

While Democrats and the Liberal mainstream media pushed propaganda that Bush 43 was a racist, I discovered that one of his closest friends and spiritual advisors was a Black Methodist minister, Rev. Caldwell, who presided over his daughter, Jenna Bush’s wedding to Henry Hager in 2008.

Jeb also introduced me to his other brother, Neil Bush, who served on the board of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) and according to former UNCF president, William “Bill” Gray, raised more money for Black college kids going to HBCU’s than any of his other board members combined. And in 2014, Koch Industries, Inc. and the Charles Koch Foundation made a $25 million grant to UNCF, more than likely as a result of Neil Bush’s involvement.

Jeb formed a long-term relationship with T. Willard Fair, President of the Urban League of Greater Miami, Inc. and the two of them were responsible for getting the charter school bill passed by the Florida Legislature and they created the first charter school in the State and named it The Liberty City Charter School. Jeb served on its board as did my oldest daughter, Cheri Howard Perry and three of her children (and my grandchildren) attended there.

It was at this school that I met the matriarch of the Bush family, Barbara Bush. As I watched her beam with pride while several little Black girls and boys at the charter school climbed all over Jeb, loving on him, it was then that I realized why Jeb and his brothers were so nice to all of us.

It was because their parents, Barbara and Bush 41, had taught them the value of kindness and love to all human beings of all races, creeds and colors. So while I never met Bush 41, I feel sadness at his passing as I did at the passing of Barbara Bush.

They were kind, decent and loving people and not the evil, racists that the Left tried to make them out to be. I remember when Bush 41 bragged about his brown grandson (his chocolate child), son of Jeb and Columba, who is Mexican, the liberal MSM accused him of saying racist things about his own grandchild, which was a cruel lie.

He loved George P. Bush, who became an attorney, a former U.S. Navy Reserve Officer and is now Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office.

You can tell how a person was raised by the manner in which they treat others. And I know first hand that George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Bush raised their children according to Proverbs 22:6 (KJV), which says “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it”.

Proverbs 23:24 (KJV) says “The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him. Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice.”

They loved the Lord and they taught their children to be good Christians who stayed true to their faith. God bless them all and the family can now celebrate the passing of this great patriarch, knowing that he is with his wife and they both will spend eternity in Heaven with their Lord and my God.