Somehow it feels like the whole city of Houston just lost its grandmother.

We all know her face just as surely as if she were someone in our own family. The classic inauguration day photo taken in 1989 shows Barbara Bush standing next to her husband, proudly and dutifully holding a Bible as he took the oath of office to become the only president of the United States from Houston. Another photo taken exactly 12 years later shows her sitting in the background as her oldest son, who grew up mostly in our city, swore the same oath to become the 43rd president.

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Maybe that’s the way the rest of the world saw her, but here in her hometown we look at her differently. We remember a familiar face sitting behind home plate at Minute Maid Park, sporting an Astros cap over a head of hair as white as the string of faux pearls around her neck - keeping score.

She always wore pearls. And she always kept score.

As America mourns the passing of a first lady, Houston mourns the loss of a neighbor, a civic advocate, a philanthropic leader and a beloved figure in our city. Barbara Bush was the matriarch of a political dynasty, yet she stayed stubbornly unassuming and approachable, a striking woman who graciously greeted strangers in supermarkets and movie theaters around her hometown.

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That straightforward personality is what Americans came to love about a first lady who wore $29 shoes to her husband’s inaugural ball. Perhaps that’s what attracted a 17-year-old boy to ask a 16-year-old girl to dance with him in December 1941, just a couple of weeks after Pearl Harbor. The story of love in wartime unfolded like an old movie. A few weeks later, George H. W. Bush was in the Pacific Theater, serving in World War II as the youngest aviator in the Navy up until that time. All the while, he would later recall, he was “thinking about a girl named Barbara.” Lt. Bush flew combat missions from the USS San Jacinto and won the Distinguished Flying Cross. And when he came home, he got the girl.

They had six children, and they moved their family dozens of times during the coming decades. As her husband spent more and more of his time managing a political career launched in the suburbs of west Houston, she famously became the family’s enforcer, the tough disciplinarian in charge of a boisterous clan. In time, some of the most powerful men in Washington came to fear her withering stare.

She quickly grew into a fierce protector of her family, a calling that became especially difficult in presidential politics. She readily joined her husband and sons on the campaign trail, developing into a not-so-secret weapon for what no one in the family wanted to call a political dynasty. But sometimes, as her husband watched campaign coverage on television, she recalled ignoring the din of political chatter and just sitting aside and reading. Barbara Bush didn’t care much for hearing people criticize her husband and her kids, and she wasn’t shy about letting people know it.

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And yet, she was a funny lady. With acerbic wit and unrelenting candor she confronted and deflected the inevitable negatives of a life in the public arena. She understood that her position as first lady wasn’t exactly a job; as her husband’s chief of staff, Jean Becker, succinctly observed, the occupation was an expectation. Americans look to the president’s wife to represent the nation with poise and kindness. Barbara Bush fulfilled that role not only in the White House, but long after she returned home to Houston.

Now we have lost yet another great Texas woman forged in equal parts of grace and steel, of decency and determination.

Today a statue of President George H.W. Bush overlooks Buffalo Bayou in downtown Houston, standing in the midst of a plaza dedicated in his honor. One of the plaques arrayed around the memorial shows him taking the oath of office, his hand placed on a Bible held by the woman standing at his side. As we remember the affable and inspirational woman who graced our city, this is how the world will remember her, the wife of one president and the mother of another, a formidable first lady.