Barbara Bush, in a commencement speech clouded by controversy over women's roles in modern American life, exhorted Wellesley College graduates Friday to put friends and family first in their lives, whatever careers they pursue.
She was joined at the women's college graduation by Raisa Gorbachev, who delivered her own words of advice to the 575 graduates and nearly 5,000 other guests gathered inside a white tent on this sylvan campus.Even as the first ladies arrived, some of the seniors who protested the choice of President Bush's homemaker wife as their commencement speaker fired off a new letter urging Mrs. Bush to "take a definitive and vocal stand" on abortion rights and other issues. Copies were placed on each chairs.
acknowledged with a joke the controversy over her appearance.
"I know your first choice for today was Alice Walker, known for `The Color Purple,' " she said. "Instead you got me, known for the color of my hair." (George Bush affectionately calls her the Silver Fox.)
She noted that the roles of men and women were changing.
"Maybe we should adjust faster, maybe slower," she said. "But whatever the era, whatever the times, one thing will never change: Fathers and mothers, if you have children, they must come first.
"Your success as a family - our success as a society - depends not on what happens at the White House, but on what happens inside your house."
Mrs. Gorbachev, dressed in a gray suit rather than the traditional gown worn by commencement speakers, told the graduates that women "have our special mission."
"Always, even in the most cruel and troubled times, women have had the mission of peacemaking, humanism, mercy and kindness," she said. "And if people in the world today are more confident of a peaceful future, we have to give a great deal of credit for that to women."
Mrs. Bush told the women, "You will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent."
Mrs. Bush, who turns 65 on June 12, dropped out of Smith College in 1944 in her sophomore year to marry her teenage sweetheart, George Bush, then a torpedo-bomber pilot for the Navy.
Before returning to Washington in midafternoon, the first ladies took a driving tour of downtown Boston. They stopped at the Boston Public Gardens and met with about 30 students from the Mathers School, the oldest public school.