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Purdue Talk About Bush Family's White House Time Stays Away From Politics

Miyu Sumimoto
/
WBAA News

Before a crowd at Purdue University Thursday night, former First Lady Laura Bush and her daughters spent time telling the college town crowd of the importance of education.

Laura Bush talked of her time creating a women’s council that promotes education for women in Afghanistan.

Jenna Bush, who’s been a teacher and is now an on-again, off-again TV contributor, says she, in her words, “wasn’t proud of the country” and decided to focus on education as a way of making change.

The two spoke alongside Jenna’s sister Barbara Bush in a program called “Women in the White House and Beyond,” but did not take questions from the audience and deliberately steered the conversation away from most political topics.

Barbara talked about the activities of her group, the Global Health Corps, which she helped found in 2008 and which is working to promote more sanitary practices in places such as Africa.

She implored today’s college students to join the cause of promoting appropriate health habits.

Barbara, who was born to a wealthy family, talked of her travels to six continents, saying she believes she was born in the “right place at the right time” and that people struggling with proper health in the developing world were born in the “wrong place at the wrong time.”