“I think The Smile Train is a terrific idea. It will help hundreds of thousands of children who are currently living desperate lives of shame and isolation.”
President George H.W. Bush, 1997
President George H.W. Bush was instrumental in getting Smile Train up and running.
We were able to brief President Bush about the Smile Train program shortly before he met with President Jiang Zemin of China when he visited the United States in 1997. President Bush told President Zemin we wanted to launch Smile Train in China.
President Zemin loved the idea and immediately told his people to make it happen. Even though the China Minister of Railways shot down our idea of an actual train traveling around China providing surgeries and leaving trained surgeons and equipment behind, we did keep the name and ended up launching the Smile Train program in China. (Turns out we never needed the train!)
President Bush and his wife Barbara helped a lot. They came to Beijing with us in 2001 for the official launch of Smile Train and their presence got us on the cover of every newspaper and magazine in China. Our PR company estimated that more than 460 million Chinese saw news coverage of the Smile Train launch.
Five years later, President Bush and his wife Barbara came back to China with us for a second time and they helped us garner even more publicity.
I was lucky enough to get to go to the “White House” of China with President Bush and his wife Barbara for a private meeting with the President of China, Jiang Zemin. We traveled to the “White House” in a presidential motorcade and I ended up in a car all alone with Barbara Bush. She couldn’t have been nicer and was asking me all kinds of questions about our program.
She wanted to know what causes clefts so I explained that clefts can because by all kinds of things. For instance, if a woman smokes and drinks a lot during the pregnancy that can cause a cleft.
Barbara Bush let out a big laugh and told me, “Well I smoked and drank when I was pregnant with all of my kids and one of them is the Governor of Florida and the other is running for President!”
At the Chinese “White House”, there were only a few of us in an enormous room for our big meeting with the President of China. It was just President Bush, China President Jiang Zemin, Barbara Bush, the US ambassador to China, me and two interpreters.
It was quite an experience to sit for a couple of hours and listen to two presidents of the world’s most important countries have a very warm and cordial conversation. You could tell that they both had great respect and affection for one another.
None of us were permitted to speak of course. But at one point President of Jiang Zemin kept asking President Bush who the famous American actor that loves Tibet so much was and President Bush couldn’t remember. After a very long pause, I couldn’t resist and said, “That would be Richard Gere.” The President of China said,” Yes! Thank you!” That was my only contribution to the meeting.
By far my favorite memory of these trips with President Bush and his wife to China was when he gave a very emotional speech about the importance of America and China having a strong, respectful relationship.
And afterward, about 100 children, all Smile Train patients, came on the stage and surrounded President Bush. Everybody gasped when President Bush plopped right down on that stage and was mobbed by those kids.
It was beautiful. It really showed you what kind of man he was and how much he cared about kids and how much he cared about China.
Photos of him hugging and playing with those kids were on the front page of every newspaper in China the next day.
After those trips, I always made a point of sending updates to President Bush to let them know that we were actually fulfilling all the promises we made to China when he helped us launch Smile Train.
Sometimes I would even fly down to Houston, to visit with President Bush and give him a personal update. The last time I went he was in his late 80s.
When I came into his office he gave me a warm greeting and struggled a little bit to stand. And I told him to sit right there and I pulled up a chair around the side of his big desk, opened up my laptop and started to show him some photos of the hundreds of thousands of children Smile Train had operated on in China.
It didn’t take long before he was grabbing a tissue and wiped the tears away. He always cried when I showed him photos of our patients.
When I told him just how much we’ve done in China he couldn’t believe it.
By this point, Smile Train was one of the biggest charity programs in China and we were in more than 500 hospitals spread across all of China. We had helped provide more than 150,000 surgeries for Chinese children.
“It’s a good thing we actually delivered on all those big promises you made in China when you helped us launch Smile Train back in 2001 President Bush!”
That gave them a big laugh and he responded, “I never had any doubt!”
President Bush used to send me handwritten Christmas cards and notes. He was such a gentleman in such a class act.
We were so lucky to have President Bush help us launch Smile Train. Thanks to him and Mrs. Bush, Smile Train got off to a great start in China and that laid the foundation for success in India and 90 other countries.
A decade later, when we launched our next surgical charity, WonderWork, President Bush supported us with that as well. And right before he died in 2018, he sent me the nicest note about Smile Train and WonderWork that you can see below.
One of the best parts about my job is that I get the chance to meet truly extraordinary people.
Sometimes they are peasants – and sometimes they’re Presidents.
I’ll always be grateful that I got the chance to meet you and get to know President George H. W. Bush.
