Jenna Bush Hager, sister Barbara visit children's hospital to honor late grandmother's legacy

Jenna Bush Hager and her twin sister, Barbara Pierce Bush, are doing their part to carry on the work started by their late grandmother, former first lady Barbara Bush.

In a segment that aired on TODAY Nov. 7, Jenna recalled how she and her sister were influenced by their grandmother, who died at the age of 92 in 2018, and witnessed her impact through deeds like reading to patients at the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital in Portland, Maine. Bush even spent her 86th birthday reading to patients at the hospital, which was named in her honored in 1998, and her commitment has stayed with her granddaughters.

“We haven’t had her in our life in five years,” Jenna said while she and Barbara visited the hospital during the TODAY segment. “And so to be reminded of her just in the little things around this place always makes us feel pretty good.”

Bush’s love for kids was rooted in tragedy. She and her husband, late President George H.W. Bush, endured the death of their daughter Robin, who died of leukemia at a young age.

“She lost her daughter when her daughter was 4 and went through the process of caring for a sick child and knowing how challenging it is,” Barbara said. “And so (she) wanted to make sure that other families had support.”

The Bush twins spent so much of their time growing up in Maine, seeing the joy in their grandmother’s world come together.

“When we were little, even when my grandmother was first lady, all of us, Barbara and I and all of our cousins, would spend almost the whole summer (in Maine), and our parents were sometimes there, and they sometimes weren’t,” Jenna said.

“And I think for her, she had three really great loves. She had her grandchildren. She had reading. And she had my grandfather. And we felt that love by her presence, by the fact that she wanted us around all the time. She loved us, but she loved other children, too, and so when she was thinking about ways to give back, kids were always sort of at the forefront.”

“Kids and reading," Barbara added while visiting the children's hospital. "She loved those two things and I know she used to come here and read to kids here."

The sisters have followed in their grandmother’s footsteps by reading their new children’s book, “Love Comes First,” to kids in the same room at the hospital where the former first lady once read a decade ago.

It was a full circle moment that meant a lot to Jenna and Barbara.

“I think our ganny would be so thrilled because one of the things that she loved was service and knowing that the next generation was going to leave our world a little bit kinder than we’d left it,” Jenna said. “And so the fact that we get to go hang with kids who spend their time trying to spread joy to others, I think she’d be pretty happy.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com