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We recognize the role of first lady as it exists today because of Eleanor Roosevelt. A compassionate and smart woman with an activist spirit, she was not content to just entertain others and serve her husband domestically. She was a public servant intent on sharing her voice with the world in order to do good.
Eleanor Roosevelt's lifelong quest to understand and improve the lives of others began on a local level and gradually expanded to encompass much of the world. In the process, she compelled herself to square off against daunting challenges that stretched her beyond what others thought she could (or should) do.
Today, the National Portrait Gallery remembers the life and legacy of Former First Lady Barbara Bush.
The White House is not a residence for the meek or the timid; the White House of Gerald and Betty Ford was no exception. President Ford was a star athlete turned politician, while Mrs. Ford was a gifted dancer turned political support team. The Fords stepped up the Washington political and social ladder more than two and a half decades, beginning with Gerald Ford’s election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1948.
It has been almost thirty years since President Jimmy Carter and his wife, First Lady Rosalynn Carter, left the White House. In that time, both President and Mrs. Carter have worked tirelessly on humanitarian efforts and both, now in their eighties, continue to work for multiple causes, never assuming that their octogenarian status implies that they should retire or that their work is somehow finished.
On Friday, May 7, the National Portrait Gallery is hosting a book-signing with author and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
It is difficult to know the character of the Lincolns’ relationship. When Lincoln wed Mary Todd in 1842, he married into a well-established Illinois family.
Claudia Taylor’s nursemaid declared that she was as pretty as a “ladybird,” a nickname that stuck with her through her entire life. Lady Bird Johnson graduated from high school at age fifteen and earned two degrees at the University of Texas: a B.A. in 1933 and a degree in journalism in 1934. That same year, she met Lyndon Johnson, a young legislative secretary. After a brief courtship—best characterized by her statement that “sometimes Lyndon simply takes your breath away”—they were married.
Gilbert Stuart painted this portrait of Martha Washington at the same time he did that of the president. Both paintings were commissioned by the Washingtons. They were never completed, however, and the artist kept them in his possession until his death.
Dolley Madison served as White House hostess during the administrations of the widowed Thomas Jefferson and her own husband, James Madison. Her effervescence doubtless accounted, in part at least, for the popularity of Madison's presidency in its last several years. After the end of Madison’s term in 1817, Dolley helped her husband put his papers in order, selling a portion of them to Congress after his death.
Two hundred and fifty years ago today, George Washington, a land owner and an officer in the Virginia militia, and Martha Dandridge Custis, a widow with two children, were wed at White House, the Custis home in New Kent County, Virginia, that Martha inherited upon the death of her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis.
President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush unveiled portraits of themselves commissioned for the National Portrait Gallery in a private ceremony at the museum this morning. The paintings will be on public view beginning today. This is the first time that the Portrait Gallery will present the official likenesses of a sitting president and first lady.