KENNEBUNKPORT (NEWS CENTER Maine) - The number one thing you will hear about Barbara Bush is that she always treated everyone equally, like they were family.
Two men from two walks of life will tell you that Mrs. Bush treated them like one of her own. One is a friend who boated with the family in Kennebunkport. The other, Mrs. Bush’s personal driver.
Stephen Spelinhauer and his wife met the Bushes the summer after they moved out of the White House. “People would always say, 'What do you talk about? Do you talk about politics?' And I would say, 'No! We talk about things that friends talk about. We talk bout Kennebunkport, we talk about people that are visiting them, we talk about their family, the kids and the grandkids.’”
They weren't the President and First Lady out on their boat in Kennebunkport - they were just good friends. “Just talk to some of the Secret Service people who served them over the years,” he said. “They always put the Secret Service's needs...sometimes above their own.”
He’s right – and Scarborough resident Paul Beeler can attest to that. He worked in the Secret Service and at one point was Mrs. Bush's personal driver. “She treated you just as if you were one of her children,” he said.
He says the first lady took care of everyone - even holding an annual summer barbecue for the secret service and their families. What made her special, in his mind, was her “nature of her treating people on an equal basis.”
Mrs. Bush's close friends worry about 41 now - because the love they saw when she was alive, they can't imagine him without.
“They were inseparable,” Beeler said. “She took care of him and he took care of her.”
“I was always amazed that they would be places where no one would see them, and they would still be holding hands,” Spelinhauer said.
Former President George H.W. Bush released a statement Wednesday afternoon telling people that he's grateful for the love and support - and to cross the Bushes off your worry list.
Stephen and his wife are headed down to Houston for Mrs. Bush's private funeral.