flfw:

As a boy, one of his nicknames - he had several - was 'Have-Half,' after his habit of always sharing half his sandwich with whoever was there. Another was 'Poppy,' followed years later by the somewhat more exotic 'Vishnu.'

'Have-Half' remained apt later in his life. As vice president, Mr Bush would stay over in Washington for Christmas rather than go home to Houston, so that his Secret Service detail could spend the day with their families. When, a few years ago, the two-year-old child of one of his Secret Service agents was stricken with cancer, Mr Bush shaved his own head bald in solidarity.

There are dozens, scores, hundreds such stories about George Herbert Walker Bush's noblesse oblige -or as he called it, 'noblesse noblige.' [...]

He was, to use a term that has suffered of late from desuetude, a Christian gentleman. Paradigmatically so. His love was total, unconditional. He embodied Shakespeare's admonition that 'Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.' His soul was visible on his sleeve. And in his pocket there was always a handkerchief, usually damp.

I was present in 2004 at the National Cathedral in Washington when Mr Bush, struggling through his eulogy to Ronald Reagan, came close to breaking down. I'd seen him lose it so many times. He'd choke up during the playing of the National Anthem at a baseball game. The Navy Hymn brought forth Niagara falls. For a flinty New England blueblood Yankee, George Bush had the tear ducts of a Sicilian grandmother.

In November 1992 I phoned him at Camp David. It was a few days after his mother Dorothy had passed away. Just weeks before, he'd lost the presidency to a governor of Arkansas. Talk about a dark, drizzly November of the soul.

Dorothy Bush's funeral was the next day. I asked if he was going to give a eulogy.

'God no,' he said. 'I couldn't do it. I'd choke up. I would be permanently ensconced as a member of the Bawl Brigade.' The Bawl Brigade is Bush-speak for members of the family who cry easily. It constitutes a majority of Bushes.

He told me, 'I'd love to, but I know my limitations. I even choked up here at Camp David last night. We had our choir singing. We had a little vespers program with Amy Grant. It was so beautiful, and I found myself choking up. We had a bunch of friends up here and "Oh God," I said, "please hold back the floods."'

That was my Vishnu. I'm struggling now to hold back my own floods, but I'm also pinching myself, contemplating my amazing good fortune in having known this splendid man.

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