In 1963, First Lady Laura Bush Was Responsible For A Tragic Accident That Killed A Friend
Bush Ran A Stop Sign
On November 6, 1963, 17-year-old Laura Bush, then Laura Welch, and her friend Judy Dykes, were on their way to see a movie at the drive-in theater in Laura’s hometown of Midland, Texas. Laura was driving her father’s car, a new Chevy Impala. She ran a stop sign going about 50 mph and slammed into Michael Douglas’s Corvair Monza, a compact sedan. News reports from 1963 state that Douglas suffered a broken neck when he was thrown from his vehicle. He was pronounced dead on arrival when he reached Midland Memorial Hospital.
Laura Was Good Friends With The Boy She Killed
On Larry King Live, Laura Bush explained that she and Michael Douglas grew up together and were very good friends; he's even in home videos from her childhood. In her book, Spoken from the Heart, she describes her and Michael's relationship as close. “[Michael and I] talked on the phone for hours, and Mike’s circle of friends included nearly all of my own," she wrote. "And so it was unbelievable that it was his car in that almost always empty intersection.”
Mike was extremely well liked in high school. He was the school football and track star, and he was nominated Most Popular Boy as a junior, an award that typically went to a senior.
Michael's Father Saw The Entire Crash
Michael Douglas’s father was driving behind his son when Laura crashed into the boy’s vehicle. In an interview with Larry King, Laura says that after the accident her and Judy stood to the side of their car and watched a man rush over to the injured victim. Judy said "I think that's [the victim's] father." Bush responded, "No, that can't be the father. That's Mr. Douglas." Laura simply couldn't believe that her close friend was the victim of the car accident.
Police Didn't Conduct A Sobriety Test
In the early ‘60s, it was rare for police to administer a sobriety test, so the police report from the crash didn’t indicate whether Laura had been drinking. In her book, Bush insists that she was not intoxicated. Despite a lack of evidence, much speculation surrounds this subject, however. A.L. Bardach from The Daily Beast interviewed several of Laura's old neighborhood friends, and they said she grew up surrounded by alcohol. Richard Pendleton was just a few years older than Laura, and he was the brother of Laura's close friend, Jeannie Bohn. Pendleton described Laura’s parents as habitual heavy drinkers:
What I remember about them is that every day at 4:00, you could set the clock for Happy Hour. Her mom and dad were lushes. They were nice people, don’t get me wrong. I feel badly about saying that, but it was every day about 4:00 'til about 7. And it was every day. I can always remember going over there, collecting for the paper, and they would be all in a good mood and laughing and partying and again always very friendly with me. I can’t stress that enough. They were nice people. But they were partying people, so Laura grew up in that type of household. She was a party girl.
Michael's Mother Used To Call Laura's Mother In The Middle Of The Night
Richard Pendleton recalls in an interview with The Daily Beast that the Douglas family sued the Welch family. Pendleton's father was a banker, and Laura's father, Harold Welch, asked to borrow a large sum of money after the accident. According to the police report, charges were never filed, but the families seemed to settle out of court for an undisclosed amount.
Pendleton also notes that the Douglas family called the Welches often, even after the families settled the case. "Michael Douglas's mother kept calling [Laura's mother] in the middle of the night crying, 'Your daughter killed my son,'" said Pendleton.
Laura And Judy Weren't Badly Injured
Laura Bush was injured but not badly hurt in the accident. Bush was treated at Midland Memorial Hospital, which is where she learned that Michael died. She told Larry King that she was thrown from her car. “In those awful seconds, the car door must have been flung open by the impact, and my body rose in the air until gravity took over and I was pulled, hard and fast, back to earth,” she wrote in her memoir. Judy, her friend in the passenger seat, didn't suffer any serious injuries either.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Jeannie Bohn, Laura's close childhood friend, said that Laura didn't return to school for about a month. "She was in pretty bad [physical] shape," said Bohn. "Laura was pretty banged up, and... so was Judy."
She Didn't Attend Michael's Funeral Or Reach Out To His Parents
After the accident, Laura didn’t attend Michael's funeral or contact the Douglas family. In her book, she says that she wanted to go to the service, but her parents forced her to stay home because they feared it would upset her even more. "Looking back now, with the wisdom of another 45 years, I know that I should have gone to see the Douglases; I should have reached out to them. At 17 I assumed that they would prefer I vanish, that I would only remind them of their loss,” Laura wrote in her memoir.
The Accident Rattled Her Faith
In her memoir, Laura Bush says that she still feels horribly guilty about the accident to this day. "In the aftermath all I felt was guilty, very guilty,” she wrote. “In fact, I still do. It is a guilt I will carry for the rest of my life, far more visible to me that the scar etched in the bump of my knee." Laura also said that the accident made her question her belief in god, because she prayed for something so resolutely and felt ignored.
“I lost my faith that November, lost it for many, many years,” Laura wrote. “It was the first time that I had prayed to God for something, begged him for something, not the simple childhood wishing on a star but humbly begging for another human life. And it was as if no one heard. My begging, to my 17-year-old mind, had made no difference. The only answer was the sound of Mrs. Douglas’ sobs on the other side of that thin emergency room curtain.”
The Tragedy Changed Laura's Personality
Richard Pendleton said that Laura didn't leave her house for months after the accident. When the community did see her, she "would go to the car with a hat on her head and sunglasses, like Jackie Kennedy or something." He noted that in the months after the crash, Laura would walk "straight from the car into the house, and she was not driving.... Her mom and dad would be driving her or maybe a friend would let her off."
Pendleton described Laura's personality before the accident as "not librarian-like." "Laura would have been a cheerleader or somebody that would have been in public-type work," said Pendleton. "She was not Mother Teresa. She was an average girl who partied." After Michael's death, however, she grew more somber.
Michael's Death Shook Up Their Midland, TX Community
Jeannie Bohn states that the community had a very difficult time dealing with Michael's untimely death. "The thing that I remember the most is... the tragedy of it, and what our school felt, and what it did to our community," said Bohn. "And what Laura and her family went through, and what the Douglas family went through. Laura went back to school and graduated with me... The parents were just devastated, the neighborhood was just devastated... And like I said, we were at a young age. And it had a real effect on Laura. A lasting effect on Laura."
The Police Report Was Made Public In 2000
Laura Bush personally addressed the crash in her 2010 memoir, nearly 45 years after it happened, but information was made available to the public 10 years earlier. In 2000, a two-page report detailing the crash was released by the Midland Police Department.
She Now Councils Other Young People Responsible For Crashes
Since the report became public, Laura Bush says she's received letters from young people who have caused car accidents. The letters ask for her advice on how to come to terms with the tragedy.
"Each time, I've answered. I've told them that, although you will never get over what happened, there will come a time in your life when you can move on,” she wrote. "Sometimes the letters are to kids who were drinking, but a lot of them are just like I was, an inexperienced, 17-year-old driver who didn't have a good concept of where I was in town, who didn't know how far I'd gone in the dark or how close I was to the intersection."
