Who2 Editorial Blog
Notes and Commentary from the Editors
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Bush Twins: Born in Dallas
With Jenna Bush engaged to be married, this seems like as good a time as any to clarify a fact about her past: Jenna and her twin sister Barbara were born in Dallas.
Their birthplace has often been reported as Midland, Texas. That's the hometown of the twins' mother, Laura Bush, and it is where Laura and George W. Bush were living in 1981, when the twins were born. But because of difficulties with the pregnancy, Laura Bush traveled to Dallas to have the twins. We ran onto this fact some time ago in a transcript from the CNN show Inside Politics. The show aired on 19 September 2000, and included a clip of George Bush talking to Oprah Winfrey about the birth:
...[Laura] became ill, she got toxic -- toxemia and so. We had to move from out of West Texas and she moved to the hospital in Dallas and she got on the airplane. She said, these babies are going to be born healthy.Here's a more recent source: Wikipedia recently linked a November PR release from Baylor University Medical Center, which states:
In 1981, 2 famous births occurred at BUMC: Laura and George W. Bush became the proud parents of twin daughters... Multiple births are considered high risk, so the neonatal facilities and specialists available at BUMC made it the logical choice for this special delivery.(Note to college buffs: Yes, Baylor University is in Waco, Texas, but the medical center is in Dallas, 100 miles north.)
Given these sources, it seems fair to say that the Bush twins were indeed born in Dallas.
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 3:27 AM 
5 Comments:
I'm curious about your first sentence. What other type of engagement is there other than to lead to marriage?
Heh! Good question.
People are occasionally "engaged" to cook, to provide legal services ("we've engaged a lawyer"), or to wrassle other tasks.
They also can be engaged in conversation, engaged in an argument, etc, etc.
The OneLook dictionary site has a good rundown in the right column of its index page on engaged.
But overall, you're right: that sentence might have been constructed more artfully: "Now that Jenna Bush is to be married..." or "With Jenna Bush engaged to marry [oop!] Henry Hager..."
Given that last alternative, maybe it's harder to keep out of there than I thought.
Which twin was born first, exactly? I cannot seem to find this information easily...
Barbara was born a few minutes before Jenna. As noted in our profile of Jenna, "Her fraternal twin, Barbara, was born a few minutes before her. Jenna is blonde, Barbara brunette."
What is Jenna's middle name?
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