Kennedy: Laura Bush 'Enormously Elegant'

Even President Bush’s leading Senate critic Ted Kennedy has nothing but praise for first lady Laura Bush, calling her "enormously elegant.”

Appearing on Larry King’s CNN talk show to discuss politics and plug his new book "America Back on Track,” Sen. Kennedy was asked where he was on 9/11 – and he revealed that he shared the impact of that tragedy with Laura Bush.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Laura was scheduled to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee about the need to improve reading instruction.

Kennedy said he was preparing for the hearing and "the phone rang in my office. It was my wife calling. The first plane had crashed ... I thought this is unusual, distressing, bizarre.

"And then the second plane crashed and we obviously knew it was something and tried to get a hold of Mrs. Bush and she was already in the building, in the Russell Building.

"And I remember going out to the door and seeing her walk down the corridor and probably the Secret Service had known just at this time but she was walking down. She was probably 50, 75 yards down the corridor walking in front of her Secret Service," Kennedy continued.

"She came into our office. Senator Gregg from New Hampshire was there ...

"We sat down in that office at this time and she was enormously elegant, dignified, a woman of great composure, strength.”

Kennedy said he and Laura talked about the attack on America and while they "didn't have a real idea of the grasp of the situation, the depth of it, but nonetheless she had her own sort of thoughts and you can imagine her thinking, her husband and children.”

Kennedy told King that the room opposite his office was by then filled with members of the press who were there to cover the first lady’s appearance at the hearing.

"She went in and just spoke very briefly to the press about how we all had to maintain our calmness and that she had been thinking of those that were affected.”

Author Ronald Kessler also gives a detailed account of those intimate moments, and other dramatic events that unfolded for Laura on 9/11, in his best-selling new biography "Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady.” [Editor’s Note: Check out this FREE offer for Ron Kessler’s "Laura Bush” -- Go Here Now.]

Kessler writes that when Laura met Kennedy in his office, "Kennedy was cordial and gave Laura a painting he had done. Lawrence McQuillen of USA Today asked Laura, ‘Mrs. Bush, you know, children are kind of struck by all this. Is there a message you could tell to the nation?’

"‘Well,’ Laura said, looking a bit tense, ‘parents need to reassure their children everywhere in our country that they’re safe.’

"At that point,” Kessler writes, "Laura became the ‘comforter in chief,’ calmly reassuring the nation and dispensing advice on how parents should deal with the tragedy.”