Laura Bush stays on message
National parks her focus in visit with schoolchildren
She confided that the Grand Canyon is her favorite national park, hiking her favorite thing to do in a national park. Americans should also be advised: The first park she ever visited, she said, was Carlsbad Caverns, when she was a Girl Scout and her mother drove her there from their home in Midland, Texas.
As political appearances go, Laura Bush's visit to the Charlestown Navy Yard yesterday has to be classified among the least hard-hitting. Bush spent 45 minutes chatting with wide-eyed elementary school pupils about caves, brushing aside questions from reporters as Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey and Ann Romney, the governor's wife, stood silently in back.
''Caves are very delicate, so you don't want to harm them," Bush told one girl as the two rolled out Play-Doh to simulate how a cave is formed.
Bush was in the Bay State to promote National Park Week, highlighting America's natural beauty. Asked by a reporter about high gas prices, Bush smiled.
''No," she said. ''I'm going to talk about national parks."
Georga Morgan-Fleming, 10, a reporter for the Weekly Reader and a fifth-grader at St. Peter School in Cambridge, was the lone journalist granted the privilege of questioning Bush. She asked how Bush became honorary chairwoman of the National Park Foundation. Bush said the foundation asked, and she enthusiastically accepted.
''I thought it was really cool," Morgan-Fleming said afterward. ''It made me want to be a reporter, because it's fun."
MICHAEL LEVENSON 
