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Two things about Barbara Bush you didn't know

Barbara Bush biographer Susan Page says the matriarch and former First Lady suffered depression and Graves' Disease
Credit: Sean Rayford
GREENVILLE, SC - Former first lady Mrs. Barbara Bush waves to the crowd at a campaign event for her son, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, February 19, 2016 (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (WUSA9) — A lot of people remember Barbara Bush as a grandmotherly figure with a cloud of white hair and a strand of fake pearls. But there were plenty of things we didn't know about her.

Susan Page of USA Today, who has spent hours interviewing Barbara Bush for a biography due out next year, said the former First Lady rarely talked about her struggles with depression and Graves' disease.

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Mrs. Bush wrote in her memoirs that she was hit by depression so severe in 1975 that she contemplated suicide. Page said she told her it was so bad, she would think about driving her car into a tree, and would have to pull over until the thought passed.

She was diagnosed with Graves' Disease soon after becoming First Lady. It left her in pain and gave her double vision.

But Page says she took her struggles without any public complaint.

Susan Page's biography will be called, "The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty."

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