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Barbara Bush, the 37th first lady of the United States, is being remembered by her family as a "woman unlike any other" who brought "levity, love and literacy to millions".
A family statement announced Mrs Bush had died at the age of 92. She had recently been in and out of hospital but in recent days announced she would instead return home to "focus on comfort care".
"Our souls are settled because we know hers was," her son, former president George W Bush said.
He added that his mother "kept us on our toes and kept us laughing until the end".
Mrs Bush was the second woman in history to be both a wife and a mother of a United States president — her husband George HW Bush preceded her son in the Oval Office.
Abigail Adams was the wife of the second president, John Adams, and mother of the sixth president, John Quincy Adams.
The Bush family matriarch had been treated for decades for Graves' disease, a thyroid condition.
She also had heart surgery in 2009 for a severe narrowing of her main heart valve and was hospitalised a year before that for surgery on a perforated ulcer.
Mrs Bush married George HW Bush on January 6, 1945.
They had six children and were married longer than any presidential couple in American history.
Eight years after she and her husband left the White House, Mrs Bush stood with her husband as their eldest son George W Bush was sworn in as the 43rd president.
President Donald Trump paid tribute to Mrs Bush as "an advocate of the American family".
"Amongst her greatest achievements was recognising the importance of literacy as a fundamental family value that requires nurturing and protection," the President and the First Lady Melania Trump said in a statement.
Former president and first lady Barack and Michelle Obama described Mrs Bush as "the rock of a family dedicated to public service".
"We'll always be grateful to Mrs Bush for the generosity she showed to us throughout our time in the White House, but we're even more grateful for the way she lived her life — as a testament to the fact that public service is an important and noble calling; as an example of the humility and decency that reflects the very best of the American spirit," their statement read.
'Everybody's grandmother'
Barbara Pierce was born June 8, 1925 in Rye, New York.
She met George HW Bush at a dance during Christmas vacation when she was 16.
They became engaged a year-and-a-half later, just before he went to fight in World War II as a naval aviator.
The pair married shortly after his return, when Barbara was 19, and moved to Texas.
Her husband went into the oil business before turning to a life of politics and public service.
Mrs Bush's brown hair began to grey in the 1950s while her three-year-old daughter Pauline, known to her family as Robin, underwent treatment for leukemia.
After Pauline's death in October 1953, Mrs Bush eschewed dying her hair.
She later said that dyed hair did not look good on her and credited the colour to the public's perception of her as "everybody's grandmother".
Her son George W said that a "crowning achievement" of his father, who was fond of coming up with nicknames for friends and family, was anointing Barbara "The Silver Fox".
But her daughter-in-law Laura Bush told a White House correspondents dinner in 2005 the matriarch was no "sweet grandmotherly aunt Bea type".
"She's actually more like (fictional Mafia Godfather) Don Corleone," she said.
George W also noted in his post-presidency book Decision Points that he inherited a quick, blunt temper from his mother.
Literacy legacy and the famous pearls
Mrs Bush's triple-strand false pearl necklace sparked a national fashion trend when she wore them to her husband's inauguration in 1989.
The pearls became synonymous with the first lady, who later said she selected them to hide the wrinkles in her neck.
The candid admission only bolstered her common sense and down-to-earth public image.
A version of the necklace, "the famous triple strand, hand-knotted on a gold-toned clasp," was even available for $125 at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M University.
During her White House years, Mrs Bush established The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, with a goal to improve the lives of disadvantaged Americans by boosting literacy among parents and their children.
The foundation partnered with local programs and had awarded more than $40 million as of 2014 to create or expand more than 1,500 literacy programs nationwide.
"Focusing on the family is the best place to start to make this country more literate, and I still feel that being more literate will help us solve so many of the other problems facing our society," she wrote in her 1994 memoir.
Along with her memoirs, Mrs Bush wrote two books based on the lives of her dogs.
Proceeds from the books benefited adult and family literacy programs.
ABC/wires
Topics: death, community-and-society, united-states
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