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In new book, Laura Bush discusses 1963 fatal crash - TODAY
DALLAS - Former first lady Laura Bush says in her new book that she lost her faith for many years after her pleas to God to spare the life of a high school classmate whose car she hit were not answered.
Bush talks in detail for the first time publicly of the accident she was involved in as a 17-year-old in Midland, Texas, that killed her friend Mike Douglas. She says that she and a girlfriend were on their way to a drive-in theater on Nov. 6, 1963, when she ran a stop sign and hit Douglas' car.
She also dispels rumors that she ever considered leaving her husband over his drinking, saying she never told him it was "Jim Beam or me." She says that while his drinking was indeed a problem at one point, they loved each other and never considered divorce.
But she says he was "a bore" when he drank too much and she felt he could be a "better man."
She says her husband would drink bourbon before dinner, beer during and B&B after, a combination she called "lethal" but "completely accepted" by their social circle.
The man who went on to serve two terms as president quit drinking in 1986 at the age of 40. She says his decision came as a result of a growing religious faith, being a husband and a father and recognizing that "failures are best met head-on, clear-eyed."