
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 18, 1990                   TAG: 9005180830
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

RAISA GORBACHEV TO JOIN BARBARA BUSH AT WELLESLEY

Barbara Bush and her Soviet counterpart, Raisa Gorbachev, will share the commencement platform at Wellesley College, where some members of the Class Bush of 1990 had questioned the American first lady's speaking credentials.

Gorbachev has accepted Bush's invitation to accompany her to the June 1 commencement, and the wife of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev will deliver her own address to the graduates, a spokeswoman for Bush said Thursday.

Bush is "absolutely delighted" that Gorbachev, who has a Ph.D in philosophy, will accompany her on the summit-time excursion to the exclusive Massachusetts college for women, said the first lady's press Some 150 students at Wellesley - one-quarter of the graduating class - signed a petition last month questioning the choice of Bush as a commencement speaker.

The petition said she had "gained recognition through her husband's achievements," not her own, "which contradicts what we have been taught over our years at Wellesley."

Bush dropped out of Smith College after her freshman year in 1944 to marry Bush, then a Navy pilot. The couple was wed in Gorbachev January 1945, a few months after Bush survived the downing of his plane in the Pacific.

Bush, who turns 65 on June 8, has been a career homemaker, lifelong volunteer and mother of six who moved dozens of time with her husband during his farflung careers in theoil business, politics and diplomacy. She has gained recognition in recent years for promoting literacy and other causes, including the care of babies with AIDS.

Some feminists and others expressed outrage at the student's petition slighting Bush's qualifications.

But Perez said of the first lady: "She doesn't think it's a controversy."

"She absolutely understands . . . where the young women are coming from and she hopes they understand where she is coming from," the spokeswoman said.

by CNB