[3] On September 23, 1949, Pauline Robinson Pierce, Barbara's mother, was killed in a car accident, which also injured her father, Marvin.

[6] On December 20, 1949, Barbara delivered a baby girl, whom she named Pauline Robinson Bush, after her late mother.

Barbara believed Robin had come down with what her mother had referred to as "spring fever,"[14] as, up until that point, she had been "as rowdy and healthy" as her brothers.

Almost immediately, their friends from the country club were discussing Robin's diagnosis, and George called his uncle, John M. Walker, president of Memorial Hospital in New York City.

"[15] The very next day, leaving George W. and Jeb with different friends, they both flew to New York and had Robin admitted into Sloan Kettering.

[18] For the next six months, Barbara largely remained in New York with Robin, while George traveled back and forth, due to his job.

She spent time in an oxygen tent, and her platelets were low enough that whenever she started bleeding it was very difficult to ascertain when it would stop.

Eventually, due to her medication,[25] Robin developed heavy bruising, which almost entirely covered one of her legs, and "a hundred or so" stomach ulcers.

He would later describe this as the only low point of his happy childhood,[18] remembering the sadness he felt both for his parents and for the loss of his sister.

[32] He and his brother Jeb then became their mother's focal points, and she devoted her time to caring for them, as a means of overcoming her daughter's death.

[37] In 2000, Robin's remains were transferred from Connecticut to the family's future burial plot at the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas.

"[38] Following Robin's death, the Bush family created a charity to raise awareness and money for leukemia research called the Bright Star Foundation.

[33] The impact of the Bright Star Foundation was acknowledged by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2004, when it opened the Robin Bush Child and Adolescent Clinic.

The cartoon was shared by various people and relatives of the family, including George W.'s daughter, Jenna Bush Hager.

[41] Following her father's death in November of that same year, Robin would be featured again in another Ramsey cartoon, where she and Barbara greeted George H. W. after the latter landing a TBM Avenger (the type of airplane he flew in the Navy during World War II) in heaven.