Bushes’ 45th Anniversary: Not a Big Deal

President Bush and his wife, Barbara, celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary Saturday, marking the occasion with a quiet day at home before having dinner with friends and an evening at the theater.

The Bushes tend to honor such occasions without ballyhoo and do not exchange gifts, aides said. But they said the two agreed to remodel some rooms at their Kennebunkport, Me., home as a mutual gift.

On Saturday night, they dined with family members and friends at the White House and went to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to see the play “A Tuna Christmas.”

When the Bushes entered the theater, the audience stood and applauded enthusiastically. Bush, beaming, motioned with his hands for everyone to take their seats.

“They don’t make a big deal out of it,” one aide said.

The Bushes usually spend the weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md. But they stayed in Washington this weekend, in part, because Mrs. Bush is undergoing 10 days of radiation treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for an eye ailment.

Saturday was her fourth consecutive day of receiving the 10-minute radiation dose, which aides say causes her no side effects or curtailment of activity.

The eye condition is a result of Graves disease. It has caused her months of double vision and tearing.

Mrs. Bush took her usual 1-mile swim in the White House outdoor pool Saturday, Anna Maria Perez, her press secretary, said.

She wore a festive, multicolored dress at the theater.

The President spent part of the day working in the Oval Office.

On Friday night, the Bushes hosted a group of friends to see the movie “Always” in the White House theater, Perez said.

The Bushes were teen-age sweethearts who married Jan. 6, 1945, at the First Presbyterian Church in Mrs. Bush’s hometown of Rye, N.Y. The wedding took place while Bush was on leave from his service as a Navy pilot, a few months after he was shot down over the Pacific.

The couple met at a high school Christmas dance at a Greenwich, Conn., country club when she was 16 and he was 17.