Alva Review-Courier -

WASHINGTON (AP) — It was a grace note for the ages.

"Dear Bill," George H.W. Bush scribbled Jan. 20, 1993, to the Democrat about to succeed him as president. "When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too."

Short yet intimate, the note left in the Oval Office from vanquished to victor seeded a friendship that flowered in the decades since, to a point where Bill Clinton said upon Bush's death Friday : "I just loved him."

Hillary Clinton says the letter made her cry, when she first read it back then...