Blevins' Steve Burke with former-president George W. Bush.

Farm Credit Services Board of Directors Vice President Steve Burke of Blevins described an encounter he had two months back with a former U.S. president.

He was attending a meeting in Fort Worth of Farm Credit System chief executive officers and directors whose guest was none other than the 43rd President of the United States.

Burke said he “spoke of his experiences” as president, and “specifically of the events of September 11, 2001.”

Bush revealed in his talk that on the evening of that dire day that one F-16 fighter jet’s transponder wasn’t working correctly. For a time, it had to be treated as an enemy plane. “He said that all of a sudden the Secret Service came and grabbed him, and they went down to a bunker, because they said ‘We’ve got another plane coming in,'" Burke recounted. Finally, the plane was identified and the president allowed back above ground.

Asked at the meeting who his favorite leader was, Bush said he enjoyed when the then-Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi requested to go to Graceland, a wish the president granted. The president took the prime minister to Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis in June of 2006 as a going-away gift just as Koizumi’s term was expiring.

Arriving at Graceland, Koizumi and President Bush met their guides, Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley, whereupon Koizumi serenaded them all with “Love Me Tender.”

The president also explained some of his thinking when he was first notified by his chief of staff Andy Card in a Florida elementary classroom that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center and the nation was under attack.  Burke said, “He told us, ‘I’m sitting in this classroom, and I get the word we’re under attack.’ He said, ‘I can’t just jump up. I’m figuring out how I want to play it.’ He said what he had to say and then they shipped him all over the United States.”

Burke said during the appearance, former-president Bush was “very gracious and a good speaker” and “just a cordial guy.”

“Then I got the privilege to take a picture with him,” Burke said. “That’s a big deal for me, a country boy.”

Through his work for Farm Credit Services, Burke has gotten to meet such figures as the airline pilot Chesley “Sulley” Sullenberger who landed a US Airways flight on the surface of the Hudson River January 15, 2009, saving 155 passengers and crew. He has also met Navy SEAL Team 6 member Robert J. O’Neil, who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakastani city of Abbotabad, and retired US Army General Stanley McChrystal.