Former President George H.W. Bush Dies At 94

George Herbert Walker Bush died Friday, November 30th.  He was born June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, and lived to be 94-years-old.  He grew up with the New England elite, a world of prep schools, mansions and servants seemingly untouched by the Great Depression.  His father, Prescott Bush, the son of an Ohio steel magnate, made his fortune as an investment banker and later served 10-years as a senator from Connecticut.

George H.W. Bush enlisted in the Navy on his 18th birthday in 1942, right out of prep school. He returned home to marry his 19-year-old sweetheart, Barbara Pierce, daughter of the publisher of McCall’s magazine, in January 1945. They were the longest-married presidential couple in U.S. history. She died on April 17, 2018.

“Today, we mourn the passing of a truly amazingAmerican leader, an experienced statesman, and a man who always put our nationfirst.  President George H.W. Bushdisplayed the utmost love for country since his time as a Navy pilot until hisdays as Commander in Chief,” Republican Party of Florida Chairman Blaise Ingoglia said.  “He will always beremembered as a man of integrity and patriotism, and it is with a heavy heartthat we extend our condolences to the Bush Family and keep them in our prayersduring this difficult time.”

Blaise Ingoglia

Lean and athletic at 6-foot-2, Bush became a war hero while still a teenager. One of the youngest pilots in the Navy, he flew 58 missions off the carrier USS San Jacinto.

He had to ditch one plane in the Pacific and was shot down on Sept. 2, 1944, while completing a bombing run against a Japanese radio tower. An American submarine rescued Bush. His two crewmates perished. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery.

After the war, Bush took just 2½ years to graduate from Yale, then headed west in 1948 to the oil fields of West Texas. Bush and partners helped found Zapata Petroleum Corp. in 1953. Six years later, he moved to Houston and became active in the Republican Party.

In politics, he showed the same commitment he displayed in business, advancing his career through loyalty and subservience.

He was first elected to Congress in 1966 and served two terms. President Richard Nixon appointed him ambassador to the United Nations,and after the 1972 election, named him chairman of the Republican National Committee. Bush struggled to hold the party together as Watergate destroyed the Nixon presidency, then became ambassador to China and CIA chief in the Ford administration.

Bush made his first bid for president in 1980 and won the Iowa caucuses, but Reagan went on to win the nomination.

In the 1988 presidential race, Bush trailed the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, by as many as 17 points that summer. He did little to help himself by picking Dan Quayle, a lightly regarded junior senator from Indiana, as a running mate.

But Bush soon became an aggressor, stressing patriotic themes and flailing Dukakis as an out-of-touch liberal. He carried 40 states, becoming the first sitting vice president to be elected president since Martin Van Buren in 1836.

He took office with the humility that was his hallmark.

“Some see leadership as high drama, and the sound of trumpets calling, and sometimes it is that,” he said at his inauguration. “But I see history as a book with many pages, and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning. The new breeze blows, a page turns, the story unfolds.”

Former President George H W Bush

Bush approached old age with gusto, celebrating his 75th and80th birthdays by skydiving over College Station, Texas, the home of his presidential library. He did it again on his 85th birthday in 2009, parachuting near his oceanfront home in Kennebunkport, Maine. He used his presidential library at Texas A&M University as a base for keeping active in civic life.

He became the patriarch of one of the nation’s most prominent political families. In addition to George W, who became president, another son, Jeb, was elected Florida governor in 1998 and made an unsuccessful run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.

The other Bush children are sons Neil and Marvin and daughter Dorothy Bush LeBlond. Another daughter, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953, a few weeks before her fourth birthday.

Associated Press writer Michael Graczyk contributed to this report.