Bush GeorgeHW

American Republican politician who served as the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993. A Yale graduate in 1948, he went on to become a business executive and owner of Zapata Petroleum. Bush first took public office as GOP Chairman in 1963. From there, he served as a Congressman in 1966 for two terms and spent a diplomatic year in China in 1974. He was director of the CIA from 1975 to 1977. Bush was elected Vice-President under Ronald Reagan in 1980, taking office in January 1981. Young George was a student at Andover, where his grades were less impressive than his extracurricular records as senior class president, captain of the soccer and baseball teams and, maintaining his faith, chairman of the student deacons. Six months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, George got his diploma. On his 18th birthday, against the wishes of his parents who wanted him to go on to college, he was sworn into the Navy. When he got his wings in August 1943, he was the Navys youngest pilot. By the time he emerged from the service two years later, he was a war hero. On 2 September 1944, he nearly died when his torpedo bomber, nicknamed "Barbara" for his girl friend, took a hit over the Pacific island of Chichi Jima. With the plane on fire, he flew on to drop his bombs on target. He stayed at the controls, hoping his two crewmen could parachute to safety, but both died. Bailing out over the ocean, Bush was picked up within two hours by an American submarine. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and three air medals. Home on leave three months later, Bush married Barbara Pierce on 6 January 1945, a debutante whose dad was president of McCalls. They had met three years earlier at a Christmas party when they were 16 and 17, and had connected with a particular intensity from then. Following his September 1945 discharge from the Navy, George entered Yale to study economics. He and his young bride moved into a basement apartment in New Haven. Racking up the proper credentials, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in the fall of 1948. Although his dads international banking firm offered him a job, Bush headed for Texas with Barbara and their baby, George Jr., and tapped into the oil boom. He took a job painting machinery for $375 a month and they lived in a shabby rented house next door to a mother-daughter team of prostitutes. By 1953, he sunk all of his savings into an investment with three partners in a wildcatting operation. The company, Zapata Petroleum, would eventually make him a millionaire when he sold out in 1966. He and Barbaras lives were not without grief. One morning in 1953 their little girl Robin, a three-year old, woke listless and weak; she had leukemia and died six months later, on 11 October 1953. His dad died in 1972 and his mom 20 years later. The family stayed in Texas for 11 more years before Bush made the plunge into politics. His dad, Prescott, had served ten years as a U.S. Senator, up to 1962, just two years before George tried to win a Senate seat. He lost the 1964 race, but three years later a Republican district in Houston sent him to Congress for two terms. In 1970, he had a deflating loss of the Senate position to Lloyd Bentsen. In March 1971, Bush was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.; two years later he became chairman of the Watergate-plagued Republican National Committee. After Nixons resignation, Gerald Ford named Bush U.S. envoy to China, where he and Barbara stayed f Read less