41: A Portrait of My Father

by George W. Bush

  For college, Prescott Bush went to Yale. (His grandfather James Smith Bush had started the family tradition of attending Yale.) A star first baseman on the baseball team, he was also such a solid golfer that the golf team recruited him for their toughest matches. On some spring days he would hit the links in the morning and the ballpark in the afternoon. He also had a great voice. He sang with the Yale Glee Club and the Whiffenpoofs. While we inherited some of Prescott Bush’s traits, my father’s branch of the Bush tree did not acquire his vocal talents.

  In 1916, just before he began his senior year, my grandfather was one of a handful of Yale students to volunteer for active duty with the Connecticut National Guard. When America entered World War I, Lieutenant Bush shipped off to France as a field artillery officer. He spent ten weeks on the front lines under the command of General John “Black Jack” Pershing. When Germany surrendered, he served as part of the occupation force before returning home with the rank of captain. His decision to volunteer made a profound impression on my father, who would face a similar choice a generation later.

  After the war, Prescott Bush took an assistant manager job with Simmons Hardware in St. Louis, where he soon met Dorothy Walker. They married in August 1921 at St. Ann’s in Kennebunkport. (At the time, I doubt they could have envisioned the parachute jump there ninety-three years later.) As a present for the new couple, Bert Walker built them a bungalow on the grounds of Walker’s Point. The house still exists and is now occupied by my sister Dorothy, who is named for our grandmother.

  My grandparents spent their early married years on the move. Prescott Bush took on business assignments in St. Louis; Kingsport, Tennessee; and Columbus, Ohio. Eventually he accepted an executive position with a rubber company called Stedman Products in South Braintree, Massachusetts. My grandparents found a house in Milton, Massachusetts, on Adams Street, named for the political family that produced Presidents John and John Quincy Adams. There, on June 12, 1924, George Herbert Walker Bush entered the world.

  It wasn’t long before Prescott Bush was on the move again. In 1925, he accepted a new job at the U.S. Rubber Company in New York City. He moved his family to Greenwich, Connecticut, about thirty-five miles northeast of Manhattan. Greenwich was the town where my father would grow up and my grandparents would live for the rest of their lives.

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  ONE OF THE lessons that my father and I learned from Prescott Bush was the value of making and keeping friends. During his time at Yale, Prescott Bush had befriended Roland Harriman, known as Bunny. (I have never understood how a man got the nickname “Bunny.”) Shortly after my grandfather arrived in New York, Bunny floated the idea of his joining him at the W.A. Harriman investment house, which his older brother, Averell, had founded and Bert Walker had joined as President. My grandfather accepted the offer. His trust of Bunny overcame any reluctance that he might have felt about working for his father-in-law. A well-tended friendship thus opened the door to my grandfather’s thirty-year career in investment banking. Eventually he became one of the leading partners at the firm, which merged with Brown Brothers to become Brown Brothers Harriman, one of the most respected and successful firms on Wall Street. The firm was also bipartisan. Averell Harriman, a Democrat, later became Governor of New York and a leading member of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, while Prescott Bush and his son and grandsons became active on the Republican side of the aisle.

  Prescott Bush taught his children that the measure of a meaningful life was not money but character. He stressed that financial success came with an obligation to serve the community and the nation that made prosperity possible. Although he was busy with his Wall Street career, he always made time to serve causes that mattered to him. He was an early leader and prolific fund-raiser for the USO, which supports our military and veterans. He served as an official in the United States Golf Association, eventually becoming its President (a position that his father-in-law, Bert Walker, also held), and he was a strong supporter of the United Negro College Fund. For two decades he served as moderator of the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting, a position that paid nothing and required huge amounts of time. While his friends were out at dinner parties or playing cards, he was on the phone trying to persuade homeowners to grant easements for the Merritt Parkway, an important highway that connects Connecticut and New York. A devotion to serving others was one of the most important values that Prescott Bush instilled in his children—and that my father passed along to my siblings and me.

  Prescott Bush adhered to the creed that when you give your word, you keep it. In 1963, Nelson Rockefeller divorced his wife and married a former campaign volunteer who had left her husband and children to be with him. Even though he and Rockefeller shared a political party, my grandfather denounced him in a speech at a Greenwich girls’ school that Time magazine described as “one of the most wrathful public lashings in memory.” My grandfather asked whether the country had “come to the point in our life as a nation where the Governor of a great state—one who perhaps aspires to the nomination for President of the United States—can desert a good wife, [the] mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four youngsters to abandon her husband and their four children and marry the Governor.” Clearly Prescott Bush was not afraid to express his beliefs. I can only imagine what he would say if he saw what our society looks like today.

  While my grandfather held strict views on moral issues, he had a lighthearted side as well. He loved to sing, and some of his happiest times came at family sing-alongs or rehearsals with the quartets he organized. He had a booming laugh and loved a good joke, although it had to be a clean one. More than once, he stormed out of a room when he was offended by someone’s attempt at off-color humor. In 1959, my grandfather was nominated as the “presidential candidate” of the Alfalfa Club, a fixture of the Washington social scene. His acceptance speech brought down the house.

  “Of my staff I have demanded the same devotion to duty that I have shown,” he said. “Indeed, everyone in my office shoots under eighty. Carrying on the great tradition of Thomas Jefferson, we have endeavored to prove the axiom that the government that governs best governs least.” When he talked about the sacrifices that my grandmother had made to move to Washington, he paraphrased Nathan Hale in lamenting, “I regret that I have but one wife to give for my country.” Years later, my father, my brother Jeb, and I all followed in his footsteps as Alfalfa Club presidential nominees.

  Dad idolized his father. In many ways, he patterned his own life after Prescott Bush’s: volunteering for the war, excelling in business, and then serving his fellow citizens. I remember the look of pride that would light up Dad’s face when he told his friends that his father was a United States Senator. I suspect one of his first thoughts after he took the oath of office as President in 1989 was how much he wished he could have shared the moment with his father. That made it all the sweeter for me to embrace my dad at my presidential inaugurations in 2001 and 2005.

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  AS A LITTLE BOY, Dad loved to share with his older brother, Pres (Prescott Bush Jr., named after my grandfather). Any time he received a gift or a toy, my father would run after Pres, offer up the item, and say, “Have half.” When he got a new bike, he tried to give half of it to Pres by letting him push one of the pedals. My grandfather took to calling him “Have half.”

  Prescott and Dorothy Bush insisted on a rigorous education for their children. Dad spent his first eight school years at Greenwich Country Day School, a private school founded by local families. His early schooling experience stood in stark contrast to mine. At Greenwich Country Day, many kids arrived in a car driven by the family chauffeur. At Sam Houston Elementary in Midland, Texas, most kids walked or rode their bikes.

  For high school, Prescott and Dorothy Bush sent their two oldest sons to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. My grandparents chose the school because of its academic excellence and because they wanted their sons to get to know boys from
different parts of the country.

  Andover proved to be a valuable experience, as it did for me when I attended the school a generation later. Both my father and I benefited from the discipline and challenge of the academics. And we both learned important lessons outside the classroom. As teenagers on our own for the first time, we both learned to be independent, to work hard, and to make friends.

  At Andover, Dad displayed a natural leadership ability. People gravitated to him and wanted to follow him. His teammates chose him as captain of the baseball and soccer teams and playing manager of the basketball team. He headed up the school chapel’s fund-raising efforts and was elected President of the senior class.

  Even though my father was a so-called big man on campus, he didn’t let his reputation go to his head. One day a younger student named Bruce Gelb was getting hazed by some upperclassmen, possibly because he was one of the school’s few Jewish students. When Dad saw the upperclassmen picking on him, he told them to knock it off. They listened. George Bush went on his way and never thought much of it. Bruce Gelb did. He always remembered that one of the most popular boys on campus didn’t turn a blind eye to his suffering. He became a strong supporter of Dad’s throughout his life, and my father later appointed him to several important government positions, including Ambassador to Belgium and Director of the United States Information Agency.

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  ANDOVER LIKED TO stress its motto, “The end depends on the beginning.” George Bush was blessed with a good beginning. His family loved him, provided him with a great education, and instilled in him good character traits. He had made a large group of friends, impressed his teachers, and excelled in sports. He had also lined up his next step. He had been accepted to Yale, where he would follow in his father’s footsteps.

  Then, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, everything changed. Dad and some classmates were walking across the Andover campus near the chapel when they learned that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day, long lines of volunteers formed outside recruiting stations across the country.

  Every boy my father’s age faced the same choice: enlist for the war, or continue with life as planned. The advice Dad received all pointed in the same direction. Andover’s commencement speaker his senior year was Henry Stimson, President Roosevelt’s secretary of war and an Andover alumnus. He urged the graduates to go to college, assuring them that they would have their opportunity to join the military later. Prescott Bush strongly agreed. He told Dad to go to Yale and find his own way to serve from there.

  There was another reason for my father to stay close to home. During Christmas vacation of his senior year in high school, he attended a dance at a country club in Greenwich. While chatting with friends, he was struck by the beauty of a girl across the room. Barbara Pierce was sixteen; he was seventeen. He wanted to ask her to dance, but there was a problem: He couldn’t waltz. So they sat out the dance and just talked. He learned that she was from Rye, New York, and that she was home from a boarding school in South Carolina. They hit it off and agreed to meet the following day at a Christmas party at the Apawamis Club in Rye.

  That night, the band did not play a waltz, and George H.W. Bush got Barbara onto the dance floor. There was instant affection, and they agreed to stay in touch. They saw each other again at the Andover senior prom, after which he gave her a good-night kiss. (She insists it was her first.) Neither of my parents can recall much of what they talked about in those early days, but they remember making each other laugh. Before long, they had fallen in love.

  One thing they discussed was his decision to join the military. As my father described to Mother, he was outraged by the attack on Pearl Harbor. The murder of more than 2,400 innocent people created in him the same sense of righteous indignation that many Americans—including me—experienced after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He also felt a sense of obligation. His father had always stressed that the comforts they enjoyed came with a responsibility to give back. In the words of the Bible, “To whom much is given, much is required.” George Bush recognized that he had been given a lot. He was physically able to serve, and he felt a duty to do so. He told my mother that he had decided to join the Navy as an aviator.

  To that point in his life, George Bush had not faced many tough decisions. He had never defied his father. But Dad had made up his mind, and he did not waver. After his high school commencement, he looked his father in the eye and said, “I’m going in.” My grandfather shook his hand. He respected the decision, and from that point on he gave his complete support.

  George H.W. Bush enlisted on June 12, 1942, his eighteenth birthday. Two months later, his father accompanied him to Penn Station in New York, where he would board a train to North Carolina to commence his training. As my father stood on the platform, the stern and imposing Prescott Bush wrapped his son in a hug. For the first time in his life, Dad saw his father cry.

  WAR

  EVERY PILOT REMEMBERS his first flight. For me, it was in a Cessna 172 at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, in 1968. For my father, it was in an open-cockpit Stearman N2S-3 at Wold-Chamberlain Naval Air Base in Minneapolis in 1942. The cadets called the plane the “Yellow Peril,” because it was painted yellow and could prove perilous to fly. Its other nickname was the “Washing Machine,” a reference to the number of cadets who washed out of pilot training.

  My dad described his first solo flight as “one of the biggest thrills” of his life. I know exactly what he meant. It’s an exhilarating feeling to sit in the cockpit, accelerate down the runway, and lift off into the air. The plane doesn’t care where you came from, where you went to school, or who your parents are. All that matters is whether you have the skill to fly—“the right stuff,” as Tom Wolfe called it. Ensign George Bush flew almost every day through the bitter Minnesota winter. He grew comfortable in the air and excelled at landing on snow and ice—a valuable skill, but not one that would prove useful in the South Pacific.

  Pilots say that learning to fly makes you feel taller. In my father’s case that was certainly true. By the time his commanding officer pinned on his gold flight wings at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in June 1943, he had grown two inches since his enlistment, topping out at six feet, two inches. He was not quite nineteen years old, making him the youngest pilot in the United States Navy.

  After flight school, Dad had a brief period of leave before moving on to his next assignment. He spent it with his family in Maine, and his mother generously invited a special guest: Barbara Pierce, who was on summer break from Smith College. For two weeks in Maine, my parents were together constantly. By the end of the trip, they had decided to secretly get engaged.

  The secret didn’t last long. In December 1943, shortly before a commissioning ceremony for the aircraft carrier USS San Jacinto, which would carry my father into battle, my parents decided to inform their families of their plans to marry. To their amazement, everybody knew the secret. Their love for each other was obvious. As my father wrote to my mother, “I love you, precious, with all my heart and to know that you love me means my life. How often I have thought about the immeasurable joy that will be ours some day. How lucky our children will be to have a mother like you.” (That is one of their only remaining wartime letters; the rest were lost during one of my parents’ many moves.) After the carrier commissioning ceremony, my grandmother slipped my father an engagement ring—a star sapphire that came from her sister, Nancy. Later that day, he presented it to Barbara. She still wears it today (although apparently she still has her suspicions that it might actually be blue glass).

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  IN JANUARY 1944, after completing the intensive year and a half of training, Ensign Bush reported for duty aboard the USS San Jacinto. The San Jac was named for the battle in which General Sam Houston defeated the Mexican caudillo Santa Anna. In a glimpse of Dad’s life to come, the carrier flew both the Stars and Stripes and the Lone Star flag.

  The young Navy pilot joined a group of fliers tha
t would form squadron VT-51. Jack Guy came from rural Georgia and had left his job as a bank teller to join the Navy. Lou Grab grew up in Sacramento, California, where his father owned a gas station. Stan Butchart was a native of Spokane, Washington, who had always wanted to be a pilot. The squadron mates had little in common. At Andover, George Bush had learned that he could relate to fellow students from different parts of the country. In the military, he learned that he could relate to people from different walks of life.

  My father had a knack for making people laugh. He came up with nicknames for everyone. (Sound familiar?) Stan Butchart was “Butch.” Jack Guy was “Jackoguy,” based on his middle initial. My father acquired a distinctive moniker of his own. During a training run near the Maryland coast, he was flying low over the beach when he saw a circus setting up below. Apparently the animals didn’t have much experience with naval aviation, because the roar of the plane sent one of the elephants into a stampede through town. From that point on, Dad’s buddies dubbed him “Ellie the Elephant.” He responded with an elephant-screech imitation that he honed throughout the war. I never heard him unleash the elephant call, although it might have come in handy when he was Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

  The plane that alarmed the circus elephant was the TBF/TBM Avenger, a torpedo bomber. The Avenger was the Navy’s largest single-engine, carrier-based plane. It held one pilot, two crewmen, and four five-hundred-pound bombs. To accommodate the ton of ordnance, the plane had a bulging belly, earning it the affectionate nickname “Pregnant Turkey.”

  The Avenger was a heavy aircraft that was challenging to fly. The toughest task was landing on the narrow, bobbing deck of an aircraft carrier. A proper landing demanded concentration, precision, and teamwork. A pilot had to approach at the correct angle, follow the flag signals of a landing officer, and then catch one of the carrier’s tail hooks to avoid skidding off the deck. When I was President, I was a passenger for a landing in an S-3B Viking jet aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. I had grown up with great respect for carrier pilots, but after that landing my respect doubled.