George Herbert Walker Bush

Born: 12 Jun 1924, Milton, MA

41st President of the United States
Common Ancestor:
Mary Mayo
7th Gr Grandmother
of Merle G Ladd		 7th Gr Grandmother
of George H W Bush
 
Edward Bangs Samuel Bangs
Jonathan Bangs Joseph Bangs
Allen Bangs Lemuel Bangs
Phebe Bangs Elijah K Bangs
Allen Crowell Mary Ann Bangs
Freeman S Crowell Martha A Beaky
Graceland M Crowell George H Walker
Allen D Ladd Dorothy Walker
Merle G Ladd George H W Bush
 
Relationship to Merle G Ladd:
8th Cousin
George Herbert Walker Bush was born June 12, 1924, in Milton, Mass., to Prescott and Dorothy Bush. The family later moved to Connecticut. The youth studied at the elite Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.

The future president joined the Navy after war broke out and at 18 became the Navy's youngest commissioned pilot, serving from 1942 to 1945, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He fought the Japanese on 58 missions and was shot down once.

After the war, Bush earned an economics degree and a Phi Beta Kappa key in two and a half years at Yale University.

In 1945 Bush married Barbara Pierce of Rye, N.Y., daughter of a magazine publisher. With his bride, Bush moved to Texas instead of entering his father's investment banking business. There he founded his oil company and by 1980 reported an estimated wealth of $1.4 million.

In the 1960s, Bush won two contests for a Texas Republican seat in the House of Representatives, but lost two bids for a Senate seat. President Nixon appointed him U.S. delegate to the United Nations and he later became Republican National Committee chairman. He headed the U.S. liaison office in Beijing before becoming Director of Central Intelligence. In 1980 Bush became Reagan's running mate.

The vice president entered the 1988 presidential campaign and easily defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis.

In his first year, Bush was confronted with the Lebanese hostage crisis, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and the ongoing war against drug trafficking. His public approval soared following the invasion of Panama in late 1989. But a staggering budget deficit and the savings and loan crisis caused the president's popularity to dip sharply in his second year.

In 1991, the president emerged as the leader of an international coalition of Western democracies, Japan, and even some Arab states that came together to free Kuwait following an invasion of the country by Iraq in Aug. 1990. The coalition forces defeated Iraq in only a little more than a month after Operation Desert Storm was launched on Jan. 16–17, 1991.