President George W. Bush Our Forty-Third President

Chapter One: The Firstborn Son In July 1946 George W. Bush went to his first party. It was the lawn party after his christening in New Haven, Connecticut. He had been born only a few days before, on July 6. That made him a member of the "baby boom" generation, born after World War II.This baby was the first child of Barbara Pierce Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush. The baby's father -- tall, lean, and good-looking -- was a student at Yale University. The lively, auburn-haired mother had been a student at Smith College. They named their baby George Walker Bush -- not exactly George Jr., but very close. They called him Georgie.Georgie's father would become the forty-first president of the United States, but not for another forty-two years. However, even in those early days George Bush had already given his son a great deal to live up to. At Andover, a top-rate preparatory school in Massachusetts, he had been a baseball star. In World War II he had been a navy fighter pilot, a war hero.Both of Georgie's parents came from families who had done well in business. One of his grandfathers was a Wall Street investor, and the other was the president of a large publishing company. For generations both sides of the family had been influential in politics.For two years after Georgie's birth the Bush family lived in a little apartment in New Haven while George finished his degree at Yale. He was a baseball star in college, as he had been in prep school. Barbara, an enthusiastic sports fan, took her little son to the games to cheer on his first-baseman father.After George Bush graduated from Yale in 1948, he could have stepped into a comfortable job in the financial world in New York, like his father and grandfather. But George was looking for a more adventurous career, away from his father's eye. Barbara, who had grown up in the wealthy suburb of Rye, New York, encouraged her husband. She, too, was eager to get away from their families and do something different.One of the most exciting business opportunities in the country at that time was in the oil fields of Texas. With the new technology developed during World War II, drillers could reach deeper oil deposits. And as the economy boomed, the demand for fuel was skyrocketing.So in the summer of 1948 George Bush accepted a job in Texas. He was hired by Neil Mallon, a close family friend who headed an oil corporation. Revving the engine of his red two-door Studebaker, a graduation present from his parents, George drove all the way from the East Coast to West Texas.A week later Barbara and Georgie flew out to Texas to join George. They found a place quite different from green, woodsy New England. Around the working-class town of Odessa the land stretched flat, bleak, and dusty all the way to the horizon. Instead of pine-scented sea breezes, there were hot winds that blew sand and tumbleweeds down the street. And when the wind blew a certain way, there was also the strong smell of oil fumes from the nearby plants.The Bushes' living quarters were not inviting either. Despite his wealthy background, George Bush was starting at the bottom in the oil business. The Bushes' home in Odessa was a two-room apartment, and they shared a bathroom with another family. They were thankful to have a bathroom at all, though, since most of their neighbors used outhouses. And the Bushes had a refrigerator -- also unusual in that neighborhood.But West Texas was a "fabulous place," as George wrote to a friend the next year. "Fortunes can be made in the land end of the oil business, and of course can be lost." He spent long hours out in the oil fields, learning the business from the ground up.Meanwhile, Barbara took care of Georgie and got used to living where people were "Eastern-prejudiced," as she put it in a letter to her family. She missed her old friends and family. But Barbara was naturally cheerful and good at getting along with all kinds ofGormley, Beatrice is the author of 'President George W. Bush Our Forty-Third President', published 2000 under ISBN 9780689841231 and ISBN 068984123X.