Decision Points

was attacked, Dad was a high school senior. He had been accepted to Yale. Instead he enlisted in the Navy on his eighteenth birthday and became the youngest pilot to earn his wings. Before he shipped off for the Pacific, he fell in love with a beautiful girl namedBarbara Pierce. He immediately told friends he would marry her. As a reminder, he painted her name on the side of his plane.

    The Navy officer and his beautiful young bride.
    One morning in September 1944, Dad was flying a mission over Chichi-Jima, an island occupied by the Japanese. His TBM Avenger was struck by enemy fire, but he kept going—diving at two hundred miles per hour—until he had dropped his bombs and hit the target. He shouted for his flight mates to bail out and then did so himself. Alone in the South Pacific, he swam to the tiny rubber raft that had been his seat cushion.When Dad was rescued by a submarine, he was told he could go home. He rejoined his squadron instead. His tour ended just before Christmas, and on January 6, 1945, he married Mother at her family church in Rye, New York.
    After the war, Mother and Dad moved to New Haven so he could attend Yale. He was a fine athlete—a first baseman and captain of the baseball team. Mother came to almost every game, even during the spring of 1946, when she was pregnant with me. Fortunately for her, the stadium included a double-wide seat behind home plate designed for former law professor William Howard Taft.
    Dad excelled in the classroom, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in just two and a half years. I attended his commencement in Mother’s arms, dozing through much of the ceremony. It wouldn’t be the last time I slept through a Yale lecture.

    On Dad’s shoulders at Yale, age nine months.
    Years later, millions of Americans would learn Dad’s story. But from the beginning, I knew it by heart. One of my first memories is of sitting on the floor with Mother looking through scrapbooks. She showed me photos from Dad’s pilot training in Corpus Christi, box scores from his games in the College World Series, and a famous picture of him with Babe Ruth on the pitcher’s mound at Yale Field. I pored over photos from their wedding: the Navy officer and his smiling young bride. My favorite part of the scrapbook was a piece of rubber from the raft that saved Dad’s life in the Pacific. I would bug him to tell stories from the war. He refused to brag. But Mother would. She adored him, and so did I. As I got older, there would be others I looked up to. But the truth is that I never had to search for a role model. I was the son of George Bush.

    When Dad graduated in 1948, most assumed he would head to Wall Street. After all, his father was a partner at a successful investment house. But Dad wanted to make it on his own. So he and Mother loaded up their red Studebaker and moved west. I’ve always admired them for taking a risk, and I’ve always been grateful they settled where they did. One of my greatest inheritances is that I was raised in West Texas.
    We spent our first year in the blue-collar town of Odessa, where there were few paved streets and frequent dust storms. We lived in a tiny apartment and shared a bathroom with—depending on whom you ask—either one or two prostitutes. Dad’s job was on the bottom rung of an oil services company. His duties included sweeping warehouses and painting pump jacks. A fellow worker once asked Dad if he was a college man. Dad told him yes, as a matter of fact, he had gone to Yale. The guy paused a second and replied, “Never heard of it.”
    After a brief stint in California, we moved back to West Texas in 1950. We settled in Midland, the place I picture when I think of growing up. Midland was twenty miles east of Odessa. Native trees did not exist. The ground was flat, dry, and dusty. Beneath it sat a sea of oil.
    Midland was the capital of the Permian Basin, which accounted for about 20 percent of America’s oil production in the 1950s. The town had an independent, entrepreneurial feel. There was fierce competition, especially in the oil business. But there was also a sense of community. Anybody could make it, anyone could fail. My friends’ parents did all sorts of jobs. One painted houses. One was a surgeon. Another poured cement. About ten blocks away lived a home builder, Mr. Harold Welch . A quarter century passed before I met him and courted his sweet daughter, Laura Lane.
    Life in Midland was simple. I rode bikes with pals like Mike Proctor