Dubaya :: Essays Papers

DubayaHe brought his fathers sterling name, degrees from Yale and Harvard, some $13,000 left in his trust fund, and his strongest personal asset an exuberant charm spiked with wisecracks. Bush neer found much oil in Texas, but he slowly found his way. He married and fathered twin girls, quit drinking, began studying Scripture, and made his an winless foray into the family line of descent by running for Congress. He learned to court friends and political supporters of his father, the vice prexy. And he hooked up with the oil investors who would eventually suspensor him become managing partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Bush used the Rangers post to cultivate celebrity status and prepare for a gutsy, winning challenge to Democratic Gov. Ann Richards in 1994. The Rangers deal also made him a multimillionaire. George Walker Bush was born July 6, 1946 in New Haven, Conn., where his father, already a flying hero of World warfare II, was charging through Yale. When he was 2, his parents moved West to chase the oil boom. But young George also endured great sorrow at age 7, when his little baby Robin died of leukemia. The next child, now Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, was seven years younger. Three others followed Neil, stung by the S&L scandal of the 1980s and now a business consultant Marvin, a venture capitalist and Doro, wife of a Washington lobbyist and mother of four. None seems to have felt the weight of their fathers successes as much as the eldest, often called Junior although hes one name short of George Herbert Walker Bush. He followed his fathers path to prep school in Andover, Mass., and then Yale, but failed to live up to his bequest in academics or sports. Instead, hes remembered at Andover for organizing stickball tournaments and lavish pep rallies that brightened an otherwise rigid campus. At Yale, like his father, he was tapped for the secret Skull and Bones society and became president of Delta Kappa Epsilon. Fraternity brothers remember him a s the life of the party among a group preoccupied by beer, sports, soul music and, of course, girls. Friends say Bush avoided the nascent Vietnam War protests at Yale and didnt brook criticism of his father, then a Texas congressman supporting the war. Shortly before graduation in 1968, Bush signed up for pilot pedagogy in the Texas Air National Guard, where it was unlikely he would be sent to Vietnam.