“I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make it on my own kind of thing,” George H. W. Bush (1924-2018), the 41st president of the United States, once told his biographer.
Perhaps not our most articulate president, but among the most genuine of the modern era. Born with what some might call a silver spoon — the phrase former Texas Gov. Ann Richards used so memorably — Bush was the son of former Wall Street banker and powerful U.S. Sen. Prescott Bush. After graduating from prep school, Bush joined the U.S. Navy at age 18.
By age 19, he had become the Navy's youngest aviator. Shot down over the Pacific in 1944, Bush parachuted from his burning aircraft after completing most of his assigned bombing mission.
Following World War II and graduation from Yale University, Bush moved to Texas with his young bride, Barbara, to try his hand at the oil business.
While he enjoyed modest success in the industry, Bush soon began carving out a path in public service. He was elected to Congress representing suburban Houston and later made two unsuccessful bids for the U.S. Senate.
President Richard Nixon appointed Bush ambassador to the United Nations and later chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Watergate era. Bush was among the first prominent Republicans to publicly call for Nixon's resignation for the good of the country.
President Gerald Ford later appointed him U.S. envoy to China — before the United States established full diplomatic relations — and then director of the CIA.
When Bush launched his presidential campaign in 1979, he was joined early by prominent Georgia Republican Paul Coverdell. Their friendship would last for decades.
After winning the White House in 1988, Bush appointed Coverdell director of the Peace Corps.
In 1991, Coverdell left the administration and returned to Georgia to challenge incumbent Democrat Wyche Fowler for a U.S. Senate seat. Coverdell faced four statewide elections during the 1992 presidential election cycle, including Georgia's first U.S. Senate runoff.
On that long runoff election night, three weeks after Bush had lost his re-election bid to President-elect Bill Clinton, Bush was attempting to keep tabs on the race of his friend Coverdell.
But in 1992, Al Gore had not yet "invented the internet," and the Associated Press did not track state contest results for national wire distribution. The president's eldest son and family campaign manager, George W. Bush, was constantly calling my mobile phone for election-night updates to relay to his father, who had lost the White House three weeks earlier, and his beloved mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, just one week before.
With election results swinging back and forth throughout the night and only the north metro Atlanta suburbs left to be counted, George W. Bush asked me by phone, "What's still out?"
I told him most of North Fulton County remained unreported.
Amid the sound of rustling papers, he replied, "You mean places like Roswell and Alpharetta?"
I had forgotten at the time that the president had kicked off his re-election campaign in nearby Woodstock.
"Yes," I said. "Those are still out."
"Well," Bush replied, "Dad carried Roswell by more than 70 percent and Alpharetta by nearly 80. I'm going to go ahead and tell him that Paul has won."
Before I could say, "Wait ..." or make it across the room to Coverdell with the phone, the unmistakable voice of Poppy Bush came on the line.
"Congratulations, Senator!"
I apologized and asked the president to repeat himself as I handed the phone to Coverdell, soon to be Georgia's newest U.S. senator. The unofficial results, which would ultimately show a statewide victory by just over 25,000 votes, were expected within the hour.
The slightly premature congratulations visibly boosted Coverdell's confidence — and his often-stooped posture — by several inches. A broad smile spread across his face as he thanked the president for keeping track of the race. Coverdell's victory would also determine control of the U.S. Senate.
"You'll be our 51st senator, Paul," Bush told him. "This one is more important than either of us."
The Bush family's favored biographer, Jon Meacham, has often referred to George H.W. Bush as "The Last Gentleman."
I'm not sure that is entirely accurate. George W. Bush, his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and a few others in public life still occupy that arena. But it is a shrinking field in what was once a much larger league of extraordinary gentlemen.