A West Texan's quest for the White House begins in Midland
By Bruce Partain
President George Walker Bush has always claimed Midland as his real hometown.
At the 2000 Republican national convention, he invoked the classic Midland slogan "The Sky's the Limit" as a philosophy that has encouraged him.
When reporters ask him to describe his background and personality, he tells them all they need to do is learn about Midland and the attitudes of its residents.
"The values Midland holds near to its heart are the same ones I hold near to my heart," Bush said. "It's a town of risk takers...a town that knows the value of hard work and having an optimistic vision. The slogan 'The Sky's The Limit' was meant for everyone, not just a select few. Midlanders believed if you work hard and believe it will happen, anything can happen. That ethic of hard work and outlook of optimism has stayed with me my whole life."
Bush came to Midland as a toddler. He is the eldest of former President George H.W. Bush's sons. |
Bush family portrait, 1956, in Midland: clockwise from left, George W., Neil, George H.W., Barbara, Jeb and Marvin. (George Bush Presidential Library)
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During his candidacy for governor of Texas, George W. often mentioned his formative years at Sam Houston Elementary and San Jacinto Junior High, where he was seventh grade class president and a quarterback on the Mustang's football team.
The last Midland house he lived in as a child, 2703 Sentinel, was a good solution for the growing Bush family. It turned out to be a perfect spot for both George and his mother Barbara. He could run out the back gate to spend hours on the baseball field, and his mother could keep an eye on him just by glancing out the back window.
"We were always organizing a game," Bush said. "We played for hours until our mothers would pull us away. My childhood memories are of playing in Little League games and going over to Mike Proctor's house, my best friend. To get to a friend's house in Midland, you would walk down a couple doors, climb someone's fence, and cut through a yard, only crossing the street when you absolutely had to. You could ride your bike downtown and take in a movie. We walked to Sam Houston Elementary School every school day for six years."
Like many of Midland's parks, Cowden Park was built in a natural depression known as a playa lake or buffalo wallow. The baseball field was a man-made attraction. But the park held more mysterious secrets. Neighborhood children waited for the park to come alive after a playa-filling rain. Toads by the hundreds emerged from their subterranean hideouts. In the 1950s, young George and his running buddies were there to catch a few croakers.
George W. Bush as a Little Leaguer in Midland in the 1950s.(George Bush Presidential Library)
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George W. lived a "Leave it to Beaver" type of existence in Midland. He didn't mind being the center of attention. The New York Times reported that in the fourth grade, George quietly used an ink pen to draw a beard and sideburns on his face. He was quickly hauled down to the Principal Bizolo's office for a paddling. The laughter and attention of his classmates apparently were worth the pain of a few pops.
Teachers and administrators weren't the only watchful eyes in George W. Bush's Midland. "Mothers felt it was not only their right, but also their duty, to lecture you when you did something wrong, just as your own mother did," Bush said. "I'll never forget the time Mike Proctor's mom ran out of her house to yell at me for running out into the street without looking. She got my attention and I never did it again."
Karl Rove, a Bush political advisor, told a reporter in 1992 that "he is clearly the wild son -- even today. Part of it is rooted in Midland, where he grew up in an ordinary neighborhood, where houses are close together and risk was a way of life." |
George W. Bush benefited from his father's decision to break free of the "noble" life of the Eastern establishment. Instead of limousine rides, young George pedaled a bike around the streets of Midland, 25,000 people strong and in the midst of one of its most ambitious booms.
"Midland...was a world of clear rights and wrongs, long on absolutes and devoid of ethical gray shades," wrote New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof. "It may be the source of some of Mr. Bush's greatest political strengths, the unpretentiousness and mellow bonhomies that warm up the voters."
The path back home
While some teenagers dream of seeing their hometown fade away in the rear-view mirror, the 1959 move from Midland to Houston was probably a jolt for young George W. Bush.
From the time he was a toddler, George W. had lived the life of a West Texan.
By the late 1950s, his father's burgeoning offshore drilling business meant it was time to leave Midland for the Gulf Coast. For young George, it meant that instead of leading a gang of his buddies in pick-up baseball games at Cowden Park and riding his bike to the Ritz Theatre, he was now living in an upper-class Houston neighborhood, where some of the 14-year-olds already drove their own cars.
After years in Midland's public schools, he now attended private schools. Like his father, he would graduate from Yale. Bush spent a short time as a jet pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the early 70s, worked in Houston, then headed back to the East Coast, completing a MBA at Harvard in 1975.
A Midland friend convinced him he should come back to Midland to take part in the booming oil business, and to make his own way in the world. |
Midlanders Jenna Welch and her daughter Laura in the 1950s. (Courtesy of Jenna Welch)
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Driving a five-year-old Oldsmobile Cutlass, George W. Bush returned to the Tall City. Bush admits that as a young adult he was "young and irresponsible." But back in Midland, he worked hard in the oil business, and proved to be an excellent salesman and fundraiser for his ventures. Like many in the oil business, he gained a first-hand acquaintance with dry holes and disappointment. Friends say that the experience was part of the humbling process that helped George grow in maturity.
His marriage to Laura Welch in 1977 also helped ground the still playful and prankish Bush.
A somewhat impulsive run for Congress against Kent Hance in 1978 provided more humble pie. At one debate, he was asked what qualified him better for office than Hance.
"I've got more hair," he quipped. Hance won the election, however.
Never one to wallow in defeat, Bush told Texas Monthly later "it wasn't that people didn't like me. I finished a popular second."
Bush raised his sights in the oil business about the same time. At first he had worked as a contract landman, checking courthouse records. He later acquired leases for his own projects. He ramped up to structuring drilling funds.
Arbusto Energy became Bush Oil. He later formed Bush Exploration and merged it with Paul Rea's Spectrum 7. Results were never spectacular, and the bust of 1986 finished his run in the oil business. Harken bought out the two companies, providing working capital for other ventures. George left Midland in 1986 to help his father's campaign for the Presidency.
A 1978 campaign poster (George Bush Presidential Library)
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"I learned a lot of lessons in the oil business," Bush said. "I learned the human side of capitalism. I felt responsible for my employees and tried to treat them fairly and well. I also learned that taking risks in the oil business is just like taking risks in life. Sometimes you strike it at the right time at the right place and you have success. But even if you don't, you keep trying until you do."
The oil price crash of the 1980s challenged Bush. "At the time, Bush Exploration had seventeen employees and few choices," he said. "But before I left...I made sure every one of Bush Exploration's employees had a new job."
The oil business helped him mature, but Bush did not lose his bemused outlook on life. |
Kristof reports that in 1991, President George H.W. Bush invited Queen Elizabeth to the White House for a state banquet.
Barbara Bush introduced young George to the Queen. George W. told Her Majesty that his new cowboy boots were embroidered with the phrase "God Save the Queen." Barbara then explained that it was fear of such a remark that caused her to seat young George a safe distance from the Queen.
George then told the Queen that apparently he was the Bush family's black sheep. "Who's yours?" he queried. According to Kristof, Queen Elizabeth smiled and retorted, "None of your business."
The proud father of twins
Barbara and Jenna in 1981.
(George Bush Presidential Library)
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By now, George W. was back in Texas as co-owner of the Texas Rangers. Good things happened in the early 1990s in Arlington, Texas. Creative financing, a fabulous new stadium and marketing savvy revitalized the Rangers baseball club and its new owner George W. Bush. The turnaround and financial results gave Bush the success he would need to defeat Ann Richards for governor of Texas in 1994.
After Bush's second win in 1998 and a solid record of focusing on issues and winning bipartisan support, Republicans were clamoring for George W. to run for president. |
The tough primaries of the spring of 2000 finished with Bush as the nominee, and a historically close election in November certified him as the 43rd President of the United States of America.
Bush showed a quiet confidence as a candidate for President in 2000. It was only his fourth run for office, so in some ways he was still a political rookie. But the presidency was simply another goal, not his life's ambition.
To visualize that particular dream, sit on the edge of a dry playa lake in Midland, Texas, and look across the green and tan grass toward a backstop that is all that remains of an old Little League field. Then imagine a ten-year-old boy playing hour after hour of baseball, pretending he is grown and powerful, roaming the outfield like his hero, Willie Mays, snagging every fly ball and line drive that comes along.
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The girls growing up in 1987. The twins are now in college. (Bush-Cheney campaign)
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George and Laura Bush.
(Bush-Cheney Campaign)
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The hopes of his friends in Midland for George W. Bush remain the same as they did years ago:
Say hey |
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