[Hillary's Folly]

One of the life's incidents which I believed changed GW forever was the loss of his little sister

Excellent point. Do you know how old he was when this happened?

[CyberAnt]

I'm not sure, but from pictures of the sister just before she died (3 yrs or so), I'd say GW was 7-8 years of age.

[texasflower]

From "A Charge to Keep, My Journey to the White House" by George W. Bush

Excerpt from Chapter 2 Midland Family Values

"To this day, I am certain that I saw her, her small head rising barely above the backseat of my parents' green Oldsmobile as it drove up in front of Sam Houston Elementary School in Midland. I was walking down an outdoor hall with a friend, carrying a phonograph back to the principal office. The instant I saw the car, I put it down and took off running, eager to welcome Mom and Dad and my little sister, Robin, back from New York, where Robin had been seeing a doctor because she was sick. I got to the car, still certain Robin was there, but of course, she was not. Mom and Dad had come to school to tell me Robin wasn't coming home, not then or ever.

I was sad and stunned. I knew Robin had been sick, but death was hard for me to imagine. Minutes before, I had had a little sister, and now, suddenly, I did not. Forty-six years later, those minutes remain the starkest memory of my childhood, a sharp pain in the midst of an otherwise happy blur.

I was seven. Robin was almost four when she died of leukemia."

It just breaks my heart everytime I read it.