I am not a fan of G.W. Bush, and I really dislike Jeb Bush, even though when they ran for public office, I voted for both them multiple times.
Their father, Ex-POTUS, George Herbert Walker Bush is another story. IMHO, a true American hero has passed on yesterday. While the senior Bush had his ups and downs in politics, I remember two things that will endear me to him for eternity.
Bush was accepted to “Yale University”. He chose to delay his entrance into Yale, because he joined the U.S. Navy, becoming the young naval pilot in 1942. during his term through WWII, Bush participated in Fifty-Eight combat missions.
On September 9. 1944, at age twenty (20), his Grumman TBM Avenger fighter bomber was hit by Japanese flak causing a fatal fire on his engine. Bush completed his mission successfully, dropping his bombs on the assigned Japanese targets and then he headed out to sea to ditch if possible. He and his crew abandoned the aircraft via parachute and, one crew member was killed when his parachute failed to open. Bush landed in the water where he waited for four hours for an American submarine to pick him up. Had he attempted a landing over the island he attacked, he knew they all would have been shot by the Japanese.
The second item that endears me to the senior Bush is that he was once asked at a dinner, “What is the important task of life that you have served, Mr. POTUS, George HW Bush?” He answered immediately without hesitation, “Being a good Husband, Father & Grandfather”!!!
These two moments in life say it all about American Hero & past POTUS, George H.W. Bush...period!!! RIP, POTUS, Bush.
The GI Generation is almost gone.