Transcript: Chapter 02

Narrator: George Herbert Walker Bush grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut in a family that came from Ohio and became one of New England's prominent families. His grandfather, Samuel Bush, made his fortune in railroads in Columbus. His father, Prescott, went to Yale and remained in the East. Prescott Bush was a partner in Brown Brothers Harriman, the most prestigious investment bank on Wall Street at a time when the influence of the WASP establishment in America, the white Anglo Saxon Protestants, was near its peak. Averell Harriman, Prescott's colleague and the firm's founding partner, was an aide to President Franklin Roosevelt in World War II. He then became U.S. ambassador in Moscow. His partner Robert Lovett was Assistant Secretary of War. After the war they were among a group known as the "Wise Men" who helped President Truman fashion the policy of containing the Soviet Union.

Richard Norton Smith, presidential historian: Prescott Bush was very much at home with the wise men, the essentially bipartisan, consensus-seeking, post-World War II statesmen. If you think of people like Robert Lovett, they didn't run for office, they exercised enormous power and influence from appointed positions.

Evan Thomas, co-author, The Wise Men: Even when Bush was a schoolboy in the 1930's at a time when America was isolationist, these men, these Wall Street financiers, were acutely conscious that America had to stay involved in the world, partly for financial reasons. I mean, Brown Brothers Harriman did business all around the world. They did business in France, in Germany, and in England. But also because of this American tradition of spreading democracy and standing up for democracy and standing up for, as they saw it, for right against wrong.

Narrator: George Bush was raised in this milieu -- people of wealth who devoted themselves to government service. His father, who later became a Senator, was the moderator of the Greenwich town meeting when George was a boy. He was George's model for public service.

John Robert Greene, presidential historian: Prescott Bush wanted his children to understand was that there was a world beyond the boundaries of Greenwich, and that they were expected to give something back to that world, whether it be through business, whether it be through public service, or whether it be through military service.

Narrator: Young George also bore the strong influence of his mother, Dorothy Walker Bush.

Doro Bush Koch, daughter: It was my grandmother who taught my Dad the basic lessons in life that he still adheres to. One time my dad was playing soccer in elementary school, and he came in and he was thrilled with himself because he'd scored three goals, and he said, "Mom, I've scored three goals." And he said, "Mom, I've scored three goals." And she said, "Well, that's nice, George, but how did the team do? He always heard her voice in his head, saying, "Don't brag about yourself." And that's hard to do when you're running for President of the United States.

Narrator: The Finback, Bush would write, "moved like a porpoise, water lapping over its bow, the sea changing colors, first jet black, then sparkling white. It reminded me of home and our family vacations in Maine." Bush was the fourth generation of his mother's family to summer at Walker's Point in Kennebunkport. It would become his spiritual home. George bore the name of his grandfather, George Herbert Walker, for whom the Walker's Cup, an international golf trophy, was named. His competitive spirit came from the Walkers.

Doro Bush Koch: My grandmother was a champion tennis player. She would play tennis until her feet were blistered and raw. She loved competition. She was a great golfer. She was a great baseball player. One time she hit a home run, rounded the bases, and then went on to the hospital to give birth to my father's oldest brother, Prescott.

Narrator: George Bush was captain of his baseball team at Andover, a prestigious prep school in Massachusetts. In fielding drills he would charge the plate from first base, "right down the baseline, streaking in," a biographer would write, "laughing with the pure joy of contest. "That's why he was he one for captain. It was the glint of Walker steel his teammates saw. They wanted their team to be like that." At Andover Bush listened to radio broadcasts on the history of aviation in America.

ANNC radio (archival): Wings Over America... Welcome to Yale Unit Base #1, ladies and gentlemen...

Narrator: A group of wealthy aristocratic Yale students, including Robert Lovett, his father's business partner, turned their college "aero" club into the First Yale Unit. The "millionaire's unit," as the press dubbed it, became the nucleus of the navy air corps and an inspiration for George to become a naval aviator.

ANNC radio (archival): Our standard long-range bombardment airplane is known in the Air Corps as the B-17, the Boeing Flying Fortress.

Narrator: "Today our world is presented with the clearest issue between right and wrong which has ever been presented to it," Andover's commencement speaker warned on June 14, 1940 shortly after Hitler launched his blitzkrieg. The speaker was Henry L. Stimson, a Republican, a Wall Street lawyer, the very embodiment of the East coast establishment. Two days later President Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, named him Secretary of War.

Evan Thomas: When Bush was an impressionable schoolboy, a 16-year-old schoolboy, he heard Henry Stimson give a speech about the coming threat from Nazism, from fascism, that it was the duty of the country to stand up to fascism. This is 1940. This is early in the game. A lot of Americans are still isolationists. But Stimson's telling these schoolboys, "Look, it's up to you, to you young leaders, future leaders of America, to stand up to evil and fight back."

Narrator: These were words the 16-year-old sophomore never forgot. Stimson, whom Bush regarded as "a towering world figure", returned to Andover two years later and urged the graduating class to go to college before joining the service. Bush rejected both Stimson's advice and his father's. Later that day, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. It was June 12, 1942, his 18th birthday.

Barbara Bush, wife: His father took him to Penn Station, and George said his father put his arms around him and had tears in his eyes when he said good-bye.

Narrator: That was, Bush recalled, the first time he saw his father cry. From the Finback, Bush wrote his girl back home, "I hope my own children never have to fight a war," Bush wrote his girl friend from aboard the Finback. Friends disappearing. Lives being extinguished. It's just not right." Barbara Pierce grew up in Rye, New York. Her father, who became the publisher of McCall's magazine, commuted to New York on the same train as Prescott Bush. When Barbara was 16 she met George, age 17, at a Christmas dance in Greenwich.

Barbara Bush: Well, he was the handsomest living human I ever saw, and maybe the nicest, most relaxed. They played a waltz and he said, "I can't waltz." So we sat down and talked, and that was sort of it. But I fell in love at first sight, practically.

Narrator: George's mother invited Barbara to Kennebunkport when he was on leave in August 1943.

Barbara Bush: His whole family was up here. And we were never left alone. Had four uncles and four young brides, and a grandmother and grandfather and his mother and father. So we had to walk around outside. And we sort of got engaged secretly. We were way too young to be engaged.

Narrator: Barbara waited for two years while George Bush flew 58 combat missions, logged twelve hundred twenty eight hours of flying time and made 126 carrier landings. On January 6, 1945, Barbara Pierce married, she would come to say, "the first man I ever kissed."