My father ruled out other options as well. In June 1948, he received a surprising letter from a childhood friend, Gerry Bemiss. Evidently, Bemiss had heard that Dad was entering the ministry. While my father was always a religious man, he did not envision a career in the clergy. “I have never even thought about the cloth—only a tablecloth or a loincloth,” he wrote.
One option was to go work for his uncle George Herbert Walker Jr., known as Herbie. Herbie adored my father. In later years, I sensed that the attention he showered upon Dad came at the expense of the love he gave to his own sons. He assured my father that he would have a prominent place at his Wall Street firm. Similarly, executives at Brown Brothers Harriman, Prescott Bush’s firm, made a serious recruiting pitch for my father.
It was not surprising that George H.W. Bush was in high demand. Few could claim the trifecta of war hero, Phi Beta Kappa, and captain of the baseball team. Dad took the Wall Street job offers seriously. He respected the work that his father did, and he wanted to put his economics degree to use. Plus, a job in finance would likely ensure he could earn a solid living for Mother and me.
Yet something pushed my father in a different direction. Wall Street represented the conventional path. After flying bomber planes, landing on aircraft carriers, and working next to people from all walks of life, the idea of boarding a commuter train from Connecticut and sitting behind a desk in New York had limited appeal. Rather than trade paper, he wanted to build something. He wanted to do something different with his life. And he wasn’t afraid to take a risk.
Dad also wanted to prove that he could succeed without help from his family. That independent streak ran in his blood. His great-great-grandfather Obadiah Bush had traveled west with the forty-niners during the Gold Rush. His grandfather G.H. Walker had broken away from the family business in St. Louis to strike out on his own in New York. His father, Prescott Bush, was proud that he hadn’t taken a dime from his parents.
That still left the question of exactly what to do. My parents had read the book The Farm by Louis Bromfield, which touted the classic American experience of tending your own land. They flirted with the idea for a while but ultimately decided the lifestyle wasn’t for them. I could just imagine Mother milking a cow.
In February 1948, Dad’s grandfather S.P. Bush died. My father joined family and friends on a flight to Columbus for the funeral. On the way he spoke to Neil Mallon, a close friend of Prescott Bush’s from Yale. Neil ran a company called Dresser Industries that sold drilling equipment and supplies to oil operators. Neil mentioned that Dad should consider working for Dresser. He could learn how a business operates from the ground up: managing inventory, making sales, and getting products to market. He could see firsthand a fascinating industry, the oil business. There was one caveat: He would have to move to the oil fields of the Permian Basin—an isolated, dusty, scorching-hot patch of West Texas populated mostly by ranchers and roughnecks, and full of oil.
The opportunity intrigued Dad. He had read articles about the Texas oil boom, where colorful entrepreneurs like H.L. Hunt and Clint Murchison were making fortunes. He had enjoyed his brief stint in Corpus Christi during his Navy flight training. And one thing was for certain: He would be on his own. Prescott Bush and G.H. Walker cast a long shadow, but it didn’t reach Odessa, Texas.
Shortly after graduation, Neil offered Dad a job with a Dresser subsidiary called Ideco, the International Derrick and Equipment Company. He accepted. There’s no doubt that my father got the position because of his family’s connections. I benefited from connections in my own life. I was fortunate that generous family members and friends helped create opportunities for me. But there’s a limit to the power of connections. While they can open doors, they cannot guarantee success.
In my father’s case, Neil Mallon opened the door to a job as an equipment clerk at an Ideco warehouse in Odessa with a salary of 375 dollars a month. A clerk’s duties included sweeping floors, arranging inventory, and painting pump jacks. He would meet interesting characters and figure out whether he liked the oil business. Beyond that, there were no guarantees.
For the second time in his young life, George H.W. Bush made a bold and life-changing decision. As a high school senior, he had given up the safety of college to serve in the war. Now he would leave behind the comforts of Greenwich, Connecticut, and move his young bride and infant son to West Texas.
—
GEORGE BUSH DID not make the decision alone. Barbara Bush made it too. Moving to West Texas was not a natural step for Mother. She had grown up in a relatively affluent family in Westchester County, New York. Her father, Marvin Pierce, came from Ohio, where he had been a star athlete at Miami University. He was a big, burly guy who used his fierce work ethic and Midwestern charm to build a successful career as President of the McCall Corporation, at that time one of the largest publishing companies in America.
Her mother, Pauline Robinson Pierce, descended from James E. Robinson, a Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. She relished her family’s position in the social hierarchy and spent money lavishly on life’s “finer things.” She supervised her children closely; she bought all of Mother’s clothes and decided where she would go to high school and college. She doted on Mother’s older sister, Martha, a model who appeared in Vogue magazine. Mrs. Pierce believed in what might be called the refined life. I can only imagine her horror at the idea of her daughter living out in West Texas, where the only thing refined was oil.
Fortunately, my father didn’t need to persuade Pauline Pierce. He only needed to convince Mother. That was not a hard sell. As she later told me, “I was young and in love. I would have gone anywhere your father wanted.”
I think there was more to her willingness to move than her devotion to Dad. “Christmas was a nightmare,” she told me. “We would spend Christmas Eve in Greenwich with the Bushes. Then Christmas morning with my parents in Rye. Then back to Greenwich for Christmas lunch.” Moving west would free her from the pressures of competing families.
Although she may not have realized it at the time, Mother too had an independent streak. Otherwise, she would not have been a willing partner in seeking new adventures. I can only guess how Dad’s life would have turned out if his wife had been less open to change. History might have been different.
One of my favorite family stories occurred shortly after my parents got married. Mother lit up a cigarette, and my grandfather Prescott Bush asked jokingly, “Did I give you permission to smoke?”
Before she could catch herself, Mother shot back, “Well I didn’t marry you, did I?”
Usually nobody spoke to my grandfather that way. The sharp rejoinder just popped out. Fortunately, he responded with a big laugh. One thing was for sure: Barbara Bush was willing to speak her mind. That was something she did quite frequently in later years. Mother’s quick wit and self-deprecating humor endeared her to millions of Americans. Her willingness to speak her mind stood in contrast to some tightly scripted political spouses. As a result of her wide following, she helped many Americans understand and love her husband. Many people told me that anyone who married Barbara Bush had to be a good man.
—
IN THE SUMMER of 1948, George H.W. Bush had two immediate tasks: start his job, and find a place for Mother and me to live. While he scouted for housing in Odessa, Texas, we stayed with my great-grandfather G.H. Walker at his summer house in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Life was a lot more comfortable on Walker’s Point than in West Texas. In those days, Odessa was a town of under thirty thousand people located twenty miles from its sister city of Midland and more than three hundred fifty miles from the nearest major airport in Dallas. Most streets were unpaved. Few buildings were taller than one story; the skyline consisted of oil derricks dotting the horizon. Summer temperatures routinely hit triple digits, sometimes before noon, and long droughts were common. The flat terrain offered no relief, nor was there any natural shade, since West Texas had no native trees. And the wind howled, often carrying with it punishing waves of dirt.