Vice President George Bush pauses on the pier to talk with guest attending the commissioning ceremony for the guided missile frigate USS AUBREY FITCH (FFG-34), upon the conclusion of the day's events

George Herbert Walker Bush (born June 12, 1924) was the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993 and the 43rd Vice President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the U.S. Republican Party, he was previously a congressman, ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to Prescott Bush and Dorothy Walker Bush. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Bush postponed college, enlisted in the U.S. Navy on his 18th birthday, and became the youngest aviator in the U.S. Navy at the time. He served until the end of the war, then attended Yale University. Graduating in 1948, he moved his family to West Texas and entered the oil business, becoming a millionaire by the age of 40. He was chosen as a running mate by party nominee Ronald Reagan, and the two were elected. In 1988, Bush ran a successful campaign to succeed Reagan as President, defeating Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis. Under his presidency wars were conducted in Panama and the Persian Gulf, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Soviet Union dissolved two years later. He lost the 1992 presidential election to Democrat Bill Clinton. Besides being the 43rd president (2001–09), his son George also served as the 46th Governor of Texas (1995–2000) and is one of only two presidents—the other being John Quincy Adams—to be the son of a former president. His second son, Jeb Bush, served as the 43rd Governor of Florida (1999–2007).