On Wednesday, a national day of mourning, former President George H.W. Bush's state funeral began in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The 41st president died November 30 in Houston, at the age of 94. Although remembered as a quintessential Texan (Bush will be laid to rest next to his daughter Robin and wife, Barbara, who passed away earlier this year, in College Station, Texas), the president once considered a move to St. Louis.
In All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings, a collection of writings, letters, and diary entries by the president, he writes in 1948, just before his graduation from Yale and right after the birth of his first son, future president George W. Bush, to his friend FitzGerald Bemiss about future plans. One option, long before the presidency: going to work for one of his uncles in our city.
So where does that leave me—no cloth, no books, perhaps a briefcase. I could work for Herby Walker in St. Louis—GH Walker & Co. investments etc. Some are fascinated, and genuinely so, by such a business. Perhaps I would be. Right now I do not know. It's not a basic business and yet it is important as long as we are living under a relatively free economic system. I am uncertain—I want to know and understand people, but the people I'd be doing business with in the investment business, I know to some degree now. I am not sure I want to capitalize completely on the benefits I received at birth—that is on the benefits of my social position. Such qualities as industriousness, integrity, etc. which I have or at least hope I have had inculcated into me by my parents at least to some degree, (I hope) I do want to use, but doing well merely because I have had the opportunity to attend the same debut parties as some of my customers, does not appeal to me.
So what happened? H.W. decided to take a job at IDECO in Odessa, Texas, instead. "I started at the very bottom of the corporate ladder, as an equipment clerk. Barbara and George W. joined me as soon as I found us a place to live—a tiny two-room duplex."
