George H.W. Bush ~ June 12, 1924 - November 30, 2018

41st President, 1989 - 1993

George H.W. Bush sites visited:
We visited the George H.W. Bush Library Center last spring and it is fairly interesting, considering his long career in politics. The Center is located on the campus of Texas A & M University, 1000 George Bush Dr W, College Station, Texas. This is a sampling of things we found in the museum.
There are lots of photo opps 😊
Oval Office
A gate from Kuwait
The Situation Room
Several artifacts from a 2023 exhibit at the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Sometime during his Presidency, Bush visited Grand Rapids and we took this photo of him and Barbara.
We found this undated photo of Vice President Bush at the Johnson Space Center in Houston speaking to the crew of the shuttle Challenger (so sometime between 1981 and 1986).
The Library is situated on a beautiful part of the campus. We wandered outside on our way to his gravesite. This sculpture is entitled "A Monument to Freedom" by Veryl Goodnight and celebrates the falling of the Berlin Wall.

The pathway to the gravesite.
There's a lovely lagoon between the gravesite and the library.
Bush was one of five presidents to visit Mackinac Island, although his visit was after his presidency. And as the others did, he stayed at the Grand Hotel in 2005.
Rapid City, South Dakota, City of Presidents statue:
George H.W. Bush had a few firsts while President, including being the first president to have been a naval aviator, the first to have served as CIA director, and the first president to have received a Distinguished Flying Cross.

He is one of 15 Vice Presidents to become President and one of four to become President immediately after serving as Vice President due to winning the election (the others being John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Van Buren). Biden and Nixon both became President later on and Ford became President upon Nixon's resignation. Eight others became President due to the death of the then President.

The library is not the most convenient to get to being 3 hours south of Dallas, 2 hours east of Austin and 1 1/2 hours northeast of Houston. But George H.W. Bush had a long career and a long life, and his library reflects that.


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