George Bush Family Home

Bush came to the oil patch from a war and a university. Born in Milton, Massachusetts, in 1924, he enlisted in the Navy on graduating from Phillips Academy and in June 1943 became one of its youngest aviators, flying a TBM Avenger torpedo bomber from the carrier San Jacinto. On September 2, 1944, antiaircraft fire hit his plane over Chichi Jima; he bailed out, was rescued by the submarine Finback, and both crewmates died. He flew fifty-eight combat missions and won the Distinguished Flying Cross, then married Barbara Pierce and finished Yale in economics in 1948.

What the plaque says

George Bush Family Home George H. W. Bush, future President of the United States, moved to Texas in 1948 with his wife, Barbara, future First Lady, and their young son, George W., to begin work as an equipment clerk for the International Derrick & Equipment Company in Odessa, earning $375 per month. He was promoted to salesman the next year and transferred to California. The Bushes returned to Texas in 1950 and bought a home in Midland on East Maple Street, a street nicknamed "Easter Egg Row" for its pastel colored houses. Bush and his neighbor and friend, John Overbey, founded the Bush-Overbey Oil Development Company in 1951. They joined with Bill and Hugh Liedtke in 1953 to form a new company, Zapata Petroleum. Drilling success helped Bush afford this larger home for his family here at 1412 West Ohio. While the family lived here their second child, Robin, was tragically stricken with leukemia; she died on October 11, 1953, two months shy of her fourth birthday. The Bushes' third child, Jeb, was born here. From here, George W. walked to neighboring Sam Houston Elementary School. The family moved into a larger home at 2703 Sentinel Drive in 1956 and moved to Houston in 1959. During the mid-1970s George W. Bush, future governor of Texas, returned to Midland to start his own career in the oil industry. In 1977 he met and married Midland native Laura Welch, future first lady of Texas. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bush Family Home State Historic Site — steps away
  The small 1939 frame house on West Ohio Avenue where George and Barbara Bush raised their young family in Midland's 1950s oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site.
• Museum of the Southwest — 0.4 mi
  Midland's art and science museum in the 1937 house of oilman Fred Turner and his wife Juliette, with added galleries, a children's museum and a planetarium on the grounds.
• Permian Basin Petroleum Museum — 1.8 mi
  Midland's museum of the oil basin it sits on, from a restored diorama of the Permian reef to a 40-acre yard of drilling rigs and Jim Hall's Chaparral race cars.
• Midland Army Air Field Museum — 8.2 mi
  A hangar museum at Midland's airport, run by Commemorative Air Force volunteers, telling how a 1927 grass field became the bombardier college that graduated 6,627 officers in World War II.

More markers nearby

• First Christian Church of Midland — 0.2 mi
• First Baptist Church of Midland — 0.5 mi
• Midland National Bank — 0.7 mi
• Midland County — 0.9 mi