Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush,who presided over the end of the Cold War and routed Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army but lost a chance for a second term after breaking a no-new-taxes pledge, died on Friday at the age of 94, a family spokesman said.
Bush, the 41st president of the United States, lived longer than any of his predecessors. His death at 10:10 p.m. Central time was announced in a statement issued by longtime spokesman Jim McGrath.
Prior to assuming the presidency, Bush served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party, he had previously been a Congressman, Ambassador and Director of Central Intelligence. During his career in public service, he was known simply as George Bush; since 2001, he has often been referred to as “George H. W. Bush”, “Bush 41”, or “George Bush Senior” in order to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States.
A scion of the Bush family, he was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to Prescott Bush and Dorothy Walker Bush. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Bush postponed his university studies, 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 September 1945, then attended Yale University. Graduating in 1948, he moved his family to West Texas, where he entered the oil business and became a millionaire by the age of 40 in 1964. Soon after founding his own oil company, Bush became involved in politics. –Additional info from WikiPedia
