Former US President George HW Bush has died at the age of 94, his son George W Bush has announced. George Bush Sr, as he was known, passed away on Friday evening, a spokesperson said on behalf of the family.
He was the 41st US president between 1989 to 1993, after serving eight years as vice-president to Ronald Reagan. Despite achieving popularity ratings of 90%, he was accused of neglecting domestic affairs and was defeated by Bill Clinton in the 1992 election, reports BBC.
He was a World War Two aviator and Texan oil tycoon before entering politics in 1964 as a Republican. In April, he was admitted to a hospital intensive care unit with an infection, a week after the death of his wife Barbara.
George HW Bush takes the oath of office as the President of the United States
Bush was the longest-lived American president in history, followed closely by Jimmy Carter, who was born a few months later.
George Herbert Walker Bush was born at 173 Adams Street in Milton, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1924, to Prescott Sheldon Bush and Dorothy (Walker) Bush. The Bush family moved from Milton to Greenwich, Connecticut, shortly after his birth. Growing up, he used the nickname “Poppy”.
Bush began his formal education at the Greenwich Country Day School in Greenwich. Beginning in 1938, he attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where he held a number of leadership positions that included president of the senior class, secretary of the student council, president of the community fund-raising group, a member of the editorial board of the school newspaper, and captain of both the varsity baseball and soccer teams.
He married Barbara Pierce (1925–2018) in Rye, New York on January 6, 1945. The marriage produced six children: George W. (b. 1946), Robin (1949–1953), Jeb (b. 1953), Neil (b. 1955), Marvin (b. 1956), and Doro (b. 1959).
At the time of his wife’s death on April 17, 2018, George H. W. had been married to Barbara for 73 years; theirs was the longest presidential marriage in American history. They had become the longest-married presidential couple in January 1999 when their marriage surpassed the 54-year (1764–1818) marriage of John and Abigail Adams.
