Presidential portrait of George H.W. Bush

George H.W. Bush’s Houston years, from oil to Congress

ByMarcus Tolliver

Photo: David Valdez, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

George Herbert Walker Bush moved to West Texas in 1948, after Navy service in World War II and graduation from Yale. He worked in the oil fields around Odessa and Midland and co-founded Zapata Petroleum in 1953.

In 1959 he moved to Houston with his family to run Zapata Off-Shore, a company that drilled for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

Politics

In Houston, Bush became active in Republican politics, then a minority party in Texas. He became chairman of the Harris County Republican Party in 1963 and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1964.

In 1966, he was elected to Congress from a new district in west Houston, one of the first Republicans to represent the city. He served two terms before another Senate run in 1970, which he lost to Lloyd Bentsen.

National career

He served as ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, envoy to China and director of the CIA. He was vice president under Ronald Reagan and was elected president in 1988.

Back home

After losing the 1992 election, Bush and his wife Barbara returned to Houston and lived in Tanglewood. His presidential library was built at Texas A&M in College Station. Houston’s main airport was renamed George Bush Intercontinental in 1997.

He died in Houston in 2018 and was honored at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church before burial at his library.

More in Spotlight