There was one serious hitch in this plan. It was illegal. Though he would be 18 years old on June
12, he would not have the two years of college the Navy required for its aviators.
Well, if you had an urgent problem, perhaps the law could be simply set aside, for you and you
alone, ahead of all the five million poor slobs who had to go in the mud with the infantry or swab
some stinking deck--especially if your private school's president was currently Secretary of War
(Henry Stimson), if your fa(Robert Lovett), and if your father's banking partner was currently Assistant Secretary of Wther had launched the career of the current Assistant Navy Secretaryar for Air (^)
for Air (Artemus Gates).
And it was done.
As a Bush-authorized version puts it, One wonders why the Navy relaxed its two years of college requirement for flight training in George Bush's case. He had built an outstanding record at school as a scholar [sic], athlete and campus leader, but so had countless thousands of other youths. Yet it was George Bush who appeared to be the only beneficiary of this rule-waiving, and thus heeventually emerged as the youngest pilot in the Navy--a fact that he can still boast about and
because of which he enjoyed a certain celebrity during the war. ''@s2@s9
Return to the Table of Contents
Notes for Chapter V
- Nicholas King, George Bush: A Biography (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1980), pp. 13-
- Ibid., p. 19.
- Ibid.
- Joe Hyams, Flight of the Avenger: George Bush at War (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovitch, 1991), p. 14. - Ibid., p. 17.
- Ibid., pp. 16-17.
- Donnie Radcliffe, Simply Barbara Bush (New York: Warner Books, 1989), p. 132.
- Fitzhugh Green, George Bush: An Intimate Portrait (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1989), p. 16.
- Radcliffe, op. cit., p. 133.
- King, op. cit, p. 14.
- Hyams, op. cit., pp. 17-19.
- King, op. cit., pp. 10, 20.
- Ibid., p. 21.
- Claude M. Fuess, The Life of Caleb Cushing, 2 vols. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and