What George H.W. Bush's Life Was Like After Leaving the White House (2024)

Update: Former president George H.W. Bush passed away last night at the age of 94. The sad news was announce via a statement from his son, former president George W. Bush.

"Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Doro, and I are saddened to announce that after 94 remarkable years, our dear Dad has died," reads the message. "George H. W. Bush was a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for. The entire Bush family is deeply grateful for 41's life and love, for the compassion of those who have cared and prayed for Dad, and for the condolences of our family and fellow citizens."

Original 04/17/2018: Former first lady Barbara Bush passed away today at the age of 92. Earlier this week, it was announced that she had decided to "stop seeking medical treatment to prolong her life." The former first lady had been "seriously ill" and would focus on "comfort care," a family spokesman said.

The 92-year-old was one of only two women (along with Abigail Adams) to both serve as first lady and be the mother of a U.S. president. Born in Manhattan in 1925, the former Barbara Pierce attended Rye Country Day School and Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, before heading to Smith College. Her father, Marvin Pierce, was president of the McCall Corporation, which published the magazines Redbook and Popular Mechanics (both are now Hearst publications).

She dropped out of Smith to marry George Herbert Walker Bush, whom she had met while she was home from school during Christmas break at a dance at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

And while Barbara Bush and her husband each had a reported net worth of $25 million at the time of her death, they did not accumulate their wealth overnight.

"George Bush's father, Prescott Bush Sr., was a successful Wall Street investment banker and later a senator from Connecticut who left an estate of nearly $3.5 million when he died in 1972," the New York Times reports. "Barbara Bush also comes from a family of means. But, according to President Bush's autobiography, Looking Forward, he and his wife "never considered going to our families for seed money."

The 41st president "received only a modest inheritance, and once he was established in business, he did not use his family's money." It was not until 1966, when he sold his interest in an oil-drilling business before running for Congress, that he was considered wealthy. In 1988, the Times estimated his net worth as $2 million, and the newspaper attributed the majority of the increase in his assets to "buying and selling houses when he and his family moved."

Since leaving office, Bush—like other ex-presidents—has capitalized on his unique position through speaking engagements and book deals; he has reportedly "authored, co-authored and contributed to more than 50 books on topics ranging from religious commentaries to politics and health."

As a couple, the former president and first lady also shared two homes: a compound on a peninsula in Kennebunkport, Maine that was assessed at $8.4 million in 2010. The main house on the oceanfront 6.4-acre property is a 7,000-square-foot, six-bedroom home built in 1920. Their other residence is the home they built in Houston following the president's electoral defeat in 1992. It's a "two-and-a-half-story home on a modest lot in the affluent but hardly showy Tanglewood [neighborhood]," the New York Times reported in 1994.