George H.W. Bush, who died on Nov. 30, 2018 at the age of 94, lived a long and remarkable life, serving as the nation’s 41st president and raising its 43rd. He also spent 73 of his 94 years married to his wife, Barbara, before her death in April.
But his entire future — including becoming president — was threatened in 1944, when Bush was just 20 years old and serving as a flying officer for the Navy during WWII, according to biographer Jon Meacham, who wrote Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush. During a planned strike on the Japanese island of Chichi Jima, Meacham wrote, Bush’s plane was hit, forcing him to steer through smoke and flames before parachuting out of the aircraft. He bobbed in the water for hours, injured but evading capture by the Japanese, before eventually being rescued by a U.S. submarine.
