When George Herbert Walker Bush won the 1988 presidential election, it was the first time an incumbent vice president was elected president since Martin Van Buren in 1836.

Bush, the son of a senator, entered the Navy on his eighteenth birthday, becoming the youngest naval aviator in World War II’s Pacific Theater where he flew 58 combat missions. Once, when his aircraft was hit by Japanese fire, he completed his attack from a burning plane before ejecting. In 1945, Bush married Barbara Pierce. After graduation from Yale, he embarked on a career in the West Texas oil business, and then won a congressional seat in 1966. Appointments to a series of high-level positions followed—including United Nations ambassador, GOP chairman during Watergate, envoy to China, and CIA director—before joining Ronald Reagan on the GOP ticket in 1980 and serving two terms as vice president.

Bush was president during momentous international events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, dismantling of the Soviet Union, and protests in China’s Tiananmen Square. He led the U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf War after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Domestically, the economy started to falter midway through his term.

Bush lost his re-election bid in 1992 to Democrat Bill Clinton. The Bushes returned to Texas, worked on the Bush Library, and remained active in public life. In 2001, he became the only president since John Adams to see his son sworn into the nation’s highest office. He died in November 2018, just seven months after his wife.