Barbara Bush - Marriage and Family

Marriage and Family

She met George Herbert Walker Bush, a student at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts at age 16 during a dance over Christmas vacation. After a year-and-a-half, the two became engaged to be married, just before he went off to World War II as a Navy torpedo bomber pilot. He named three of his planes after her: Barbara, Barbara II, and Barbara III. When he returned on leave, she had dropped out of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts; two weeks later, on January 6, 1945, they were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Rye, New York.

For the first eight months of their marriage, the Bushes moved around the Eastern United States, to places including Michigan, Maryland, and Virginia, as George Bush's Navy squadron training required his presence at bases in such states.

Over the next 13 years George and Barbara Bush had six children: George W. Bush (born July 6, 1946), Pauline Robinson Bush (December 20, 1949 – October 11, 1953, died of leukemia), John Ellis "Jeb" Bush (born February 11, 1953), Neil Mallon Bush (born January 22, 1955), Marvin Pierce Bush (born October 22, 1956), and Dorothy Bush Koch (born August 18, 1959). And from their 5 living children they have 21 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.