MIDLAND, Texas – The last time George W. Bush came here, on Jan. 17, 2001, an estimated 10,000 people clogged the downtown to cheer a hometown hero who was about to be inaugurated as the 43rd president of the United States. The streets were bedecked with American flags, and Bush's sunny optimism filled the air as he spoke of “a spirit of possibility that was as big as the West Texas sky.”
Now the sun is setting on the Bush presidency, and yesterday he made a wistful return to Midland, stopping at one of his childhood homes to reflect, if only briefly, on what had changed and what had stayed the same.
“You know, I've told my friends here, I said, 'You know, I'm not going to change as a person because of politics or Washington' – that's what I said when I left,” said Bush, standing outside the small, gray-shingled, ranch-style house on West Ohio Avenue where he and his family lived for four years. “I'm wiser, more experienced, but my heart and my values didn't change.”
Bush's modest boyhood home, which has been restored to its 1950s condition – complete with family photos, his mother-in-law's teal 1955 General Electric refrigerator and a red tricycle in the yard – is now a museum.
Bush's visit was not announced; the official reason for the trip to Midland was to raise money for Republican congressional candidates. The president is spending the weekend at his ranch in Crawford, about an hour's plane ride from here, and he will attend a fundraiser tomorrow in San Antonio.
Together, the events are expected to raise $1 million, party officials said. On Friday, in St. Louis, Bush raised $1.5 million for Kenny Hulshof, a congressman who is running for governor of Missouri.
All of the events were closed to reporters, which gave Bush's visit to Midland an entirely different feel from the one he made nearly eight years ago, when the town was strung up with banners proclaiming him “Midland's Rising Son.”
That stop in 2001 was an emotional send-off rally for a Texas native who promised at the time that his stay in Washington would be temporary. Bush has said he will return to Texas full time when his term ends in January, though the president and first lady probably are headed for the cosmopolitan center of Dallas rather than West Texas.
Yesterday, Bush slipped into Midland quietly. Just a handful of people, including his old friend Donald Evans, the former commerce secretary who has moved back to the area, and the mayors of Midland and nearby Odessa, were on hand to greet him when Air Force One touched down.
There were no banners and no cheering crowds along the motorcade route, just a sparse group of curious onlookers, some of whom took snapshots with cell phone cameras of Bush's black limousine as he and his wife, Laura, made their way to the home of Rep. Mike Conaway, the host of the fundraiser.
Laura Bush grew up in Midland and has returned frequently during her White House years to visit her mother, Jenna Welch, who still lives in the city and attended the fundraiser.
After the event, the president's aides announced that Bush would make an “OTR” – White House lingo for an off-the-record stop – at his boyhood home.
The three-bedroom house, operated by a private nonprofit group, is called the George W. Bush Childhood Home, although it was also the home of Bush's father, the former president, and his brother Jeb, a former governor of Florida. It is one of three homes the president lived in as a child. His parents, who had moved to Midland in 1948, bought the house in 1951, when Bush was about 5, and kept it until 1955. Yesterday, the president confessed that his memory of the place was a little fuzzy.
“I kind of remember it,” Bush said, adding, “The bedroom – actually I do remember the wood on the wall.”
The president and first lady, both born in 1946, attended the same Midland school for just one year, in seventh grade. They did not really know each other until they met again in Midland, when they were 31, at a backyard barbecue of mutual friends. The Bushes married three months later.
It was the 1970s, and Bush had returned to Midland to follow in his father's footsteps by getting into the oil business. He spent his early marriage in the city, and their twin daughters were born here. Bush did not have much success with his energy business and the family left about a decade later. While in Midland, he ran for Congress – in his first bid for public office and his only loss as a politician.
Bush spent only a short while inside the West Ohio Avenue home yesterday, and when he came out, he called it “a very heartwarming experience.” “It's an amazing experience to come back to a place you were raised,” the president said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
