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Ernie Angelo, mayor of Midland at the time, says Bush had the family values of a Midlander but that those values were not deeply rooted.

But in time, those Midland values took root as Bush grew in his Christian experience. Bush has told family and friends, "I don't know what percentage of me is Midland, but I would say people—if they want to understand me—need to understand Midland and the attitude of Midland."

Bush's childhood years in Midland have a storybook quality and have shaped his worldview well into adulthood. He was the boy who lived on Easter Egg Lane—the nickname of a street on which all of the bungalows were painted in pastel colors, Angelo says. Bush remembers this period as one of the happiest times of his life, except for the death of his sister, Robin.

Midlanders kept their doors unlocked and their eyes on each other's children. People helped one another when things went sour. Although considered a school prankster, Bush was popular and beat a rival for seventh-grade president.

Later in life, Bush came to realize his identity as a Midlander gave him a means to separate himself from his world-famous father. "The biggest difference between me and my father is that he went to Greenwich Country Day [an elite boarding school] and I went to San Jacinto Junior High," he says.

Bush did leave Midland for an Eastern prep school before attending Yale and Harvard. But Bush says those experiences were ill-fitting, writing much later that Andover was "cold and distant and difficult."

As the oil boom faded by the mid-1980s, Bush and his friends were experiencing the grinding fears and tensions of owning businesses on the rocks. Some, including Bush, began drinking heavily.

Bush began an intense time of introspection. He dropped the name of Jesus into a causal conversation with his Bible-study leader, Bruce Robertson. "Man, you have really changed," Robertson recalls thinking at the time. "Here was this fellow, who made everything into a joke, all of a sudden turning serious."

The Bible study itself began as an unlikely substitute for Monday-night football. Bush and his friends were not eager to replace their hallowed football ritual, but their wives encouraged them.

"For the first time, they weren't just spending their time sitting around kicking back with hamburgers and beer," Laura Bush recalls.

For Bush, it was an initial step toward finally overcoming his drinking habit. As it turned out, the mid-1980s were decisive years in his spiritual development. A potent factor was his interaction with evangelist Billy Graham. Graham preached one summer at the small seasonal church, St. Ann's by the Sea, that the Bush clan attends while at the family's retreat house in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Later, at the instigation of the elder Bush, Graham gathered the younger Bushes around the fireplace to answer their spiritual queries. Bush does not remember Graham's words in that setting, but he felt impressed by "the power of his example, his gentle and loving demeanor." Graham later stood with the young Bush on the beach and asked if he was following up his spiritual interests.

"Are you right with God?" Graham asked.

"No," Bush replied, "but I want to be."

Bush had cause to reconsider Graham's question at an expensive watering hole in Colorado Springs. At Bush's 40th birthday party, with the wine flowing freely, he once again "couldn't shut it off," says Don Evans, Bush's friend and campaign finance chairman.

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October 2 2000, Vol. 44, No. 11