Source of Wealth: inheritance, baseball.
The Bush family money goes way back, says Herbert Parmet, author of George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee, but in recent generations the key figure was George Herbert Walker--called Uncle Herbie by the clan--an investment banker from St. Louis. (Prescott Bush, the current president's grandfather, was also an investment banker before being elected to the U.S. Senate.) Walker's firm, G.H. Walker & Co., bankrolled Bush Sr.'s oil venture in Texas. By the time he became vice president in 1980, the father's fortune was somewhere between $2 million to $4 million. George W., the first MBA president, was much wealthier than his father upon entering the White House--primarily on the strength of the roughly $15 million he cleared on the sale of his shares in the Texas Rangers (initial investment: $605,000).
