Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush

p. 35

Growing up, George H. W. Bush was a magnet for other boys. They liked him and felt “protected and secure in his orbit.” But one time he stepped out of character and used an anti-Semitic slur to describe a Jewish friend. The sensitive Bush accused himself for this misstep for the rest of his life. Interviewed by the author seventy-odd years later, “Bush volunteered the story and cried, shaken by guilt over a remark made in the 1930s. He shook his head in wonder over his own insensitivity. ‘Never forgotten it. Never forgotten it.’ (The classmate remained a Bush supporter and friend for many years.”)