http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/politics/14bush.htmlNeat photo on the page. Not many photos of 80 year old guys in the silk.
Ex-President's Birthday Ends, Happily, Sans Surprises
By RICK LYMAN
Published: June 14, 2004
OLLEGE STATION, Tex., June 13 - Former President George Bush, celebrating his 80th birthday with a few thousand friends and charity donors on Sunday, first appeared as a bright speck high above a baking Texas sky dotted with cloud puffs and as blue as a kitchen flame.
Suddenly, a gold-and-black-striped parachute opened 5,000 feet in the air, as though a gnat had blossomed into a butterfly. He swirled down, strapped in tandem with an Army paratrooper, Staff Sgt. Bryan Schnell, beneath a 270-square-foot glider. Their legs became recognizable, then their arms, until finally it looked like an easy chair floating beneath a kite.
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And then with a quick flourish and a burst of applause, they were on the ground, the former president skidding the last few yards on his backside.
"This was a day of joy and a day of wonder for the Bush family, and certainly for the old guy," the former president told reporters a few minutes later.
His jump suit sported an Army parachuting badge, indicating that he had just completed his fifth jump, including a practice one that very morning. Within the badge's wings is a bronze star, meaning that he made at least one jump in combat. When he was 20, he ejected from his World War II bomber before it crashed into the South Pacific.
Assisted by two instructors from the Army's Golden Knights parachute team, and chronicled by three other jumpers wearing video helmets, the ex-president had plummeted for 60 seconds of free fall before his parachute snapped open and he began a more gentle glide to the grassy field near his presidential library. Five years ago, for his 75th birthday, he made a solo jump, but on Sunday the Army decided that the wind was too unpredictable and the cloud ceiling too low. So they opted for the safer tandem jump, with the president strapped to the paratrooper.
Some 3,000 people watched from outside a huge air-conditioned tent where they had been eating and waiting for several hours. The weekend celebration of the president's birthday included a gala in Houston's baseball stadium on Saturday night and a post-jump barbecue on the grounds of the Bush library here at Texas A&M University.
Mr. Bush has talked frequently about what drives him to, in the words of his wife, Barbara, "jump out of a perfectly good airplane."
"I like speed and I like the thrill of it," the former president said. "But the second part is, I think it sets an example for older people here and abroad. Just because you're 80 years old doesn't mean you're out of it, out of the game."
Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida said that his father's previous jump had helped bring a sense of closure to his war experience.
"But this time, I think it's more related to loving life," Governor Bush said.
The current President Bush was not at the jump Sunday, but he did attend the 3 hour 25 minute birthday gala Saturday night at Minute Maid Park.
The weekend's activities, two years in the planning, raised $55 million for three charities: the Bush presidential library, the Points of Light Foundation and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
About 5,000 people paid from $100 to $1 million to attend the festivities for the 41st president, which were titled "41 @ 80."
Some, the current president said on Saturday, were there because his father's work had "made your lives easier."
"Some are here," the president said, "to see the 80-year-old dude, who tomorrow will strap on a helmet, zip up a flight suit and launch forth from a perfectly safe aerospace vehicle, arms splayed, back arched, yelling at Father Time, 'Take that, you old man.' "
The crowd on Saturday included a time-capsule assortment of world leaders from the first Bush era: former prime ministers John Major of Britain, Brian Mulroney of Canada and Shimon Peres of Israel, former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico and the unabashed crowd favorite, former President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, who sat through video montages about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.
Mr. Gorbachev had come to the United States for Ronald Reagan's funeral but said that he had been planning to attend the Bush celebration anyway.
On Sunday, Mr. Gorbachev joined the Bush entourage for the 100-mile trip from Houston to College Station in a private train pulled by a vintage steam locomotive. And there he was on Sunday, standing on a sweltering field in Texas clutching a white cap autographed by former President Bush.
Mr. Gorbachev said that Mr. Bush had pestered him for two years to join the jump but that he had declined. "Afraid," Mr. Gorbachev said.
A few hundred spectators who had not paid for entrance into the air-cooled tent on Sunday set out lawn chairs and spread blankets on a buggy lawn south of the landing field.
Billy and Mary Hardie drove a couple of hours from Fort Worth. They had seen the former president jump on his 75th birthday.
"But it's a lot different this time," said Mr. Hardie, retired from designing highways for the State of Texas. "There's a lot more security. Last time, we were over there by the library and, after the jump, President Bush walked over and talked to us."
The former president said that he may ask the Golden Knights to take him up again in a few months, so he can jump solo. And he said he was looking forward to 2008, when the Navy will launch an aircraft carrier named for him.
"Life is good, and Barbara and I are far happier in our life than we probably deserve to be," he said. "There's a saying I use, that I used when I was a Navy pilot a thousand years ago: Ceiling and visibility unlimited. CAVU. That's where my life is today."
