AUSTIN – Talking to graduates of the University of Texas at Austin in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush reflected on a decision he made as a young Navy war hero four and half decades earlier. It was a decision that would shape the rest of his life, and perhaps reshape the political map of what would become the nation’s second-largest state.

“Barbara and I packed, and I drove my red Studebaker from the Eastern States of our upbringing to the oil fields of West Texas,” Bush recalled about 18 months into his term as president. “And we chose a future that would be uniquely our own. And like most Americans, we were free to live where we pleased, do what we wanted.

“We came of age at a time when the postwar possibilities of America seemed limitless.”

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The decision by Bush to come to Texas helped set in motion the events that would transform the Lone Star State, which had produced such Democratic lions as Lyndon B. Johnson and Sam Rayburn, into the nation’s largest and most reliably Republican state.

Those “postwar possibilities” were especially limitless for Bush, the nation’s 41st president who died Friday at age 94, seven months after the passing of his wife. Newly married and still in his early 20s, Bush had every reason to expect a secure and prosperous future had he and his young family decided to remain in their native New England.

His father was a United States senator after a career as a Wall Street banker, and his grandfather was a steel industry executive who was tapped to help reorganize the federal War Industries Board in the run-up to the first World War.

Although he had several opportunities back East to make a living as a banker or perhaps a stock broker, the younger Bush’s determination to strike out on his own set in motion a chain of events that would break the Democrats’ century-long stranglehold on Texas politics. It would move the state’s nascent Republican Party from the right-wing fringe to the political home for the state’s pragmatic business class.

Moving first to Midland where he entered the oil business, Bush and his family ultimately settled in Houston where he launched his political career.

He ran for the U.S. Senate from Texas in 1964, but lost in a Democratic landslide led by Johnson’s election to the presidency. Two years later, Bush ran for and won a seat representing a conservative area of Houston. He held the seat until he made a second ill-timed run for the Senate, losing this time to Democrat Lloyd Bentsen in 1970.

Bill Minutaglio, an Austin author and journalist who in 1999 wrote "First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family," said the elder Bush’s political skills and connections helped guide legions of theretofore conservative Democrats into the GOP tent.

“There’s no doubt Bush’s presence in Texas helped give those Democrats permission, if you will, to leave the party of their fathers and find their true home in the Republican Party,” Minutaglio told the USA Today Network in a 2017 interview. “And we are still seeing that influence today.”

Author and historian Jon Meacham, who chronicled Bush’s life in his 2015 biography "Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush," said the influence of Texas worked both ways.

“Without the move to Texas nearly seven decades ago, however, it is difficult to imagine that either Bush — George Herbert Walker or George Walker — would have become president,” Meacham wrote. “Though he could not know it at the time, the senior Bush was moving not only to where the money was (in Texas oil) but also to where the power was going to be (in the increasingly conservative—and ultimately Republican) Sun Belt. To understand why the Bush family is even now a formidable force in the life of the nation, we have to pick up H.W.’s trail in the Texas of the forties and fifties.”

His grandson and political heir, Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, called his grandfather “the greatest man I ever knew. “

“His life spanned the American Century,” the younger Bush said on Twitter. “He fought in World War II ... took part in the Texas oil boom ... served out a distinguished career in public service including serving as president during the final days of the Cold War.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott remembered the 41st president as “an American hero and icon.”

“He was a friend to all he met, he embodied class and dignity,” Abbott said in a statement. “Texans are genuinely honored that he called the Lone Star State home and we collectively grieve this monumental loss.”

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, an aide to Bush during his vice presidency and White House years, called the former president a model for political figures to emulate.

"George Bush was the type of person who all of us should aspire to be," Straus said. "He was an unfailingly kind man who never wavered in his devotion to his family, his principles, his country, and his belief in serving others. For all the acts of service that he inspired and encouraged, it was his life that proved to be the most brilliant point of light of all. "

After his single term in the White House, George and Barbara Bush returned to Houston to make their home. In January 1995, they were in Austin when son George W. Bush was inaugurated as governor. Six years later the son would become president.

The elder Bush won the further endearment of his adopted home state when he parachuted, for the first time after being shot down in the war, on his 75th birthday near his presidential library on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station. He would repeat the feat on his 80th, 85th and 90th birthdays.

One of his last public appearances in Texas was in April for the funeral of Barbara Bush.

In his 1990 address to the University of Texas graduates, he seemed to describe his decision to make Texas his home as a stroke of luck.

“But the truly great decisions we make in life are rarely logical or practical,” he told the UT Class of 1990.

John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him at John.Moritz@caller.com and follow him on Twitter @JohnnieMo.