Walker's Point - Virtual Rewards 2.0 Virtual Cache

"... a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand

points of light in a broad and peaceful sky"

President George H. W. Bush

• There is limited 15 minute parking available at the posted coordinates.
• Obey all NO PARKING signs along Ocean Ave.
• Walker's Point is off limits; protected by both private security and at times the U.S. Secret Service.
• Respect private property along Parson's Way shore path.
• Use caution when walking on wet rocks and be aware of high surf, especially near high tide.
• The airspace is Prohibited meaning operating any aircraft, including drones, violates Federal law.

Click Here to Jump to Logging Requirements

History of Walker's Point

The peninsula you are looking at has had many names since being purchased by the Boston and Kennebunkport Sea Shore Company in 1872. Speculating on the Kennebunks becoming a Gilded Age summer retreat 130 miles closer to Boston than Bar Harbor, the company built about 30 hotels in the area as well as dozens of summer "cottages." The Sea Shore Company also donated the shorefront property west of here on which St. Ann's Episcopal Church was later erected.

This arrowhead-shaped outcropping has, at various times, been called Flying Point, Point Vesuvius, and Damon's Park (named for a founder of the Sea Shore Company, Samuel G. Damon). The tip of the peninsula was named Surf Ledge in 1902 when David Davis Walker built two homes on the property with his son George Herbert Walker. It has been known as "Walker's Point" ever since.

It was here at Walker’s Point in 1921 that George Herbert Walker’s daughter Dorothy Wear Walker married Ohio businessman Prescott Bush. Prescott and Dorothy frequently brought their five children to the family estate. Their second oldest, George Herbert Walker Bush, referred to this place as “our anchor to windward,” and spent nearly every summer of his life here.

The Bush Family

An American political dynasty, the Bushes have produced two presidents, a vice president, two governors, a senator, and a member of the House of Representatives. Prescott Bush was a two-term senator from Connecticut (1952 – 1963) and one of his grandsons, George W. Bush, was the 46th Governor of Texas, and the 43rd President of the United States. Another grandson, Jeb Bush, served as the 43rd Governor of Florida. The rest of the offices were all held by George H. W. Bush.

George H. W. Bush, U.S. President from 1989 – 1993

Born June 12, 1924, in Milton, MA, George H. W. Bush was the last president not born in a hospital. Bush grew up in Greenwich, CT and attended Phillips Academy in Exeter, MA. Bush decided to join the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor but, at 17, was too young to enlist. He graduated Phillips Academy on his 18th birthday and enlisted later that same day. Bush became the youngest U.S. naval aviator a year after enlisting.

During World War 2, Bush flew 58 combat missions and made 128 carrier landings. On September 2, 1944, Bush's Avenger bomber was shot down after completing a raid on the island of Chichi Jima. Of the nine airmen to bail out of their planes, eight were captured and executed. Bush was eventually rescued from the water by a U.S. submarine, becoming the only one to survive being shot down during the Chichi Jima raid. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions.

Bush had already been accepted to Yale before joining the Navy, so after he was discharged in 1945, Bush enrolled as a recipient of the G.I. Bill. He completed a degree in economics in just two and half years. At Yale, Bush was a cheerleader and a member of student organizations including Delta Kappa Epsilon, Torch Honor Society, and Skull and Bones.

Baseball

George H. W. Bush had a lifelong love of baseball. A first baseman at Yale, Bush's team went to the College World Series twice, once with "Poppy" (as he was called) as captain. He got to meet Babe Ruth on June 5, 1948 when a gravely ill Ruth attended a Yale game to donate the manuscript of The Babe Ruth Story to the school library. Bush was selected to receive the manuscript at home plate on behalf of his team.

Bush’s love of the game continued right through his political career. As vice president, he managed to play in a MLB old timers game at Mile High Stadium in Denver. On July 13, 1984, the sitting VP hit a single off Milt Pappas, and made a couple of good defensive plays including robbing Tony Oliva of a base hit. The former Minnesota Twins designated hitter smashed a hard grounder straight down the first base line when the left-handed, 60 year old veep stopped it short with a backhand and then flipped the ball to Pappas who was covering first. Years later, then President Bush lamented not having his own mitt for the game, “My excuse on this part is I had a brand new mitt — knocked the ball down — should have had it clean.”

As president, Bush kept his mitt in his desk in the Oval Office, and had it with him April 3, 1989 when he became the very first president to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day from the pitcher’s mound. Previous presidents, beginning with William Howard Taft, had thrown the ceremonial pitch from the stands.

Marriage

Bush met Barbara Pierce at a Christmas dance in 1941 and invited her to the Andover prom later that evening. They were both teenagers; he was 17, and she was 16. They married a little over three years later on January 6, 1945 when Bush was a lieutenant junior grade in the Navy. Married for 73 years, theirs was the longest marriage of any first couple when Barbara Bush passed in 2018.

The Bushes had six children, George W., Pauline Robinson (Robin), Jeb, Neil, Marvin, and Dorothy. Robin was named for Barbara's mother who had died in an automobile accident three months before Robin was born. Tragedy struck a second time when Robin developed leukemia and died at age three. Barbara believed it was the stress of Robin's illness and the grief over her passing which contributed to Barbara’s hair prematurely turning white at age 28.

The young couple moved from New Haven to Texas in 1948 when George W. was two years old and before Robin was born. The Bushes would move dozens of times during their marriage. Barbara estimated they lived in a total of 29 different homes during their 73 years together: Michigan and Virginia while George was in the Navy...Compton, CA and various homes throughout Texas during George's career in the oil business...Beijing where George was the U.S. Chief Liaison to China (essentially an ambassador)...and, finally, the U.S. Naval Observatory and the White House from 1981 – 1993. They would always return here though—to Walker’s Point—for at least a few weeks each summer.

Early Political Career and Vice Presidency

Bush was elected to Congress in 1966 representing Texas's 7th congressional district. He served two terms before retiring in 1971 to run for senate. Bush's senate run was unsuccessful, but he held numerous government appointments during the 1970's including U.N. ambassador, chief liaison to China, and director of the CIA. After the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, Bush decided to run for president.

In 1980, Bush won the Iowa caucus as well as primary contests in five other states (including the caucus here in Maine); Ronald Reagan, however, won 44 states, easily securing the Republican nomination. At the Republican convention in Detroit, Reagan had a choice of potential running mates including former President Gerald Ford. Ultimately, Reagan selected the younger, more moderate Bush to be his running mate. Reagan won the 1980 election, making Bush the 43rd vice president of the United States.

Bush served as vice president for all eight years of the Reagan administration, the longest tenure of a VP since Richard Nixon in the 1950’s. Then in the 1988 presidential election, Bush became the first incumbent vice president elected president since Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson 152 years earlier.

Presidency

On November 9 1989, almost a year to the day after Bush was elected, the Berlin Wall fell. President Bush negotiated with the Soviet Union to reunify Germany. Bush signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) with Mikhail Gorbachev in July 1991 and the START II treaty with Boris Yeltsin in January 1993 after the Soviet Union dissolved. These negotiations ended the largest peacetime military buildup in history and officially brought an end to the Cold War.

In December 1989, President Bush ordered the invasion of Panama to remove dictator Manuel Noriega. Involving 26,000 troops, the invasion was the largest U.S. military operation since Vietnam. 23 American soldiers and an estimated 500 Panamanians were killed in the conflict. Operation Just Cause lasted six weeks and resulted in Noriega's arrest on charges of drug trafficking.

In August 1990, Iraq invaded its neighbor Kuwait to gain control over Kuwait's oil fields. The invasion was widely condemned by both the Arab League and the United Nations. The U.N. Security Council demanded that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein withdraw his troops from Kuwait by January 15, 1991. On January 16, the U.S. led a coalition of 39 countries to expel Iraq; this was the largest joint military assault since World War 2. On February 28, President Bush declared a ceasefire. Like the Panama invasion the year before, the Gulf War lasted only six weeks; U.S. casualties were fewer than 300 while estimates of Iraqi casualties were 10,000 – 50,000. By the end of the Gulf War, President Bush's approval rating was 89% which, at the time, was the highest approval rating for a sitting commander in chief in the history of Gallup polling.

Domestically, President Bush worked with multiple Democrat-controlled congresses to pass major pieces of legislation throughout his presidency. In 1990 alone, Bush signed more than a dozen bills into law including:
     The Ryan White CARE Act which funded HIV/AIDS treatment
     Amending the Clean Air Act to combat acid rain
     The Immigration Act of 1990 which increased the number of immigrants allowed each
     year and ended excluding immigrants based on sexual orientation

Perhaps the legislation most associated with George H. W. Bush's presidency is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The purpose of the ADA was to eliminate discrimination based on physical and intellectual disabilities. This included mandating the creation of wheelchair ramps, wheelchair accessible sidewalks, chairlifts, and elevators. The ADA not only accommodated those with mobility issues but also the hearing impaired, the visually impaired, as well as those with intellectual disabilities. The ADA also prevented employers from discriminating against people living with disabilities, requiring employers to make "reasonable accommodations" for both job applicants and employees. George H. W. Bush (who used a wheelchair in the final years of his life) personally advocated for this civil rights law when he was vice president and again as president.

In July 1990, the same month that President Bush signed the ADA into law, the U.S. economy entered a recession. To reduce the deficit and curb inflation, Bush struck a compromise with Congress to cut discretionary spending in exchange for raising taxes, something Bush had promised not to do during his 1988 campaign. The economy emerged from the recession by March of 1991 and the deficit cuts would eventually lead to a budget surplus by the end of the 1990's; unemployment, however, was slow to recover. Nationally, the unemployment rate peaked at 7.8% in June 1992 (an 8 year high), and by October it had fallen only to 7.3%. In the presidential election that year, Democrat candidate Bill Clinton made the economy the main focus of his campaign, and Independent Ross Perot garnered 19 million votes, more than any other third-party candidate in history. On November 3, 1992, Bill Clinton was elected the 42nd president of the United States with 43% of the popular vote.

Post-Presidency and Legacy

After leaving office, the Bushes moved once again, this time to a new home built in Houston, and the now retired couple resumed summering here at Walker’s Point. The former president and first lady supported numerous charitable and social causes throughout the United States and the world, but especially in their home states of Texas and Maine. The George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum was dedicated on November 6, 1997 on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

Two of Bush’s sons were also elected to public office: on November 8, 1994, George W. was elected Governor of Texas; that same evening, Jeb Bush lost his gubernatorial race in Florida. Four years later, however, on November 3, 1998, Jeb was elected Governor of Florida while George W. was reelected in Texas.

The Bush brothers were not the first siblings elected governor of two different states the same year. Jacob G. Bigler (1774?-1827) of Dover, Pennsylvania sadly never lived to see two of his sons elected governor a mere two months apart. They were John Bigler, the 3rd Governor of California from 1852-1856 and his younger brother William Bigler, the 12th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1852-1855.

For the record, Thomas T. Crittenden was elected Governor of Missouri from 1881-1885, the same time his half brother Eli Houston Murray was Governor of the Utah Territory from 1880-1886. But the Utah Territory's governors were appointed by the president, not elected.

When George W. was elected the 43rd President of the United States in 2000, George H. W. became only the second president, after John Adams, to also be the father of a president. Coincidentally, both sons had the same name as their fathers. President John Adams had no middle name, but he gave his son the middle name Quincy which he pronounced with a “z,” rhyming with “Lindsay.” The elder Bush, in turn, rarely used his middle initials for most of his life. Friends and family referred to him as “Pop” or “Poppy,” his nickname since childhood, and he mostly used “George Bush” professionally until his son George W. was elected president. Thereafter he began to be called George H. W. or simply “41.”

Skydiving

In February 1997, George H. W. was asked to retell the story of being shot down over Chichi Jima. He described how, after bailing out of his burning TBM Avenger, he “pulled the rip cord and released my chest straps too early, and how I had sunk fairy deep when I hit the water.” After recalling that hard splashdown into the Philippine Sea, Bush began contemplating what a thrill it might be to jump from a plane in far less dire circumstances. Realizing, at age 72, that he wanted to go skydiving, Bush quickly set about making it happen. On March 25, 1997, after getting approval from Barbara and his children, Bush parachuted with the Army Golden Knights over Yuma, AZ. What was supposed to be a one-time, bucket list kind of stunt by the former president became a genuine passion for skydiving.

Bush made a total of eight parachute jumps including jumps to celebrate his 75th, 80th, 85th and 90th birthdays. The day after he turned 80 Bush actually jumped twice over College Station, TX for which he earned the U.S. Army Basic Parachutist Badge for completing five jumps. The silver badge has a single bronze star representing Bush’s one combat jump over Chichi Jima. The event was attended by many celebrities including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and actor Chuck Norris.

Bush’s final two parachute jumps were completed here in Kennebunkport. He landed at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church which is the large stone church visible to the west of Walker’s Point. Even needing to use a wheelchair didn’t prevent Bush from celebrating his 90th birthday in 2014 by jumping from a helicopter at 6,000 ft.

Death

George H. W. Bush died on November 30, 2018, thirty years after the United States elected him president. At the time of his death, at age 94, he was the longest-lived American President and became only the 32nd person to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Building. He is buried in College Station, Texas on the grounds of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. He rests between his wife, Barbara and his daughter, Robin.

"It's been a joy to be here. Barbara put it pretty well: that this is a place where we really enjoy ourselves–but more than that, kind of refurbish our souls and get our batteries all charged up and enjoy life really to the fullest. It's a point of view. You can feel it in the land and in the water here."

George H. W. Bush, Kennebunkport, Maine, August 30, 1989

• Both born in Massachusetts
• Both had sons who became president
• Both had six children
• Both were sitting vice presidents when elected president
• Both served only one term in office
• Both were the oldest living president at the time of their deaths

• Both were the last two sitting vice presidents who were elected president
• Both had foreign policy experience before becoming vice president:
       Van Buren was Secretary of State and Ambassador to Great Britain
       Bush was Ambassador to the United Nations and to China
• Both appointed two justices to the Supreme Court:
       Van Buren appointed John McKinley and Peter Vivian Daniel
       Bush appointed David Souter and Clarence Thomas

History on Walker's Point

How to Log This Cache

The posted coordinates will take you close to a bench and a wall. Find a plaque on the bench and identify a large rectangular stone on the corner of the wall facing away from Ocean Ave. Count the number of vertical drill marks on that stone. Convert the month on the bench to a numeral so that it reads: MM DD, YYYY. Add MM + DD to the number of vertical drill marks from the stone. Email your answer to me through my profile.

Virtual Rewards 2.0 - 2019/2020

This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between June 4, 2019 and June 4, 2020. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 2.0 on the Geocaching Blog.