All state agencies and offices have been ordered closed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott so people can pay their respects to the memory of President George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Bush, 94, was born and raised in New England, but many consider his rise a true Texas success story.
After serving in World War II and graduating from Yale, SMU political analyst Cal Jillson says Bush moved to Midland where he started a successful oil company. At the time, he says, Texas was the 'perfect breeding ground for success.'
"It's open. It's entrepreneurial. It's welcoming if you have talent and capital. Bush had that in the late 40s."
He later moved that company to Houston, the state's biggest city, as he started in politics. He tried as a Republican, when Texas was still a democratic state, to win a US senate seat in 1964 and 1970.
"He lost both of those races, but lost them in a way that suggested that he was the face of a rising Republican Party in Texas."
Jillson says Bush made the Republican Party palatable for democrats with conservative voting records.
"He legitimized a Republican party that was still uncomfortable for many blue dog Democrats.
"That started a red wave in Texas that's still seen today."
Today is the first day there's been a national day of mourning since the death of President Gerald Ford in 2007.
The Federal Government will be closed. So will the post office and the stock market.
A state funeral will held today in Washington. Bush's casket will then be taken here to Texas, where it will be delivered to St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston, where he is scheduled to lie in repose. On Thursday, Mr. Bush will be taken by train to his final resting place at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station.
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