George H.W. Bush, Barbara Bush, and Gerald Ford Signed 1992 Flashback Decision Trading Card.

George Herbert Walker Bush (1924–2018), the forty-first President of the United States, brought to the office an unmatched breadth of public service — decorated Naval aviator, CIA Director, Ambassador to the United Nations, and two-term Vice President — and presided with considerable distinction over the end of the Cold War and the Gulf War coalition of 1991, before losing his bid for a second term following his politically fatal reversal of his "no new taxes" pledge. His wife Barbara Pierce Bush (1925–2018), his partner of seventy-three years in the longest marriage in presidential history, was among the most beloved First Ladies of the modern era, known for her candor, her warmth, and her lifelong advocacy for literacy through the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. Gerald Rudolph Ford (1913–2006), the thirty-eighth President, holds the unique distinction of being the only person in American history to serve as both Vice President and President without being elected to either office, ascending to the presidency upon Nixon's resignation in August 1974 and issuing the controversial pardon of his predecessor one month later — a decision that cost him the 1976 election but which history has largely vindicated as an act of civic courage that spared the nation a damaging and interminable criminal proceeding.