GETTING RIGHT:

[I]n the spring of 1984, when he heard the aptly named Arthur Blessitt proselytizing on local radio, Bush was intrigued. At the time, oil prices had started to crater, jeopardizing his business, and Laura had made repeated pleas for him to stop drinking. Blessitt, a traveling preacher who gained renown as a sort of folk hero among the evangelical community for dragging a twelve-foot wooden cross across the country and throughout much of the world, was in town for a week of speeches at Midland College's Chaparral Center. Through a friend, Bush arranged to have a private meeting with Blessitt at his hotel.

Bush was forthcoming with Blessitt, who while pledging his discretion, implored him to follow the path of Jesus. "I encouraged him to tell his wife and his friends what was in his heart," Blessitt wrote of their encounter on his website. "I told him he needed now to grow in the Lord and to study the word of God and be open to his testimony. I told him I would not to get up and announce in the meeting about him being saved."

Whether Bush was actually saved by the meeting remained to be seen. He and Blessitt never spoke again, nor did Bush show any outward signs of religious conversion.

A different spiritual mentorship, though, began again a year later, in the frigid Maine waters not far from the family warmth and tradition of Walker's Point. It spoke volumes about George W.'s rarefied life that it came from Billy Graham--and perhaps it was prophetic. Graham, a friend of George and Barbara's, had offered spiritual and political counsel to every U.S. president since Harry Truman. He and Ruth, his wife of forty-two years, were guests of the vice president and second lady during the Bushes' annual August reunion in Kennebunkport, where they took part in a frenzy of activities--golf, tennis, swimming, and anything else that may have a competition attached--that typified a Bush summer get-together.

One afternoon George W. and Graham took a walk on the beach, then ventured into the dark, heaving Atlantic Ocean. While it wasn't a baptism, it stirred something in Bush. Graham remembered little of what was said as they swam but recalled, "It was just two people. That was our beginning."

Their relationship developed during Graham's visit. One evening, in the expansive living room at Walker's Point as the waves steadily crashed into the rocky shore outside, Graham lectured the assembled Bush clan in a private Bible study. George, his mother, Dorothy, and Graham sat on a couch. "They say you have to be born-again to go to heaven," the vice president challenged Graham. "My mom, who I'm confident will go to heaven, will say that she's not born-again. Billy, what do you say?"

"I had a born-again experience," Graham replied. "But I needed it, and your mom didn't."

George W., who stood in the back of the room sipping wine, thought, Wow, that's a good answer. It wasn't an epiphany, but he started listening more intently to Graham throughout the evening.

The following day, Graham "saddled up" to George W. during a walk and asked, "Do you mind if I send you a Bible?"

"No, I'd be honored," Bush said. As he recalled thirty years later, "There was no lecture, no grabbing of the shoulders. And I started reading it. It was the beginning of me reading the Bible. A religious walk began, and still goes on today."

Graham had the advantage of seeing Bush around the larger Bush family, providing insight into his character. "Billy Graham was watching the interplay of [George W.] and his family, and he asked, 'Do you have the right relationship with God?'" said Karl Rove.

It was a question Bush carefully considered, taken as much by Graham's message as he was its messenger. "The man is powerful and humble," he said of Graham. "The combination of wisdom and humility was so inspiring to me individually that I took up the Bible in a more serious and meaningful way."

Forever after, he remained grateful to Graham, who "planted a seed in my heart, and I began to change."

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