President George H.W. Bush and first lady Barbara Bush walk with their dog, Millie, across the South Lawn in 1992 as they return to the White House. Bush died at age 94 on Friday, about eight months after the death of his wife.

Few people have entered the presidency with as many achievements as George Herbert Walker Bush, who died late Friday at the age of 94.

Bush was the 41st president of the United States — and father of the 43rd president. He was our last president to hail from the Greatest Generation.

During his public life, Bush was a congressman from Texas, an ambassador to the United Nations, envoy to China, chairman of the Republican National Committee during the post-Watergate turmoil that rocked the GOP, director of the CIA, two-term vice president and one-term president.

“There is no higher honor than to serve free men and women, no greater privilege than to labor in government beneath the Great Seal of the United States and the American flag,” Bush told senior staffers in 1989, according to The Associated Press.

Before entering public life, Bush joined the Navy on his 18th birthday and flew 58 missions off the carrier USS San Jacinto. He survived being shot down and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery. While at Yale, he was captain of the baseball team that went to the College World Series — twice. He graduated from college in 2½ years and went on to become a successful businessman in Texas.

Bush was a personally modest man who lived an amazing life of public and private achievement.

His presidency is best remembered for pushing Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait in 1991. At the time, Iraq had one of the largest armies in the world and Bush, correctly, knew that to allow Iraq to remain in Kuwait would only pass along, to future American presidents, a whole host of political and economic problems in one of the world’s most dangerous places.

Bush showed leadership, skill and forward thinking to create an unprecedented coalition of nations that not only liberated Kuwait, but stabilized an oil-dependent world economy.

On the war’s 20th anniversary, Bush said told The Associated Press, “I think it was a signature historical event. And I think it will always be.”

But George H.W. Bush was more than just a warrior. He appealed to Americans’ better side with his call for a kinder, gentler society at home. That’s a common interest for all presidents, but when Bush said it the words rang true. He was a man who had seen the worst that people could do to one another; when he achieved the height of political power, he called on all of us to be better people to one another.

The world is a better place because Bush prosecuted the Persian Gulf War. Americans would be a better people if more of us acted with the humility, courage, modesty and respect for others that Bush so strongly advocated for during his presidency.

The term “public servant” tends to be used to describe a lot of different kinds of people who win elections in this country. But it meant something when those two words were used to describe George Herbert Walker Bush. He was a true public servant — in every sense of the word — and his legacy made America a better, stronger nation.

— RDB