📍Walker's Point, Kennebunkport, ME 04046, USA
1924 – 2018“I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, but the place that held my heart from my first summer was Walker's Point, the rocky headland at Kennebunkport, Maine, where my grandfather, George Herbert Walker, built the big shingled house around 1901. One of my earliest memories is standing beside my father in its small front hall. Every summer the whole clan gathered there: cousins, uncles, dogs and boats, with the Atlantic crashing on three sides. My grandfather taught us to fish for mackerel and pollock and to handle a boat in rough water, and I never lost my love of opening up the throttle and racing across the swells. The Point taught me what family meant: big tables, loud games, loyalty and the sense that, wherever life took you, there was one place you always came home to. I came every summer of my life except 1944, when I was flying from a carrier in the Pacific. Later, Barbara and I bought the Point to keep it in the family. As president I brought friends here, including François Mitterrand and Yitzhak Rabin, because I believed you learn more about a person across a kitchen table or on a fishing boat than across a conference room. A great storm smashed the house in 1991, and we rebuilt it. For my 90th birthday I made a tandem parachute jump and landed near St Ann's Church, just along the shore. Summers at Walker's Point, surrounded by children and grandchildren, were the happiest days I knew.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today