Former President George H.W. Bush Hospitalized In Texas

Donna Carson/ReutersFormer President George H.W. Bush smiles as he listens to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speak as he met with Bush to pick up his formal endorsement in Houston March 29, 2012.

Former 41st US President George H.W. Bush, 90, was hospitalized in Houston, Texas, late on Tuesday after experiencing shortness of breath, a spokesman said in a statement.

On Tuesday evening, the former president "was taken by ambulance to the Houston Methodist Hospital as a precaution after experiencing a shortness of breath," according to his spokesman, Jim McGrath.

Bush "will be held for observation, again as a precaution," McGrath said in a statement.

Bush's latest health scare comes two years after he was struck by illness during the 2012 holiday season and ended up spending seven weeks in a Houston hospital for bronchitis and related ailments, before his discharge in mid-January of 2013.

The former president grew so ill during his previous hospitalization that he was believed at one point to be near death, and members of his family gathered around him.

But he recovered and went on to mark his 90th birthday this year by taking a parachute jump in Kennebunkport, Maine. 

US Army PhotoFormer US President George H.W. Bush (bottom) celebrates his 85th birthday by jumping with the Army's Golden Knight parachute team in a tandem jump with SFC Michael Elliott in Kennebunkport, Maine in this handout photograph released June 12, 2009.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Robert Birsel)