The Family (5 page)

In May 1916, Prescott reached the summit; he was one of fifteen men tapped for Skull and Bones. These names—Alfred Raymond Bellinger, Prescott Sheldon Bush, Henry Sage Fenimore Cooper, Oliver Baty Cunningham, Samuel Sloan Duryee, Edward Roland Noel Harriman, Henry Porter Isham, William Ellery Sedgwick James, Harry William LeGore, Henry Neil Mallon, Albert William Olsen, John Williams Overton, Frank Parsons Shepard Jr., Kenneth Farrand Simpson, and Knight Woolley—would anchor Prescott’s life, the lives of his two sisters, who would marry Yalies, and his brother, also Skull and Bones, as well as the lives of his children and his children’s children. These Bonesmen became one another’s best friends, confidants, colleagues, business associates, golfing partners, investors, and clients.

Skull and Bones has been called “the most powerful secret society the United States has ever known” because its members have presided at the highest realms of American business and political life. Former Bonesmen hail from some of America’s most prominent families: Bundy, Coffin, Harriman, Lord, Phelps, Rockefeller, Taft, Whitney, and, of course, Bush.

A Yale student named William H. Russell started the secret organization in 1832 in an effort to create a new world order that would place the best and the brightest at the helm of society. A wealthy elitist, Russell believed that the most important decisions should only be made by those who are bred to make them, so he created an environment that would shape the characters of the men who would shape the world. He called his group the Brotherhood of Death or, more informally, the order of Skull and Bones, patterned after a secret society founded in Germany, also in 1832. Since then, Skull and Bones has maintained its “tomb”—the basement of its headquarters—on the Yale campus in a windowless house on High Street just off the Old Campus and has selected fifteen men, and later, women, too, in every junior class to be admitted to its elite ranks. These men, who automatically include the captains of the football and baseball teams, the editor of the
Yale Daily News
, the president of the student council, and the head of the Political Union, are all sworn to lifetime secrecy about their rituals and commit themselves to helping each other scale life’s summits.

Within Skull and Bones, all Bonesmen are called “Knights,” and members refer to the rest of the world as “Barbarians.” When writing to one another, each Knight is addressed as “Pat” or “Patriarch” to signal his dominant role at life’s table. In the tomb deep within the ivy-covered house, the Knights swear allegiance to each other until death renders them nothing more than skull and bones. This allegiance gives all Knights a leg up in the Barbarian world, for members are always willing to help each other with financial assistance, social entrée, and political access. The Knights also pledge a lifetime tithe to the Russell Trust Association, the corporate shell of Skull and Bones and the richest corporation in the state of Connecticut. The RTA also owns Deer Island, a forty-acre retreat on the St. Lawrence River, two miles north of Alexandria Bay, New York. On the property is a lavish clubhouse that serves as a retreat for members only.

All Knights are encouraged to “crook”—to steal something rare and valuable for the tomb, which will build up the coffers of Skull and Bones. The best crook is displayed with a plaque in the clubhouse with the crook’s name, an honor all Knights seek. The competition in this area is fierce.

During Prescott’s years at Yale, the United States was trying to negotiate an end to the Great War in Europe while maintaining its neutrality. Students followed the progress of the European war on large-scale maps in the university library, and Yale urged its men to train for military service in the patriotic spirit of Nathan Hale (Yale 1773), whose monument on campus, always wreathed, carries his immortal words: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

American antiwar sentiment remained strong until May 7, 1915, when the Germans sank the
Lusitania
and 128 Americans lost their lives. Twelve months later Congress passed the National Defense Act and instituted the draft. President Woodrow Wilson campaigned for reelection with the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Opposing Wilson’s isolationist policies, Prescott and several other Knights formed the Republican Club at Yale to support Charles Evans Hughes of New York, the esteemed Supreme Court justice who felt that American intervention in the war was inevitable, desirable, and in fact admirable. President Wilson was able to ride antiwar sentiment to victory, but after German U-boats sank five American merchant vessels, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany to keep the world “safe for democracy.”

That declaration of April 6, 1917, changed the lives of Prescott Bush and many other Yale men who immediately joined the National Guard.

“At Yale I developed the thought that I really would like in the long run to get into politics, and with that in mind, I decided that I would go to law school after my graduation,” Prescott said in his oral history at Columbia University. “But unhappily the war broke out . . . and I immediately went into the Army and spent a little over two years in the service, getting out in May, 1919. I was a captain of field artillery. I might say that prior to that, in 1916, during the Mexican border crisis, I entered the Connecticut National Guard as a private . . . and that training was exceedingly useful to me and to many, many other Yale men who formed the so-called Yale Battalion with four batteries of field artillery, which meant about 400 men—100 in a battery—roughly speaking.”

The “Mexican border crisis” arose after the British decoded a secret telegram from the Germans. The telegram urged Mexico to declare war on the United States and promised that once America was defeated, Germany would insist on peace terms that would force the United States to return Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona south of the border. The German attempt to foment fighting within the United States was nullified with the declaration of war.

For two months in the spring of 1918, Prescott and four other Knights were dispatched to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, as members of the Army’s last horse-drawn artillery unit. The unit pulled the cannons and caissons that served as ammunition carriers, and was commanded by Brigadier General Adrian S. Fleming, who placed Prescott on his personal staff because the young man continually led everyone in singing the field-artillery song: “Over hill, over dale, we have hit the dusty trail as our caissons go rolling along.”

To Prescott and the other Knights of Skull and Bones, Fort Sill looked like a cornucopia for crooking, especially the Old Post Corral with its frontier relics and the Apache Cemetery that contained the grave of Geronimo, the Indian warrior who had led sensational campaigns against the white man. The chieftain had taken forty-nine scalps before the Army troops at Fort Sill finally captured him. He had escaped so many times before that he was lionized as a hero by both sides.

At the time of his death in 1909, Geronimo was the most famous Indian warrior in the world. As a result, the Apaches were afraid that white men might dig up his body and exhibit it in a traveling show or vandalize his grave, looking for gold and silver, not realizing that there would be nothing of value within because the Apaches were poor and did not bury valuables with their dead. Actually, Apaches were afraid of the dead and believed the spirits might contaminate them. They looked upon grave tampering with horror. So when the grave of a Comanche leader was desecrated, the Apaches, to prevent further tampering, spread the story that they had removed Geronimo’s bones. National magazines and newspapers published stories in 1914 stating that Geronimo’s remains were no longer at Fort Sill.

When the Knights of Skull and Bones arrived at the Army fort in 1918, they found all the graves unmarked and the cemetery overgrown with weeds and thorny vines. Available records failed to designate the burial site, and nine years after Geronimo’s death men on the post could not recall the spot, and Apaches professed ignorance. Despite all that, the Knights claimed that they had unearthed the secret grave and had snatched Geronimo’s skull in a midnight raid, along with his stirrups and a horse bit, all of which they carried back to the tomb in New Haven to be proudly displayed as the most prized of all “crooks.”

These false claims proved to be another example of Prescott Bush’s predilection for “pernicious . . . fooling.” The actual location of the Indian chieftain’s grave remained secret for many years until U.S. Master Sergeant Morris Swett, Fort Sill librarian from 1915 to 1954, shared his knowledge. He had become close to the Apaches during his many years at Fort Sill, and Nah-thle-tla, Geronimo’s first cousin, had trusted Swett enough to show him the unmarked grave. Swett’s story, “The Secret of Geronimo’s Grave,” confirmed by Apache leaders and tribal elders in Lawton, Oklahoma, was written by Paul McClung in 1964 in
The Lawton Constitution
, where it received little circulation. By then the 1918 myth of Prescott Bush and his Knights had taken hold as legend among decades of Bonesmen. The nonexistent exploit was so beguiling that F. O. Matthiessen, literary critic from Yale’s class of 1923, wrote it up for a Skull and Bones history titled “Continuation of the History of Our Order for the Century Celebration, 17 June 1933”:

From the war days also sprang the mad expedition from the School of Fire at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, that brought to the T [tomb] its most spectacular “crook,” the skull of Geronimo the terrible, the Indian Chief who had taken forty-nine white scalps. An expedition in late May 1918 by members . . . planned with great caution since in the words of one of them: “Six army captains robbing a grave wouldn’t look good in the papers.” The stirring climax was recorded by Hellbender in the Black Book of D. 117 . . . “The ring of pick on stone and thud of earth on earth alone disturbs the peace of the prairie. An axe pried open the iron door of the tomb, and Pat. [Patriarch] Bush entered and started to dig. We dug in turn, each on relief taking a turn on the road as guards . . . Finally Pat. [Patriarch] Ellery James turned up a bridle, soon a saddle horn and rotten leathers followed, then wood and then, at the exact bottom of the small round hole, Pat. [Patriarch] James dug deep and pried out the trophy itself . . . we quickly closed the grave, shut the door and sped home to Pat [Patriarch] Mallon’s room, where we cleaned the bones. Pat [Patriarch] Mallon sat on the floor liberally applying carbolic acid. The Skull was fairly clean, having only some flesh inside and a little hair.”

Many years after Prescott joined Geronimo in the happy hunting ground, this story rose up like a ghost in chains to smack the fortunes of Prescott’s political son, George.

When Geronimo died, the headline in one Oklahoma paper read: “Longed to Die in Arizona Where He Waged Bloody Wars—Resisted Civilization.” So in 1986, Ned Anderson, a former chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, decided to try to find the chieftain’s remains and take them to Arizona. During his search, Anderson received a letter from someone who purported to be a member of Skull and Bones. “What you’re seeking is not over at Fort Sill. It is in New Haven, Connecticut, on the Yale University campus. If you are interested in pursuing the matter further, I will make photographs available to you.”

Anderson wrote back immediately, and the anonymous Bonesman sent him a photograph of the glass display case in the tomb containing bones, stirrups, a horse bit, and what the informant said was the skull of Geronimo “crooked” by Prescott Bush and his fellow Patriarchs. The Bonesman also included a copy of F. O. Matthiessen’s document that told the story of the fictitious raid on Geronimo’s grave as if it were real.

The Apache chairman retained a lawyer to retrieve the skull so that it could be reinterred with the tribe in Arizona. The Skull and Bones attorney showed up for the meeting with what appeared to be the original display case, complete with the skull, stirrups, and horse bit. Anderson mentioned that the skull didn’t look exactly like the photograph he had received. The Skull and Bones attorney said he’d had it analyzed. “We found out it’s not Geronimo’s skull,” said Endicott Peabody Davison (Yale 1945), “but the skull of a ten-year-old boy.”

All negotiations fell apart when the Skull and Bones attorney demanded that, in exchange for the display case, the Apaches sign a document stipulating that the society did not have Geronimo’s skull. They also had to promise never to discuss the matter. Anderson refused to sign the document. He returned to Arizona and asked his senator, John McCain, to intercede by calling George H.W. Bush, then Vice President of the United States. McCain told the Apache chairman that Bush would not take his call, but the senator had no recollection of his call many years later. The display case was returned to the tomb in New Haven, where Bonesmen to this day still erroneously refer to it as Geronimo’s skull.

With America’s declaration of war in 1917, Prescott headed for France, while Samuel, his civic-minded father, went to Washington, D.C., to serve as chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms, and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board under Bernard Baruch. Described as a “Jeffersonian Democrat,” Samuel Bush was a progressive who built housing for his company’s employees and helped labor leaders persuade Ohio legislators to pass legislation for workers’ compensation. During the war, Flora, who stayed in Ohio, had to rely on letters to communicate with her family. As she wrote to her husband:

Dearest,

Yesterday brought another dear letter from Prescott + even today he must be at the front—His letters are a constant source of happiness to me—as they must be to you and I hasten always to forward them at once—I knew the news of John Overton’s death [Skull and Bones, 1917] would be a trial to him. [Overton was the first of Prescott’s class to die in the war.] That news came yesterday through the Associated Press and also in Prescott’s letter, which shows how delayed war news necessarily is.

Flora then refers to the front-page story in the
Ohio State Journal
that greeted her and all of Columbus on the morning of August 8, 1918. There was no byline on the story, or any indication of how the paper came by its exclusive. As a proud mother, Flora hoped that “the great epic” was true, but the realistic part of her was dubious. As she wrote to her husband: “The next mail Prescott receives will have our letter after the great news contained in Tom’s letter was rec’d—He will receive a good many letters + these will fill his heart with gladness if
only
the great epic was written seriously—I hesitate to write the word
if
but to you surely I can write as I feel—and open my heart.”