The Family (87 page)

George Herbert Walker Bush (class of 1948) finished Yale in three years on the accelerated program for returning veterans of World War II. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in economics. An outstanding first baseman for the Yale team, he joined Skull and Bones and was president of his fraternity, DKE.

The Skull and Bones roster from the class of 1948. The secret society, founded in 1832, became the most important part of Yale for George Herbert Walker Bush, whose best friends and financial backers in his political races were Bonesmen.

Edward Williamson Andrews Jr., Thomas William Ludlow Ashley, Lucius Horatio Biglow Jr., George Herbert Walker Bush, John Erwin Caulkins, William Judkins Clark, William James Connelly Jr., George Cook III, Endicott Peabody Davison, David Charles Grimes, Richard Elwood Jenkins, Donald Loyal Leavenworth, Richard Gerstle Mack, Thomas Wilder Moseley, Frank O’Brien Jr., Philip O’Brien Jr., George Harold Pfau Jr., Samuel Sloane Walker Jr., Howard Sayre Weaver, Valleau Wilkie Jr.

Babe Ruth, two months before he died in 1948, presents his book
The Babe Ruth Story
to Yale’s baseball captain, George Herbert Walker Bush, for the Yale library. Like his father, George played first base on the Yale team, where he was known as “All Glove, No Hit.”

George Walker Bush (class of 1968) was born in New Haven during his father’s first year and was admitted as a Yale “legacy” in 1964. He did not achieve the distinctions of his father or grandfather, but he became president of his fraternity, DKE, and joined Skull and Bones. Unlike his grandfather, George wanted nothing to do with Yale upon his graduation.

George W. Bush’s transcript from Yale, where he graduated near the bottom of his class. When he received an honorary degree from the university in 2001, he said, “And to the C students, I say, you, too, can be President of the United States.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Prescott Bush in 1956. Prescott ran this photo in his reelection campaign against Democratic Representative Thomas Dodd under the heading “President Eisenhower Signs a Senator Bush Bill.”

Senator Prescott Bush, representing Connecticut, known then as the Hat State, adjusts a straw Panama he gave to Vice President Richard Nixon on May 6, 1953, after a weekly lunch of freshman Republicans in the U.S. Senate. Bush, who favored jaunty brown-and-white spectator shoes and plaid double-breasted blazers, was known as one of the best-dressed men in the Senate.

Planned Parenthood fund-raising letter of January 8, 1947, lists Prescott S. Bush as treasurer of Margaret Sanger’s first national fund-raising drive. At that time, contraception was against the law in Connecticut, and the state had a large Catholic constituency. In 1950, during Prescott’s first race for the U.S. Senate, the syndicated columnist Drew Pearson accused Bush of being a member of Planned Parenthood. Bush lost and accused Pearson of spreading the lie that cost him elected office. This fund-raising letter proved Pearson right.

The New England Conference of Senators, June 26, 1958. Seated left to right: Henry S. Bridges (R-NH), John O. Pastore (D-RI), Prescott S. Bush (R-CT), and Theodore F. Green (D-RI). Standing left to right: Norris H. Cotton (R-NH), Ralph E. Flanders (R-VT), George D. Aiken (R-VT), Leverett Saltonstall (R-MA), and John F. Kennedy (D-MA). The day after this photo, Kennedy made a speech criticizing the administration’s handling of a crisis in Lebanon: “The fact remains that the American people have no clear and consistent understanding of why we are there, what we are going to do, or what we hope to accomplish . . . We are confronted once again with armed conflict in the Middle East because we have developed no alternative to armed conflict.”

The gravestones of Prescott S. Bush and his wife, Dorothy Walker Bush, in Putnam Cemetery, Greenwich, Connecticut. Dorothy selected the never-tarnish bronze marker for the senator: “Leader, Athlete, Singer, Soldier, Banker, Statesman, Churchman, Companion, Friend, Father, Husband Extraordinary.” Her stone, laid twenty years later, identifies her simply as “His Adoring Wife.”

George H.W. Bush and Eisenhower. Bush had been chairman of the Eisenhower-Nixon campaign in Midland, Texas, in 1952 and 1956. Calling on his father’s friendship with the President, Bush sought Eisenhower’s endorsement for his failed Senate race in 1964 and for his successful congressional race in 1966.