The Family (90 page)

George W. Bush being sworn in as President with his wife, Laura, on January 20, 2001. In his inaugural address Bush said, “Many in our country do not know the pain of poverty, but we can listen to those who do. And I can pledge our nation to a goal: when we see that wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side.”

George W. Bush speaking at Bob Jones University during the South Carolina primary on February 2, 2000. “We share the same conservative values,” he said, “the same conservative principles.” Bob Jones University—whose founders were virulently anti-Catholic—opposed integration, banned interracial dating, and condemned homosexuality.

President Bush (43) in the rubble of Ground Zero on September 14, 2001, three days after the terrorists’ attack on the World Trade Center. Next to the President is Bob Beckwith, a retired firefighter who had just come down to look at the ruins. Accompanied by New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Bush toured the disaster site on foot.

The youngest pilot in the U.S. Navy, George H.W. Bush enlisted following his eighteenth birthday after graduating from Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts. He served three years in World War II with the Third and Fifth Fleets in the Pacific. He was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism.

President George W. Bush landing on the USS
Abraham Lincoln
on May 1, 2003, in an S-3B Viking, an antisubmarine aircraft. Behind him, attached to the superstructure of the ship, was a large banner: “Mission Accomplished.” The White House reluctantly admitted later that it had not been necessary for Bush to land by plane but that he wanted to. After being photographed in his flight suit, the President changed clothes and announced, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

The twin daughters of George and Laura Bush: Barbara (Yale 2004) and Jenna (University of Texas 2004) on inaugural night, January 21, 2001. During college, both girls were arrested for underage drinking. They used fake IDs like their father once did. Their grandmother Barbara Bush criticized them privately. Shortly after police in Austin, Texas, cited the twins for violating state alcoholic-beverage laws, Barbara joked that what goes around comes around. Said his mother: “George is getting back some of his own.”

Lauren Bush, born June 25, 1984, is the eldest of Neil and Sharon’s three children. Enrolled at Princeton (class of 2006), she became a model at the age of sixteen, made her debut at the Crillon Haute Couture Ball in Paris in 2000, and posed for
Vanity Fair, Vogue,
and
Town & Country
. Her mother, who enjoys escorting her daughter to social soirees, said, “Bar just hates the fact that Lauren is a model.”

George Prescott Bush with his uncle George Walker Bush. P4, as he’s known in the family, the eldest child of Jeb and Columba Bush, was born on April 24, 1976. After graduating from Rice University and teaching high-school history in Florida for a year, he campaigned for his uncle for President before starting law school at the University of Texas. He graduated in 2003, clerked for a federal judge in Dallas, and plans to join the Dallas office of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer, and Feld. The Bush family considers George P. their answer to John F. Kennedy Jr.—handsome, accomplished, and destined for a bright future.

An Orange County sheriff’s deputy escorts Noelle Bush from court in Orlando, Florida, on July 19, 2002, as her brother George P. Bush, far left, looks on. The only daughter of Jeb and Columba, Noelle was born on July 26, 1977, and has been addicted to drugs, and in and out of court and rehab, for several years.

NOTES

CHAPTER 1

Records:
Samuel Prescott Bush Papers, Ohio Historical Society, containing several letters from Flora Bush to Samuel Bush during the summer of 1908; a letter from Harriet Fay Bush (1829–1924), Samuel’s mother, to Samuel, also in the summer of 1908; a letter from Samuel’s daughter Mary (1897–1992) written to him during the summer of 1908; a letter from his daughter Margie (1899–1993) to Samuel in 1911; letters from Flora to Samuel from the 1911–13 period; five undated letters from Samuel to Flora on the stationery of the Engineers’ Club in New York, one of which was written during World War I; a letter from Flora to Samuel, also written while Prescott Bush was in Europe during World War I; poem written by Samuel’s daughter Margaret Bush Clement sometime in the late 1930s; a letter from Samuel Bush to his sons, Prescott and Jim, on May 14, 1940; and a letter from Martin J. Gillen to Samuel Bush, Dec. 10, 1942, in which Gillen mentions their first meeting during World War I, when both men served on the War Industries Board. Other records: certificate of Robert S. Bush’s death in Milwaukee in 1900, Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Sevices; Prescott S. Bush Oral History, 1966, Columbia University Oral History Research Project, Eisenhower Administration Project; Yale yearbook
History of the Class of 1917
(1917),
Banner and Pot Pourri
(1916–17), and fiftieth-anniversary yearbook,
History of the Class of 1917
(1967), as well as notes on the Silver Dollar Quartet sent by Prescott Bush to Marshall Bartholomew in June 1957 and other documents from the Yale archives concerning Prescott Bush’s activities as an alumnus, Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.

Books:
Brooks Mather Kelley,
Yale: A History
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974); Herbert S. Parmet,
George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee
(New York: Scribner, 1997); Alexandra Robbins,
Secrets of the Tomb
(Boston: Little, Brown, 2002); Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff Historical Society pamphlet,
1998 Tour of Homes,
May 10, 1998.

Articles:
Burt Solomon, “A Pair of Dominant Grandfathers Shape a Presidential Persona,”
National Journal
, Sept. 7, 1991; “Annual Elections of Senior Societies from Junior Class,”
Yale Daily News,
May 19, 1916; “A Call to Undergraduates to Organize a Republican Club of Yale University,”
Yale Daily News,
Oct. 6, 1916; Paul McClung, “The Secret of Geronimo’s Grave,”
Lawton Constitution
, Feb. 18, 1964; Ron Rosenbaum, “I Stole the Head of Prescott Bush! More Scary Skull & Bones Tales,”
New York Observer
, July 17, 2000; Tim Giago, “Where Are They Hiding Geronimo’s Skull?”
Lakota Nation Journal
(Winter 2000); “High Military Honors Conferred on Capt. Bush,”
Ohio State Journal
, Aug. 8, 1918; “If Prescott Had Read It in a Story-Book When He Was a Kid,” cartoon,
Ohio State Journal,
Aug. 9, 1918; “Triple Honor to P. S. Bush, Yale ’17,”
New Haven Journal-Courier
, Aug. 15, 1918; Flora Sheldon Bush, letter to the editor,
Ohio State Journal,
Sept. 6, 1918, p. 1.

Interviews:
Indiana Earl, July 17 and 20, 2001, and Aug. 14, 2001; John G. Doll, Jan. 28, 2003; Stuart Symington Jr., July 3, 2002; James Symington, July 3, 2002; Richard D. Barrett, Dec. 12, 2002; Richard Kimball Jr., Jan. 11, 2003; correspondence with Mark Salter, June 10, 2003.

CHAPTER 2

Records:
1900 U.S. Census record of George W. Walker’s household,
msn.ancestry.com
(April 2004); deeds and plans of Walker’s Point, York County Register of Deeds, Alfred, Maine; George H. Walker will, Maine Probate Court, York County; Mary (Carter) Walker Oral History Interview transcript, Greenwich Library Oral History Project, Greenwich Library, Greenwich, Conn.; Veiled Prophet records, St. Louis Public Library; files of
St. Louis Star-Times
and
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, St. Louis Mercantile Library.

Books:
Richard Ben Cramer,
What It Takes
(New York: Vintage Books, 1993); Herbert S. Parmet,
George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee
(New York: Scribner, 1997); Fitzhugh Green,
George Bush: An Intimate Portrait
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1989); Julius K. Hunter,
Kingsbury Place: The First Two Hundred Years
(St. Louis: Mosby, 1982); Charles Van Ravenswaay,
St. Louis: An Informal History of the City and Its People, 1764–1865
, ed. Candace O’Connor (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1991); Albert Nelson Marquis, ed.,
The Book of St. Louisans
(St. Louis: St. Louis Republic, 1912); William Hyde,
Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis
(New York: Southern History Company, 1899);
Social Register of St. Louis
(New York: Social Register Association), for the years 1910–26.

Articles:
“I’m for Lynch Law and Whipping Post; D. D. Walker Writes,”
St. Louis Republican,
July 22, 1914; Jake Tapper, “Judging W’s Heart,”
salon.com
, Nov. 1, 2000; Burt Solomon, “A Pair of Dominant Grandfathers Shape a Presidential Persona,”
National Journal,
Sept. 7, 1991; “Walker Verdict of ‘Unsound Mind’ Is Set Aside,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, May 13, 1918; “D. D. Walker, Sr., Dies; Founded Dry Goods Firm 40 Years Ago,”
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, Oct. 15, 1918; “D. D. Walker, Sr., Retired Merchant, Dies in East,”
St. Louis Republican
, Oct. 15, 1918; “In Memoriam: George Herbert Walker,”
Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society
10, no. 1 (Oct. 1953); “G. H. Walker & Co. Turns 65,”
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, May 25, 1965; Beth McLeod, “President’s Mother Was Captain of Smooth-Sailing Family Ship,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
June 30, 1991; “Prophet’s Court at Coronation Scene of Beauty,” “Veiled Prophet’s Queen from Pioneer Family,” and “Riot of Color and Iridescence in Gowns Worn at V. P. Ball,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
Oct. 8, 1919;
Philadelphia Inquirer
coverage of the first girls’ singles national tennis championship, June 19–22, 1918; “Miss Dorothy Walker Weds,”
New York Herald Tribune
, Aug. 6, 1921;
New York Journal-American
account of Dorothy Walker’s wedding, Aug. 1921; “Mrs. Samuel P. Bush Killed in Auto Accident in Rhode Island,”
Columbus Sunday Dispatch
, Sept. 5, 1920; “Investigation Being Made into Watch Hill Accident,”
Westerly Sun
, Sept. 7, 1920.

Interviews:
Ann Biraben, Oct. 24, 2002; Mary Hall-Ries, Nov. 14, 2002; Robert Duffy, Nov. 13, 2002; correspondence with Robert Duffy, Feb. 21, 2003; Noel C. Holabeck, Nov. 14, 2002; Peggy Adler, Aug. 7, 2001, and Oct. 12, 2001; Christopher Walker, Feb. 10, 2003; James Symington, July 3, 2002; Stuart Symington Jr., July 3, 2002.

RE: Dorothy Walker’s Childhood Home, 12 Hortense Place, St. Louis
“We have always felt there is a ghost in this house,” said Mary Hall-Ries on November 14, 2002. “It’s a friendly ghost . . . a woman who smells like violets . . . She’s gentle and benign.”

Mrs. Hall-Ries described the “weird but wondrous things” that have happened in the old Walker home since she and her husband, Jonathan Ries, bought it several years ago. “Things moved in different places . . . stereos went on in the ballroom at 5 a.m. . . . anytime you changed anything, the ghost would change it back.”

The “Georgian, Italianate, Beaux Arts” house, built in 1901, has a sleeping porch (“no air-conditioning in those days”), a ballroom, eight bedrooms, and “a fainting room” (for women in tight corsets). “This was a house built by people who loved entertaining—open rooms for lots of people, all glass so you can see people in every room,” said Hall-Ries. “Maybe the ghost is Dorothy’s sister, Nancy Walker, who never married and always made her home near her parents.”

CHAPTER 3

Records:
Prescott S. Bush Oral History, 1966, Columbia University Oral History Research Project, Eisenhower Administration Project; George H. Walker correspondence with Averell Harriman, and other Brown Brothers Harriman business papers, W. Averell Harriman Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room; Flora Sheldon Bush will, Franklin County Probate Court, Columbus, Ohio; information on the Bush’s Greenwich homes, Greenwich, Conn., Assessor’s Office and the Greenwich Town Clerk’s Office; James Smith Bush FBI file obtained through Freedom of Information Act.

Books:
Peter Arno, “Well, so long. I’ll see you at lunch at the Bankers Club,” cartoon, in
The New Yorker Twenty-fifth Anniversary Album, 1925–1950
(New York: Harper, 1951); Knight Woolley,
In Retrospect—Very Personal Memoir
(privately printed, 1975); John A. Kouwenhoven,
Partners in Banking
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968, 1983); Rudy Abramson,
Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman
(New York: William Morrow, 1992); Gail Sheehy,
Characters
(New York: William Morrow, 1988); Herbert S. Parmet,
George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee
(New York: Scribner, 1997); Fitzhugh Green,
George Bush: An Intimate Portrait
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1989); Nicholas King,
George Bush: A Biography
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980); Joe Hyams,
Flight of the Avenger
(San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991); Donnie Radcliffe,
Simply Barbara Bush
(New York: Warner Books, 1989).

Articles:
Burt Solomon, “A Pair of Dominant Grandfathers Shape a Presidential Persona,”
National Journal
, Sept. 7, 1991; “Big Banking Houses Decide on Merger,”
New York Times
, Dec. 12, 1930; George Bush, “A Tribute to a Very Special Mother,”
Greenwich Time
, May 12, 1985; Barbara T. Roessner, “Growing Up with George,”
Hartford Courant
, Jan. 15, 1989; Barry Bearak, “His Great Gift, to Blend In,”
Los Angeles Times
, Nov. 22, 1987; Gail Sheehy, “Is George Bush Too Nice to Be President?”
Vanity Fair
, Feb. 1987, and “Beating Around the Bush,”
Vanity Fair
, Sept. 1988; Maureen Dowd, “For Bush, Culture Can Be a Sometime Thing,”
New York Times
, Oct. 27, 1988; Garry Wills, “The Ultimate Loyalist,”
Time
, Aug. 22, 1988, and “Father Knows Best,”
New York Review of Books
, Nov. 5, 1992; cover story,
Nutmegger
, Sept. 1978; Jane Podesta, “Playing to Win,”
People
, Aug. 22, 1988; Suzy Kane, “What the Gulf War Reveals About George Bush’s Childhood,”
Journal of Psychohistory
20, no. 2 (Fall 1992); George Plimpton, “A Sportsman Born and Bred,”
Sports Illustrated
, Dec. 26, 1988; Laura Sessions Stepp, “Nominees’ Upbringing and Their Faith,”
Washington Post
, Nov. 4, 1988; Dolly Langdon, “However Far George Runs—28 Homes in 35 Years—Barbara Bush Stands by Her Man,”
People
, Aug. 4, 1980; Walt Harrington, “Born to Run,”
Washington Post Magazine
, Sept. 28, 1986.

Interviews:
Ray Walker, May 28, 2003; Osborne Day, Aug. 6, 2002; Coates Redmon, Nov. 2, 2001; Betsy Trippe DeVecchi, July 20, 2003; Robert DeVecchi, July 21, 2003; Charles Kelly, March 12, 2003; Earl Balfour, Aug. 6, 2002; Jenny Lawrence, March 14, 2002; Marne Hornblower, March 7, 2002; Rudy Abramson, Feb. 21, 2001; Gail Sheehy, April 29, 2002, and correspondence, June 24, 2002.

CHAPTER 4

Records:
George H. Walker testimony from “Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate Commerce, United States Senate, Seventy-fifth Congress, First Session, Pursuant to S. Res. 71 (74th Congress), Part 15, November 10, 12, 17, and 18, 1937, Missouri Pacific Reorganization”; “Additional Report of the Committee on Interstate Commerce Pursuant to S. Res. 71 (74th Congress), Missouri Pacific System: Reorganization, Expansion, and Financing, 1915–1930,” printed July 29, 1940; Harry Truman speech in the Senate, “Railroad Finances,”
Congressional Record
, Dec. 20, 1937; Samuel Bush to his sons, May 14, 1940, Samuel Prescott Bush Papers, Ohio Historical Society; Samuel Bush correspondence concerning the President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library; documents and correspondence concerning Averell Harriman’s European business ventures, including letter from Ray Morris to Roland Harriman, Sept. 26, 1941, regarding Silesian-American Corporation, W. Averell Harriman Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room; documents created during and after World War II concerning Office of Alien Property vesting orders, National Archives, Record Group 131, Office of Alien Property Custodian in the Office for Emergency Management, especially files for Vesting Order 248 (Union Banking Corp.) and Vesting Order 370 (Silesian-American Corp.); documents concerning Union Banking Corporation from Brown Brothers Harriman and Company Papers, New-York Historical Society, New York City, Manuscript Department; Mary (Carter) Walker and Prescott S. Bush Jr. Oral History Interview transcripts, Greenwich Library Oral History Project, Greenwich Library, Greenwich, Conn.; Jesse R. Nichols, Oral History Project Interview transcript, U.S. Senate Historical Office; Prescott S. Bush Oral History, 1966, Columbia University Oral History Research Project, Eisenhower Administration Project; 1942
Pot Pourri
(yearbook), Phillips Academy, Andover, archives; Prescott Bush 1942 correspondence concerning USO fund-raising, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library.

Books:
David McCullough,
Truman
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992); Charles Higham,
Trading with the Enemy
(New York: Delacorte Press, 1983); Christopher Simpson,
The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Grove Press, 1993); Henry Ashby Turner Jr.,
German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); James Pool and Suzanne Pool,
Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power, 1919–1933
(New York: Dial Press, 1978); John Loftus and Mark Aarons,
The Secret War Against the Jews
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994); Townsend Hoopes,
The Devil and John Foster Dulles
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1973); Rudy Abramson,
Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman
(New York: William Morrow, 1992); John A. Kouwenhoven,
Partners in Banking
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968, 1983); Barbara Bush,
Barbara Bush: A Memoir
(New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1995); Donnie Radcliffe,
Simply Barbara Bush
(New York: Warner Books, 1989); Herbert S. Parmet,
George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee
(New York: Scribner, 1997); Fitzhugh Green,
George Bush: An Intimate Portrait
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1989); Joe Hyams,
Flight of the Avenger
(San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991); Leonard F. James,
Phillips Academy, Andover, in World War Two
(Andover, Mass.: Andover Press, 1948).