Prescott Bush | |
|---|---|
 Bush in 1948 | |
| United States Senator fromConnecticut | |
| In office November 4, 1952 – January 3, 1963 | |
| Preceded by | William A. Purtell |
| Succeeded by | Abraham Ribicoff |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895-05-15)May 15, 1895 Columbus, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | October 8, 1972(1972-10-08) (aged 77) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 5, includingGeorge,Nancy,Jonathan, andWilliam |
| Parent | Samuel P. Bush |
| Relatives | Bush family |
| Education | Yale University (BA) |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch/service | United States Army |
| Years of service | 1917–1919 |
| Rank | Captain |
| Unit | 158th Field Artillery Brigade |
| Battles/wars | World War I |
Prescott Sheldon Bush Sr. (May 15, 1895 – October 8, 1972) was an American banker andRepublican Party politician.[1]After working as aWall Street executive investment banker, he representedConnecticut in theUnited States Senate from 1952to 1963.A member of theBush family, he was the father of PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush, and the paternal grandfather of PresidentGeorge W. Bush andFlorida governorJeb Bush.[2]
Born inColumbus, Ohio, Bush graduated fromYale College and served as an artillery officer duringWorld War I. After the war, he worked for several companies, becoming a minor partner of theBrown Brothers Harriman & Co. investment bank in 1931. He served in several high-rankingUnited States Golf Association offices, including president of that organization. Bush settled in Connecticut in 1925.
Bush won election to the Senate in a1952 special election, narrowly defeating Democratic nomineeAbraham Ribicoff. In the Senate, Bush staunchly supported PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower and helped enact legislation to create theInterstate Highway System. Bush wonre-election in 1956 but declined to seekre-election in 1962, retiring from the Senate the following year.
Prescott Bush was born inColumbus, Ohio, on May 15, 1895 toSamuel Prescott Bush and Flora Sheldon Bush.[3] Samuel Bush was a railroad middle manager, then a steel company president and, duringWorld War I, a federal government official in charge of coordination of and assistance to majorweapons contractors.
Bush attendedSt. George's School inMiddletown,Rhode Island, from 1908 to 1913. In 1913, he enrolled atYale College, where his paternal grandfather, Rev.James Smith Bush (class of 1844), and his maternal uncle Robert E. Sheldon Jr. (class of 1904) had matriculated. Three subsequent generations of the Bush family have been Yale alumni.
Prescott Bush was admitted to theZeta Psi fraternity andSkull and Bones secret society.George H. W. Bush was also a member of the society, as is his son,George W. Bush. George H. W. Bush and George Bush were, however, not members of Zeta Psi, and were members, instead, of theDelta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. According to Skull and Bones lore, Prescott Bush was among a group of Bonesmen who dug up and removed the skull ofGeronimo from his grave atFort Sill,Oklahoma, in 1918.[4] According to historian David L. Miller, the Bonesmen probably dug up somebody at Fort Sill, but not Geronimo.[5]
Prescott Bush was a cheerleader,[6] played varsity golf and baseball, sang in theWhiffenpoofs, and was president of theYale Glee Club.
After graduation, Bush served as a field artillery captain with theAmerican Expeditionary Forces (1917–1919) duringWorld War I. He received intelligence training atVerdun,France and was briefly assigned to a staff of French officers. Alternating between intelligence and artillery, he came under fire in theMeuse–Argonne offensive.
After his discharge in 1919, Prescott Bush went to work for theSimmons Hardware Company inSt. Louis, Missouri.
The Bush family moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1923, where Prescott briefly worked for theHupp Products Company. In November 1923, he became president of sales for Stedman Products inSouth Braintree, Massachusetts. During this time, he lived in aVictorian house at 173 Adams Street inMilton, Massachusetts, where his son, George H. W. Bush, was born.
In 1924, Bush became vice-president of the investment bankA. Harriman & Co. where his father-in-law,George Herbert Walker was president. Bush's Yale classmates andfellow BonesmenE. Roland Harriman and Knight Woolley also worked with the company.
In 1925, he joined theUnited States Rubber Company of New York City as manager of the foreign division, and moved toGreenwich, Connecticut.
In 1931, he became a partner ofBrown Brothers Harriman & Co., which was created through the 1931 amalgamation of A. Harriman & Co withBrown Bros. & Co., (amerchant bank founded inPhiladelphia in 1818) and withHarriman Brothers & Co. (established in New York City in 1927).
He was an avid golfer, and in 1935 was named head of theUSGA.[7]
From 1944 to 1956, Prescott Bush was a member of theYale Corporation, the principal governing body of Yale University. He was on the board of directors ofCBS, having been introduced to chairmanWilliam S. Paley around 1932 by his close friend and colleagueW. Averell Harriman, who became a majorDemocratic Party power broker.
In July 2007,Harper's Magazine published an article byScott Horton, an American attorney known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict, claiming that Prescott Bush was involved in the 1934Business Plot, a failed plan by some of America's wealthy to trick retiredMarine Corpsmajor generalSmedley Butler into helping them overthrow PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt.[8][9]
Bush was a founder and one of seven directors (includingW. Averell Harriman) of theUnion Banking Corporation (holding a single share out of 4,000 as a director), an investment bank that operated as a clearing house for many assets and enterprises held by German steel magnateFritz Thyssen, an early supporter ofAdolf Hitler and financier of theNazi Party.[10][11] In July 1942, the bank was suspected of holding gold on behalf of Nazi leaders.[12] A subsequent government investigation disproved those allegations but confirmed the Thyssens' control, and in October 1942 the United States seized the bank under theTrading with the Enemy Act and held the assets for the duration ofWorld War II.[10]
JournalistDuncan Campbell pointed out documents showing that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen. Bush was the director of the Union Banking Corporation that "represented Thyssen's US interests", continuing to work for the bank after America's entry into the war.[10][11]
Prescott Bush was politically active on social issues. He was involved with theAmerican Birth Control League as early as 1942, and served as the treasurer of the first nationwide campaign ofPlanned Parenthood in 1947. He was also an early supporter of theUnited Negro College Fund, serving as chairman of the Connecticut branch in 1951.
From 1947 to 1950, he served as ConnecticutRepublican finance chairman, and was the Republican candidate for theUnited States Senate in the1950 special election. A columnist inBoston said that Bush "is coming on to be known asPresident Truman'sHarry Hopkins. Nobody knows Mr. Bush and he hasn't aChinaman's chance."[13] (Harry Hopkins had been one ofFranklin D. Roosevelt's closest advisors.) Bush's ties with Planned Parenthood also hurt him in strongly-Catholic Connecticut, and were the basis of a last-minute campaign in churches by Bush's opponents; the family vigorously denied the connection, but Bush lost toSen. William Burnett Benton by only 1,102 votes.[14]
Prescott Bush sought a rematch with Sen. Benton in 1952, but withdrew as the party turned toWilliam Purtell. The death of SenatorBrien McMahon later that year, however, created a vacancy and this time the Republicansnominated Bush.[15] He defeated the Democratic nominee,Abraham Ribicoff, and was elected to the Senate. A staunch supporter of PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower, he served until January 1963. He was re-elected in 1956 with 55% of the vote overDemocratThomas J. Dodd (later U.S. Senator from Connecticut and father ofChristopher J. Dodd), and decided not to run for another term in 1962. He was a key ally for the passage of Eisenhower'sInterstate Highway System,[16] and during his tenure supported thePolaris submarine project (built byElectric Boat Corporation inGroton, Connecticut), the establishment of thePeace Corps,[17] and voted in favor of theCivil Rights Acts of 1957 and1960 and the24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[18][19][20][21]
On December 2, 1954, Prescott Bush was part of the large (67–22) majority tocensureWisconsin Republican SenatorJoseph McCarthy after McCarthy had taken on theU.S. Army and theEisenhower administration. During the debate leading to the censure, Bush said that McCarthy has "caused dangerous divisions among the American people because of his attitude and the attitude he has encouraged among his followers: that there can be no honest differences of opinion with him. Either you must follow Senator McCarthy blindly, not daring to express any doubts or disagreements about any of his actions, or, in his eyes, you must be a Communist, a Communist sympathizer, or a fool who has been duped by the Communist line."[22] Eisenhower later included Prescott Bush on an undated handwritten list of prospective candidates he favored for the 1960 Republican presidential nomination.
In terms of issues, Bush often agreed withNew York GovernorNelson Rockefeller. According to Theodore H. White's book about the 1964 presidential election, Bush and Rockefeller were longtime friends.[citation needed] Bush favored a Nixon-Rockefeller ticket for 1960, and was presumed to support Rockefeller's 1964 presidential candidacy until the latter's remarriage in 1963. He then publicly denounced Rockefeller for divorcing his first wife and marrying a woman with whom Rockefeller had been having an affair while married to his first wife.[17] Bush then very publicly endorsed his former Senate colleagueHenry Cabot Lodge Jr., who was also the older brother of one of Bush's protegés, former Connecticut GovernorJohn Davis Lodge.[17]
Another of Senator Bush's major legislative interests was flood and hurricane protection. He drafted the Bush Hurricane Survey Act (Public Law 71), enabling U.S. Army engineers to develop a new program of community protection against tidal flooding.[23][24] Bush and RepresentativeJohn W. McCormack, the Democratic House Majority Leader, co-sponsored the Bush-McCormack Act (Public Law 685), which expedited the construction of local flood protection works.[25]
Prescott Bush married Dorothy Wear Walker (1901–1992) on August 6, 1921, inKennebunkport, Maine. Dorothy Walker Bush was a founding member of the Junior League of Columbus, Ohio in 1923. They had five children:Prescott Jr.(1922–2010),[26]George(1924–2018),Nancy(1926–2021),Jonathan(1931–2021), andWilliam "Bucky"(1938–2018).[27]
Bush founded theYale Glee Club Associates, an alumni group, in 1937. As was his father-in-law, he was a member of theUnited States Golf Association, serving successively as secretary, vice-president and president, 1928–1935. He was a multi-year club champion of the Round Hill Club inGreenwich, Connecticut, and was on the committee set up by New York City MayorRobert F. Wagner Jr. to help create theNew York Mets.
He was a member of theAmerican Legion and the40 & 8 Society.
Bush maintained homes in New York City, Long Island, Greenwich, theWalker's Point Estate, andFishers Island, a secluded island off the Connecticut coast.
He died of cancer in 1972 at age 77 atMemorial Hospital inNew York City,[1] and is interred atPutnam Cemetery inGreenwich, Connecticut.
Bush's articles include:
| Party political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Republican nominee forU.S. Senator fromConnecticut (Class 1) 1950 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Republican nominee forU.S. Senator fromConnecticut (Class 3) 1952,1956 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. Senate | ||
| Preceded by | U.S. Senator (Class 3) from Connecticut 1952–1963 Served alongside:William Benton,William A. Purtell,Thomas J. Dodd | Succeeded by |
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