| Prescott Bush | |
|---|---|
| United States Senator from Connecticut | |
| In office November 5, 1952 – January 2, 1963 |
|
| Preceded by | William A. Purtell |
| Succeeded by | Abraham A. Ribicoff |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Prescott Sheldon Bush May 15, 1895 Columbus, Ohio |
| Died | October 8, 1972 (aged 77) New York City |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Dorothy Walker Bush |
| Children | Prescott Bush, Jr. George H.W. Bush Nancy Walker Bush Ellis Jonathan Bush William H.T. Bush |
| Alma mater | Yale University |
| Religion | Episcopal |
| Signature | |
| Military service | |
| Service/branch | United States Army |
| Unit | American Expeditionary Forces |
| Battles/wars | World War I |
Prescott Sheldon Bush (May 15, 1895 – October 8, 1972) was a Wall Street executive banker and a United States Senator, representing Connecticut from 1952 until January 1963. He was the father of George H. W. Bush (41st President of the United States), the grandfather of George W. Bush (43rd President of the United States) and Jeb Bush (43rd Governor of Florida).
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Bush was born in Columbus, Ohio, to Samuel Prescott Bush and Flora Sheldon Bush. Samuel Bush was a railroad executive, then a steel company president, and, during World War I, also a federal government official in charge of coordination and assistance to major weapons contractors.
Bush attended St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island, from 1908 to 1913. In 1913, he enrolled at Yale University, where his grandfather James Smith Bush, class of 1844, and his 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 the Zeta Psi fraternity and Skull and Bones secret society. George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush are also members of that society.
Prescott Bush played varsity golf, football, and baseball, and was president of the Yale Glee Club.
After graduation, Bush served as a field artillery captain with the American Expeditionary Forces (1917–1919) during World War I. He received intelligence training at Verdun, France, and was briefly assigned to a staff of French officers. Alternating between intelligence and artillery, Bush came under fire in the Meuse-Argonne offensive.
After his discharge in 1919, Prescott Bush went to work for the Simmons Hardware Company in St. Louis, Missouri.
The Bushes moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1923, where Prescott Bush briefly worked for the Hupp Products Company. In November 1923 he became president of sales for Stedman Products in South Braintree, Massachusetts. During this time, he lived in a Victorian home at 173 Adams Street in Milton, Massachusetts, where his son, George H.W. Bush, was born.
In 1924, Bush became vice-president of A. Harriman & Co. His father-in-law, George Herbert Walker also worked with the company, as did E. Roland Harriman and Knight Woolley, Bush's Yale classmates and fellow Bonesmen. In 1931, Bush became a partner of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., which was created through the 1931 merger of A. Harriman & Co with Brown Bros. & Co. (a merchant bank founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1818) and with Harriman Brothers & Co. (established in New York City in 1927).
In 1925, Bush joined the United States Rubber Company of New York City as manager of the foreign division, and moved to Greenwich, Connecticut. He was an avid golfer, and in 1935 named head of the USGA.[1]
From 1944 to 1956, Bush was a member of the Yale Corporation, the principal governing body of Yale University. Bush was on the board of directors of CBS, having been introduced to chairman William S. Paley around 1932 by his close friend and colleague William Averell Harriman, who became a major Democratic Party power-broker.
Bush was one of seven directors (including W. Averell Harriman) of the Union Banking Corporation, an investment bank controlled by the Thyssen family.[2] In July 1942 the bank was suspected of holding gold on behalf of Nazi leaders.[3] A subsequent government investigation disproved those allegations, but confirmed the Thyssens' control, and in October 1942 the United States seized the bank under the Trading with the Enemy Act and held the assets for the duration of World War II.[2]
Joe Conason said that Bush's involvement with UBC was purely commercial and that he was not a Nazi sympathizer.[4] The Anti-Defamation League[5] and historian Herbert Parmet[6] agreed with that assessment.
Bush was politically active on social issues. He was involved with the American Birth Control League as early as 1942, and served as the treasurer of the first national capital campaign of Planned Parenthood in 1947. Bush was also an early supporter of the United Negro College Fund, serving as chairman of the Connecticut branch in 1951.
From 1947 to 1950, he served as Connecticut Republican finance chairman, and was the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1950. A columnist in Boston said that Bush "is coming on to be known as President Truman's Harry Hopkins. Nobody knows Mr. Bush and he hasn't a Chinaman's chance."[7] Bush's ties with Planned Parenthood also hurt him in heavily 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 to Benton by only 1,000 votes.
Bush sought a rematch with Benton in 1952, but withdrew as the party turned to William Purtell. The death of Senator Brien McMahon later that year however created a vacancy and this time Republicans nominated Bush.[8] Bush defeated the Democratic nominee, Abraham Ribicoff, and was elected to the Senate. A staunch supporter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bush served until January 1963. He was reelected in 1956 with 55 percent of the vote over Democrat Thomas J. Dodd (later U.S. Senator from Connecticut and father of the recent U.S. Senator from Connecticut, Christopher J. Dodd), and decided not to run for another term in 1962. He was a key ally for the passage of Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System,[9] and during his tenure supported the Polaris submarine project (which were built by Electric Boat Corporation in Groton, Connecticut), civil rights legislation, and the establishment of the Peace Corps.[10]
On December 2, 1954, Bush was part of the large (67–22) majority to censure Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, after McCarthy had taken on the U.S. Army and the Eisenhower 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."[11] Eisenhower later included Bush's name on an undated handwritten list of prospective candidates he favored for the 1960 GOP presidential nomination.
In terms of issues, Bush often agreed with New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, but personally disliked and politically opposed him, despite the close relationship his father had with the Rockefeller family. During the 1964 election, Bush denounced Rockefeller for divorcing his first wife and marrying a woman about 20 years his junior with whom Rockefeller had been having an affair while married to his first wife.[10]
Another of Senator Bush's major legislative interests was flood and hurricane protection. He drafted Public Law 71, the Bush Hurricane Survey Act, enabling Army engineers to develop a new program of community protection against tidal flooding.[12][13]
Bush married Dorothy Walker on August 6, 1921, in Kennebunkport, Maine. They had five children: Prescott Bush, Jr. (August 10, 1922 – June 23, 2010),[14][15][16] George H. W. Bush (b. 1924, named after Dorothy's father George Herbert Walker), Nancy Bush (b. 1926), Jonathan Bush (b. 1931), and William "Bucky" Bush (b. 1938).
Bush founded the Yale Glee Club Associates, an alumni group, in 1937. Following his father-in-law, he was a member of the United 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 in Greenwich, Connecticut, and was on the committee set up by New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. to help create the New York Mets.
Bush maintained homes in New York, Long Island, and Greenwich, Connecticut; the family compound at Kennebunkport, Maine; a 10,000 acre (40 km²) plantation in South Carolina; and a secluded island off the Connecticut coast, Fishers Island.
He died in 1972 at age 77 and was interred at Putnam Cemetery in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Bush's articles include:
| United States Senate | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by William A. Purtell |
United States Senator (Class 3) from Connecticut November 5, 1952 – January 3, 1963 Served alongside: William B. Benton, William A. Purtell, Thomas J. Dodd |
Succeeded by Abraham A. Ribicoff |
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