Prescott Bush

Prescott Sheldon Bush was born in Columbus, Ohio, on May 15, 1895 to Samuel Prescott Bush and Flora Sheldon Bush. Samuel Bush was a railroad middle manager, then a steel company president and, during World War I, a federal government official in charge of coordination of and assistance to major weapons contractors. Bush attended St. George's School in Middletown, Rhode Island, from 1908 to 1913. In 1913, he enrolled at Yale 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 the Zeta Psi fraternity and Skull 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 W. Bush were, however, not members of Zeta Psi, and were members, instead, of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. According to Skull and Bones lore, Prescott Bush was among a group of Bonesmen who dug up and removed the skull of Geronimo from his grave at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1918. According to historian David L. Miller, the Bonesmen probably dug up somebody at Fort Sill, but not Geronimo. Prescott Bush was a cheerleader, played varsity golf and baseball, sang in the Whiffenpoofs, 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, he came under fire in the Meuse–Argonne offensive. ==Business career==

After his discharge in 1919, Prescott Bush went to work for the Simmons Hardware Company in St. Louis, Missouri. The Bush family moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1923, where Prescott 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 house at 173 Adams Street in Milton, Massachusetts, where his son, George H. W. Bush, was born. He then joined the United States Rubber Company of New York City as manager of the foreign division, and moved to Greenwich, Connecticut. The new house in Greenwich had been purchased for him by his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, and in his wife Dorothy's name instead of his. In 1926, Bush became vice-president of the investment bank A. Harriman & Co. where his father-in-law was president. Bush's Yale classmates and fellow Bonesmen E. Roland Harriman and Knight Woolley also worked with the company. In 1931, he became a partner of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., which was created through the 1931 amalgamation of A. Harriman & Co with Brown Bros. & Co., (a merchant bank founded in Philadelphia in 1818) and with Harriman Brothers & Co. (established in New York City in 1927). He was an avid golfer, and in 1935 was named head of the USGA.{{cite news|title=Prescott Bush Named Head Of U.S.G.A.|agency=Associated Press|newspaper=The Washington Post From 1944 to 1956, Prescott Bush was a member of the Yale Corporation, the principal governing body of Yale University. He was on the board of directors of CBS, having been introduced to chairman William S. Paley around 1932 by his close friend and colleague W. Averell Harriman, who became a major Democratic Party power broker. ==Business Plot and Union Banking Corporation ==

In July 2007, ''Harper's Magazine'' published an article by Scott 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 1934 Business Plot, a failed plan by some of America's wealthy to trick retired Marine Corps major general Smedley Butler into helping them overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Bush was a founder and one of seven directors (including W. Averell Harriman) of the Union 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 magnate Fritz Thyssen, an early supporter of Adolf Hitler and financier of the Nazi Party. 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. ==Political career==

Prescott Bush was politically active on social issues. He became involved with the American Birth Control League as early as 1942, and served as the treasurer of the first nationwide campaign of Planned Parenthood in 1947. He 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 the 1950 special election. 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." (Harry Hopkins had been one of Franklin 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 to Sen. William Burnett Benton by only 1,102 votes. Prescott Bush sought a rematch with Sen. Benton in 1952, but withdrew as the Republican party turned to William Purtell. The death of Senator Brien McMahon later that year, however, created a vacancy, and this time the Republicans He defeated the Democratic nominee, Abraham Ribicoff, and was elected to the Senate. A staunch supporter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, he served until January 1963. He was re-elected in 1956 with 55% of the vote over Democrat Thomas J. Dodd (later U.S. Senator from Connecticut and father of 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, 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 with New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. According to Theodore H. White's book about the 1964 presidential election, Bush and Rockefeller were longtime friends. 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. Bush 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. Bush and Representative John 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. ==Personal life and death==

Prescott Bush married Dorothy Walker (1901–1992) on August 6, 1921, in Kennebunkport, Maine; they had met through Dorothy's sister Nancy. Dorothy Walker Bush was a founding member of the Junior League of Columbus, Ohio in 1923. They had five children: George Nancy Jonathan and William "Bucky" He was Episcopalian, although he rarely discussed his faith publicly. Bush founded the Yale Glee Club Associates, an alumni group, in 1937. As was 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. He was a member of the American Legion and the 40 & 8 Society. Bush maintained homes in New York City, Long Island, Greenwich, the Walker's Point Estate, and Fishers Island, a secluded island off the Connecticut coast. He died of cancer in 1972 at age 77 at Memorial Hospital in and is interred at Putnam Cemetery in Greenwich, Connecticut. ==Writings==

Bush's articles include: • "Timely Monetary Policy", Banking, June 1955 and July 1955 • "To Preserve Peace Let's Show the Russians How Strong We Are!" ''Reader's Digest'', July 1959 • "Politics Is Your Business", Chamber of Commerce, State of New York, Bulletin, May 1960 ==See also==