Remembering a friend and first citizen: Prescott Bush, Jr.

On June 23, 2010, the Town of Greenwich lost its first citizen, Prescott "Pres" Bush, Jr., at age 86. The loss actually began a few years earlier, when Pres's poor heath caused the relocation of Pres and his wife, Beth to a retirement home in Hingham, Mass. to be near their son Jamie and wife Sue Bush. Their daughter Kelsey and husband Philip Nadeau live further north in Williston, Vt.

As I sat in the church for Pres's memorial service last Wednesday, there was a somber moment at the beginning when the tolling of the Christ Church bells went on an inordinate amount of time until the arrival of Pres's younger brother, former President George H.W. Bush. But that tolling allowed me to reflect on my friendship with Pres Bush.

It was in 1975 when my family moved to Greenwich that Pres and Beth warmly welcomed us to the neighborhood we shared. I was soon introduced to the altruistic side of Pres and Beth at a reception in their Deer Park home for the United Negro College Fund. Pres had made an impassioned plea for supporting the education of African Americans before the assembled guests.

The two then introduced me to the Carver Center in Port Chester, which benefited for many years from their support. They had created the Greenwich Committee for Carver Center to raise awareness of the high unemployment of our neighbors to the south. They then became involved in Family ReEntry, a ministry to prisoners and families of prisoners.

"Pres introduced me to Family ReEntry;" said Joan Warburg, another "first citizen" of Greenwich. That introduction led to Warburg's hosting the annual benefit for Family ReEntry on the grounds of her spacious John Street home. Warburg remembers Pres as "always so kind and friendly," she said. "I felt very close to him - you'd think I was his best friend."

Pres had a way with you that made you feel like family. He was often a tease with me, finding ways to use his sense of of humor, calling me Annie. Though I was born with straight hair, he would let me know he liked it better curled. He in turn made my son, especially, feel like family, encouraging him every step of his growing way.

During Pres's brief senatorial campaign in 1982 I spent some time volunteering across the state and saw his ease connecting with strangers. But he didn't seem to have that calculating edge needed for a politician.

During all those White House visiting days in first his younger brother's presidency and then his nephew's term in office, he never assumed airs. He was Pres Bush: grounded in family, friends and good causes, and his work as an insurance man and later as founder of a nonprofit organization in China. How he managed to commute to China so often in those later years I will never know. But that phase of his life was an invigorating one.

It was his earliest work with Pan Am in Brazil - developing that airline's business in South America-- that fascinated me. He'd taken his new bride, Beth (he referred to her often as his bride) to live in Rio de Janiero and told stories about Juan Trippe, the founder of Pan Am and his employer.

Their first-born son was named after Pres, and followed the tradition of attending Andover and Yale. He was very bright and handsome and I was happy to have met him. His untimely death last year was a great sorrow to Pres and Beth.

His surviving children Kelsey and Jamie were a constant joy, and in their eulogies that followed in the memorial service they shared their good fortune of having had him as their father.

Kelsey recalled her father living a life of "contagious joy." "He never dwelled on self pity," she said, though he was born blind in one eye. "If Dad were a season he would be spring," she continued. "If he were a time of day he would be morning. In grammar, he would be an action verb, and the verb would be love."

His marriage to Elizabeth Kauffman Bush lasted six months short of 67 years. Perhaps a key to that good marriage was as Kelsey shared, "Dad never held a grudge. He'd suggest let it go - move on."

"With Dad there was always laughter," said his son Jamie. "He loved jokes, but he could never tell one before dissolving in laughter before the punch line.

"Certainly God and his family were important," he added. "But safe to say, he lived for the game of golf."

Jamie then shared a little-known fact that Pres had created the Griff Harris Golf Course in Greenwich for those who were not members of private clubs. "So characteristic," said Jamie, "Also characteristic that it wasn't named after him. If everything he did carried his name, we'd be overwhelmed with evidence of Prescott Bush Jr. He was never concerned about getting credit."

"His identity was rooted in his desire to give and share," continued Jamie. "He made us understand the difference between need and want because of the way he gave. Love like this gave us the freedom to fail."

That kindness of heart, that generosity of spirit as experienced by all of us who knew Pres was addressed by The Rev. Jeffrey Walker who gave the homily at the memorial. Walker was the former minister - and good friend of Pres - of Christ Church who retired in 2007.

"He had that rare gift," he said, " of getting out of his own way."

"With Pres," he said, "We always talked together about life and its many subjects and not just the complicated and often disappointing life of the church he loved with such constancy."

Walker shared the last time he had brought the Eucharist to Pres. "A long time ago people used to talk about churchmanship. Another word that has wilted from our lexicon.

"But what I was gifted with that day was this unfailing constancy of faith with Pres. What we would have called sturdy churchmanship. Not church politcs and dreadful church fights or even more dreadful arguments about hymn selections or whether the flowers were right last Sunday. In the sacred intimacy of this moment...there was Pres... having lived with the words his whole life, reciting them by heart."

Anne W. Semmes is a staff reporter for the Greenwich Citizen. She can be reached at asemmes@gmail.com.