-Caveat Lector- http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/112/nation/Powerful_alliance_aids_Bushes_r iseP.shtml Financier George Herbert Walker provided money and support for the climb to power By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 4/22/2001 First of two parts Prescott S. Bush hardly seemed destined to lead a political dynasty when he arrived in Massachusetts in the 1920s. Nothing about his circumstances foreshadowed that his descendants would include two Republican presidents. Here was the young Bush, struggling to run a Braintree rubber factory while receiving little financial help from his wealthy father, a Democrat. But another figure loomed in Bush's life: his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, a powerful and much-feared financier who also happened to be a die-hard Republican. With Walker's intervention, Bush soon left the unglamorous factory to become one of the most successful bankers on Wall Street and, eventually, a Republican senator from Connecticut. In time, the sons of these men would tie the Bush-Walker bonds even tighter. George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush's son and eventually the 41st president, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment money at a crucial moment, from Walker's son. Without the Walker money, without the extraordinary Walker devotion, there might well never have been two Presidents Bush. This is the story of the rise of the Bushes, the indispensable role of the Walkers, and the path to power laid by Prescott Bush. It is in many ways a saga akin to that of the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, a sweeping drama that has love and money and politics - and privilege beyond the dreams of most Americans. The English-bred Bushes and the Scottish Walkers both arrived in New England before the American Revolution. The Bushes made their fortune in the steel plants and railroads of Ohio, while the Walkers flourished in finance in Missouri. As certifiable Brahmins, both families returned to New England for long summer vacations, formed their bond in the seaside resort of Kennebunkport, Maine, and later lived side by side for decades in the moneyed New York City suburb of Greenwich, Conn. Like so many dynasties, this one was built with fortunes won, and nearly lost, that were then applied to the pursuit of political power. In this tale, there is no Joe Kennedy urging his brood to politics. But the cast of characters is perhaps no less compelling: the Bush patriarch, Samuel Prescott Bush, who lost his wife in a tragic Rhode Island accident; the Walker patriarch George Herbert Walker, who sometimes seemed to care more for his Bush in-laws than his own children; the famed Democrat, W. Averell Harriman, who saved Prescott Bush from bankruptcy; and Dorothy Walker Bush, a debutante dynamo who married Prescott and forever linked the two families. With the election of George W. Bush, the Bushes have challenged the Kennedys for the crown as the nation's reigning political dynasty. So how did the Bush dynasty arise, and upon what was it built? The answer to that question is, in important ways, the story behind the ''W'' and the middle name of President George Walker Bush. This is the prequel of the Bush dynasty, gathered from interviews with Bushes and Walkers, archival materials, little-noticed oral histories, as well as letters and other documents divulged for the first time by some family members. The Missouri financier It was 1903, and George Herbert Walker was well on his way toward building a fortune and an extended family that would spawn a senator, two governors, and two presidents. A tough bear of a man, a Missouri heavyweight boxing champion who frequently fought and sometimes pummeled his own sons, who liked his Scotch and his racehorses, Walker lived a gilded life in the grandest style. As the genius behind the successful investment firm he founded and ran mostly by himself - G.H. Walker and Co. of St. Louis - Walker not only maintained the ''Walker's Point'' estate in Kennebunkport, but also a New York mansion on Long Island, a stunning residence at One Sutton Place in Manhattan, and a 10,000-acre hunting preserve called Duncannon in South Carolina. There were servants, perhaps 15 of them, a yacht, and, when needed, a private train. He believed in these things: golf, hunting, drinking, horses, gambling, a boat named Tomboy, and, eventually, a son-in-law named Prescott Bush. George Herbert Walker was supposed to have led a much different life: His Scottish Catholic family had planned for him to be a priest. But when his parents sent him to England to prepare for the priesthood, Walker rebelled. ''As a result of that stern schooling, he grew to hate Catholicism and married a Protestant,'' Dorothy Walker, his daughter and the president's grandmother, said in a 1980 family history. Walker's family ''was so upset he married a non-Catholic that they did not attend their wedding,'' she said. The clash with Catholicism would play a role in the presidential campaigns of former President Bush, an Episcopalian, and President Bush, a Methodist, both of whom struggled to get the Catholic vote. By all accounts, George Herbert Walker inspired awe and fear even among those closest to him, including his wife. ''He was a tough father, a tough old bastard,'' said one of his grandchildren, Elsie Walker. ''There really wasn't a lot of love on the part of the boys for their father.'' A private man who disliked being photographed, Walker nonetheless maintained a high profile. When a friend named Dwight Davis established the Davis Cup for tennis, Walker decided to do the same for golf. The Walker Cup competition between amateur US and British teams is still known as one of the preeminent golfing tournaments. An athlete from Yale So it is not surprising that when Walker's daughter, Dorothy, introduced him in 1919 to a golfer and star athlete named Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker was enthralled. Indeed, Walker and Bush both would eventually become presidents of the US Golf Association. Prescott Bush was much that Walker was not. Bush, a 6-foot-4 baseball standout at Yale, was elegant, charming, and outgoing, liking nothing better than to sing with the university's Whiffenpoof chorus, a college glee club that typically consisted of four to seven people singing cheerful tunes. The Bushes had their own family wealth. Samuel Bush, the great-grandfather of President Bush, ran an Ohio railroad and the Buckeye Steel Castings Co. He lived much of his life in Ohio, working in Columbus and living in a mansion with elaborate gardens in nearby Bexley. Bush helped create Ohio's workers' compensation laws, became friendly with organized labor, and was an active Democrat. Samuel Bush enjoyed luxuries known only to a smattering of Americans at the turn of the century, but he believed that his children should earn their own way in the world, at least after attending Yale. ''My father wasn't able to support me,'' Prescott Bush told an oral historian. ''He had a modest income, but he couldn't support his adult children, and I didn't want him to anyway. So that's why I abandoned the law.'' Letters tell of love This is a shocking statement, given his father's obvious wealth. A trove of 25 surviving letters between Samuel and his wife, Flora, paint a picture of Samuel working while the rest of the family vacationed year after year at the East Bay Lodge in Osterville on Cape Cod. Flora wrote to Samuel about the need to discipline Prescott, but mostly the letters are filled with affection. Dismissing the need for many friends, Flora wrote Samuel, ''You and I are so much to each other, we do not need the others.'' Later, Flora wrote: ''I want you, need you more every year and we must take good care of each other.'' But they lost each other on Sept. 4, 1920. As Samuel and Flora were walking during a vacation in the Narragansett Bay resort town of Watch Hill, R.I., Flora stepped in front of a car and was killed instantly. The accident has rarely, if ever, been mentioned publicly by either the former or current President Bush. The death deeply affected Prescott, who had been working in Tennessee. ''My mother had died, and my father was very lonely,'' he said. At his father's urging, Bush returned to Columbus to help his father run a small business, but it failed, adding to the family's misery. At the time, Prescott was engaged in his own romance with the debutante Dorothy Walker, whom he had met in St. Louis. Beautiful and competitive, she had placed second in a national girls' tennis tournament. She was the sort of person who would challenge family members to swim a 1-mile race in the Atlantic Ocean, which, according to family legend, explains the Bush competitive streak. She was born in Kennebunkport and, like Bush, she came from high society. Prescott and Dorothy were married on Aug. 6, 1921. At first, Bush tried to make it on his own. Hired by the creditors of a rubber manufacturing company in Ohio, Bush determined that the owner was skimming the profits. When Bush exposed the owner, he feared for his life. ''My father had to keep a loaded gun in his desk drawer,'' former President Bush wrote in his autobiography, ''Looking Forward,'' recalling that the situation was resolved only when the owner ''was convicted of swindling.'' Bush briefly took over management of the failing company, which was bought by a firm in Massachusetts. So the Bushes moved to Milton, with Prescott commuting for two years to the Stedman Products Co.'s factory in South Braintree, on what was then known as ''Rubber Row.'' In 1924, their second son was born, and the choice of the name speaks volumes about the man who had become so important in their lives: George Herbert Walker Bush. The two even shared nicknames; Walker was ''Pop'' and his grandson was ''Poppy.'' The future president was born in the family's Victorian house at 173 Adams St. in Milton. After a couple of more years in the rubber business, Prescott decided it was time to work with his father-in-law. A Wall Street empire George Herbert Walker had come to New York from St. Louis at the behest of E.H. Harriman, the railroad baron. Harriman's son, Averell, did not want to run the railroad empire, so Harriman set up his son in an investment business and then searched for the best man in the country to run it. That man was George Herbert Walker. Averell Harriman would eventually become ambassador to the Soviet Union and to Britain, as well as governor of New York and commerce secretary during the Roosevelt administration. But at that time he was happy to roam the world making deals and leaving Walker in control of the company that became known as Brown Brothers Harriman. But Walker needed help. He urged Prescott to join him at the Harriman company. ''My father-in-law was interested and he had confidence in me,'' Bush said later. Brown Brothers Harriman was perhaps the bluest of blue-blood firms, where Bush worked at a rolltop desk in the wood-paneled Partners Room. Many partners, including Bush and Averell's brother, Roland, had been classmates at Yale, fostering a clubby atmosphere. The partnership had huge rewards - and risks. The partners shared profits but were personally responsible for losses. Walker soon began grooming Bush to become a top officer, leading Bush to run the investment half of what was then the nation's largest private bank. It was apparently around this time, in the early 1930s, that Bush split from his father's Democratic ties and pronounced himself a Republican, in the Walker tradition. Bush also was influenced by his clients, most of whom were wealthy Republicans. Bush was a rainmaker, making his money primarily by charming and snaring potential customers. His greatest accomplishment may have been his 1932 role in helping finance the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) when few anticipated the future of television. He later served on the network's board. A fortune threatened Walker, meanwhile, was increasingly at odds with Harriman and other partners of the firm. One partner, Knight Woolley, wrote later that Walker had ''dangerous dealings'' that could have hurt the company. Walker was eventually pushed out of the firm, but he may have had the last laugh. As Walker was leaving in 1930, he sold many stocks ''short,'' meaning he could profit on the decline of the stock market. When the Depression hit with all its fury, Walker was one of the rare investors who became richer, according to his family. (Another was Joseph Kennedy, who sold many of his holdings just before the crash and also reportedly sold short.) Just as Walker left, the Depression began to wipe out the Brown Brothers portfolio. ''Things began to crumble,'' Bush recalled. Brown Brothers Harriman faced a crisis: The partners, including Bush, were rapidly going broke. Bush might have had to declare personal bankruptcy if the debts had kept growing, and his family might never have been in a position to build a political dynasty. Luckily for Bush, his partner was one of the nation's wealthiest men. Averell Harriman secretly poured the family's cash into the business, and rescued the partners from bankruptcy in the early 1930s. ''The firm lost enough capital, at least on paper, so that we were below water,'' Bush said in an oral history recorded in 1966. ''As things began to improve, the Harrimans did a very generous thing. They said they wouldn't take any profits, that the profits would go first to wipe out the deficit in the accounts of the red partners. Follow me? So we came back pretty rapidly.'' The bailout remained a secret for years, and several of Bush's children said in interviews this year they never knew about it. ''There may have been some people who suspected it,'' Prescott Bush told the oral historian, ''but we never discussed our private affairs with anybody.'' Bush added that he was ''hoping I'll be dead'' before anyone found out. The bailout helped Bush to prosper during the booming years of World War II, setting him up for his campaigns for the US Senate in 1950 and 1952. A year later, George Herbert Walker died. But history was repeating itself in the story of the sons. In the early 1950s, George Herbert Walker Bush needed hundreds of thousands of dollars for a high-risk Texas oil venture. His father supplied $50,000, not nearly enough. So he turned to George Herbert ''Herbie'' Walker II, who responded enthusiastically with his own money as well as that of investors in G.H. Walker and Co. But this financial and personal bond between ''Poppy'' Bush and the junior Walker caused friction with Walker's own sons. ''Dad never took much enjoyment from his immediate family,'' said Herbie Walker's son, George Herbert ''Bert'' Walker III, chairman of a highly successful St. Louis investment company, Stifel Nicolaus. ''If you got him cornered he would talk more about the Bushes than his immediate family. This annoyed the hell out of me.'' Ray Walker, another son of Herbie Walker, reported a dinner with his father and George Herbert Walker Bush that explains the bond, and that may explain why the Bushes went into politics. ''My father and George Bush agreed that people in politics are the most important and that people in business are second most important,'' said Ray Walker, a Vermont psychiatrist. ''First was power and then was money.'' Ray Walker did not share those sentiments and remained rueful about the memory, concluding: ''My family drove me to psychiatry.'' In his autobiography, former President Bush noted briefly that ''my uncle, Herbie Walker, had helped us with funds and his expertise.'' His collection of letters, ''All My Best,'' does not include a letter to Herbie Walker about the crucial investment. But a previously unpublished letter makes clear the bond. On Sept. 17, 1977, as Herbie Walker lay on his deathbed, Bush dramatically explained the role of the Walkers in the lives of the Bushes. ''You have shown me how to be a man,'' Bush wrote. ''You have taught me what loyalty is all about. You have made me understand what it is to make a commitment, `bet on a guy,' as you'd say, and then stick with it through thick and thin. Without your friendship and support, I'd never have had the confidence to dream big dreams.... I'm wit ya, Herby, not just cause you handed me the future and made my life sing; but, selfishly, because I need you as my father, my brother, and my best friend. You see, I love you very deeply. ''Love, Poppy.'' Tomorrow: The tumultuous political ascent of Prescott Bush. Michael Kranish can be reached by e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 4/22/2001. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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