The Republicans

(4 of 12)

Andover stood grimly in loco parentis during Bush's time there. In fact, it was even less yielding than his parents in insistence upon duty. Founded on Andover Hill during the American Revolution, the Phillips Academy had its seal designed by Paul Revere. Its self-importance comes across nicely in an editorial written during Bush's senior year (1942), when the country was at war. "President Roosevelt's speech to the nation last night was not, by any means, directed solely at Andover, but it cannot be denied that many of the things that he said are of utmost importance here on the hill." The key word is "solely." The school, like many Eastern preparatory establishments, lived on the cult of its martyrs from World War I. Memorial Tower, dedicated to those fallen aristocrats, dominates the campus.

SPORTS OVER STUDIES

Bush spent five years at Andover, since he lost part of his junior year to a bad flu epidemic. He reached his adult height early, which left him rather gawky when at rest. But he was a graceful first baseman, and he was the agile star center of the soccer team, a team with a proud history at the Phillips Academy. In a pompous book entirely devoted to sports there, it is noted, "Poppy Bush's play throughout the season ranked him as one of Andover's all-time soccer greats." In the 1942 class poll, he ranked among the top four students in six different categories: Best All-Round Fellow, Best Athlete, Most Respected, Most Popular, Handsomest, and Most Faculty Drag. (This last, in recognition of faculty popularity, because Bush was so gladly submissive to the ordeals of sarcasm that a student with poor grades was expected to put up with.)

Bush was one of the student deacons for the Sunday chapel services. More important, he was the president of the "S. of I." (the Society of Inquiry), the most serious religious body on campus, one that dated from abolitionist days and has merged with the Y.M.C.A. in more recent times. During Bush's tenure, the group sent money to a Christian medical mission in Labrador. So there may be a theological basis for Bush's later assertion that his thoughts turned, after being shot down in war, to "Mother and Dad and the strength I got from them -- and God and faith and the separation of church and state." S. of I. theology leaned heavily toward the providential nature of institutions, not least that of Phillips Andover.

George Bush was not nearly as successful in studies as in sports. When I asked him what books had shaped his life, he answered Hynes' Flights of Passage -- a rather late entry. Asked for earlier influences, he said, "Well, we had a lot of obligatory reading when I was young -- Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye, Gentleman's Agreement. They shaped my ((life)), in various ways. How? I had to go back and give a book review on each of those when I was 17." Actually, two of those three books were written after he was 17, but the reviews he remembers were written for Hart Leavitt, who taught English composition. The grade Bush earned was 67 (60 was flunking). "He showed no imagination or originality," Leavitt remembers, though praising his manners and pleasantness.

CATCHING THE WESTERN ITCH