Where Does the Ellis Name in Bush Family
those nosotros've lost
Nancy Bush Ellis, Sister and Aunt of Presidents, Dies at 94
Dissimilar most of her family, she was a liberal Democrat for a time, supporting the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and environmental causes.
Nancy Bush-league Ellis, the sis of one president and aunt of another, who for a time devoted herself to Democratic causes despite her family unit dynasty's Republican lineage, died on Dominicus at an assisted living facility in Hold, Mass. She was 94.
Her son Alexander Ellis 3d said the crusade was complications related to Covid-nineteen. She was hospitalized on Dec. 30 with a fever and tested positive for the coronavirus, he said. Her symptoms abated inside days, he added, but her full general health was failing.
Smart, athletic and approachable, Ms. Ellis exuded the patrician amuse of a bygone era, Jon Meacham, the historian and biographer of President George Bush, said in a phone interview. She was agile, he added, at a time when public service was perceived as noble and politicians from the other political party were non regarded as enemies.
"She was a Katharine Hepburn-like effigy," he said.
Dissimilar well-nigh of her family, Ms. Ellis was a liberal Democrat for decades, promoting environmental and antipoverty causes, raising money for the Due north.A.A.C.P. and serving as caput of the New England department of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
All the same, after i of her brothers, George Bush, appear he was inbound the Republican chief for president in 1979, "there was no more fiercely loyal person on the planet," Mr. Ellis said in an electronic mail.
"She was a wonderfully energetic apostle and cheerleader for her blood brother," he said.
She campaigned too for her nephew George W. Bush-league, who was governor of Texas earlier he became president in 2000. When Mr. Bush-league ran for re-election in 2004, Ms. Ellis campaigned for him not only in the Usa but also in London, Paris and Frankfurt, Germany, on behalf of Republicans Abroad, an organization that encourages Americans overseas to register and vote.
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"She was a Democrat for whom family came first," Mr. Meacham said.
Equally an active environmentalist, Ms. Ellis was a board member and honorary director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. She raised money to plant the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Expanse in Belize. She as well served on the lath of Pact, which fights poverty worldwide.
She was quoted as saying, in reference to her brother, that for many years, "I was out in what George calls 'deep left.'"
Nancy Walker Bush was born on Feb. 4, 1926, in Greenwich, Conn. Her father, Prescott Sheldon Bush, worked on Wall Street before he was elected to the United States Senate from Connecticut in 1952. Her mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, energetic and forceful, raised Nancy and her 4 brothers to be modest and socially responsible but likewise highly competitive.
"Her philosophy was, Give your all, try your hardest, do your best," Ms. Ellis said of her mother in an interview with The Chicago Tribune in 1991 while her brother George was campaigning for re-election as president.
Like her mother, Ms. Ellis was a champion tennis thespian and an all-around athlete, her skills honed by competing against her brothers.
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She attended the private school Rosemary Hall in Greenwich (now Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn.) and Miss Porter'southward Schoolhouse in Farmington. Conn., and majored in English at Vassar, from which she graduated in 1946.
That was the year she married Alexander Ellis Jr., who would run the Boston insurance brokerage house of Fairfield and Ellis. Ms. Ellis lived with her married man and four children in Concord. Every bit the daughter of a well-connected senator during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, she often visited her parents in Washington, enjoying its social scene.
She supported the Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson in his presidential campaigns and was enamored of President John F. Kennedy, some other Democrat. One evening in 1963, at a state dinner for John Kenneth Galbraith, who was returning as ambassador to India, she was seated to the president's right, traditionally a place of honor.
The arrangement caused a stir, with some remarking later that the woman side by side to the president was "a nobody."
Surprised herself, Ms. Ellis asked the president during dinner why she had been accorded such an award.
"Nan," he told her, "you are the only woman here who is registered to vote in Massachusetts."
When her nephew George W. Bush-league was a student at Harvard Concern School in the early on 1970s, Ms. Ellis had weekly lunches with him.
"My favorite aunt," he called her.
"George," she would reply, "I am your only aunt."
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After her husband died in 1989, Ms. Ellis moved to Buoy Hill in Boston and led an active social and cultural life. She supported the city'due south arts, music and theater as well as numerous charitable and nonprofit organizations, including the United South Cease Settlements, which provide services for the poor; the New England Medical Middle; and the New England Conservatory of Music.
Extremely well-read and a lifelong learner, she as well participated in seminars at Radcliffe.
"She could just equally hands quote Shakespeare sonnets equally whistle a cantankerous-court volley by your ear," Alexander Ellis said of her tennis prowess. "She offered united states of america kids $100 for the first 1 to beat her. No one did."
Ms. Ellis spent half the yr, from May to October, at her summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, not far from her blood brother's family unit compound at Walker'southward Point.
In addition to her son Alexander, she is survived past ii other sons, John Prescott Ellis and Josiah Wear Ellis, who is president and chief executive of the Denver Broncos; a daughter, Nancy Walker Ellis Black; 9 grandchildren; eleven swell-grandchildren; and a brother, Jonathan James Bush.
President George Bush died in 2018. Another older blood brother, Prescott Southward. Bush Jr., died in 2010, and her younger brother, William H.T. Bush, died in 2018.
"She's a function of this nifty American ethos that's nearly entirely gone," Mr. Meacham said of Ms. Ellis. "She was the best kind of blueblood. In that location was a sense of service without a shred of snobbery."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/nancy-bush-ellis-dead.html
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