Nancy Bush Ellis, sister and aunt of U.S. presidents, dies at 94
Grew up in Greenwich as part of political family
GREENWICH — Nancy Bush Ellis, who grew up in the Bush family residence on Grove Lane in Greenwich with her brother, former President George H.W. Bush, died Sunday. She was 94.
Ellis was a registered Democrat who was affiliated with a range of liberal causes in her lifetime, but she was staunchly loyal to the Bush family’s political dynasty, which was staunchly Republican. She campaigned for both her brother and for her nephew, President George W. Bush.
Ellis died at an assisted living facility in Concord, Mass., her son Alexander Ellis III told The New York Times. She had been hospitalized on Dec. 30 with a fever and tested positive for the coronavirus, he said.
“We are sad to share that President Bush’s beloved sister, Nancy Bush Ellis, has passed away. Our condolences and
prayers are with the Ellis and Bush families as we remember a remarkable woman who brought joy and light to the world,” the George and Barbara Bush Foundation posted on its website.
Nancy Walker Bush was born on Feb. 4, 1926, in Milton, Mass., a Boston suburb, to Prescott and Dorothy Walker Bush.
She attended Rosemary Hall in Greenwich, where she once performed the role of Alice in “Alice in Wonderland.” Rosemary Hall later became Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford. She graduated Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, and majored in English at Vassar, from which she graduated in 1946.
That same year, she married Alexander Ellis Jr. in 1946 at St. Paul’s Church in the Glenville section of Greenwich, with a reception afterward at the Round Hill Club. Ellis, a businessman in the insurance field who was active in state Republican politics in Massachusetts, died in 1989. She and her husband were longtime residents of Lincoln, Mass.
Ellis was fiercely proud and loyal to her older brother. She was so incensed about a media narrative portraying Bush as a “wimp,” specifically a syndicated column that claimed he had a tendency to “whine,” that she wrote letters of protest to the Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post in 1984, without his knowledge.
“George never cracks; he never whines. He flew strike after strike off the aircraft carrier San Jacinto during World War II,” the future president’s sister wrote. “Go after him on votes you don’t like, on his conservatism, which you think is phony, or real, or whatever, but enough of these mean-spirited, untrue attacks.”
Ellis was a delegate for Bush at the 1984 and 1988 Republican conventions.
In 1988, when her brother was vice president, she told a reporter, “Anyplace you want me to come and speak on behalf of my brother, I’ll be there,” while she was on her way to speak at a campaign event.
Ellis said her role and that of her three other brothers was like a “second team” to their brother.
“The first team is his five kids,” she said. “We’re sort of second tier, but working like dogs.”
President Bush was equally loyal to his sister. She kept a family photograph in her Lincoln home on which he wrote: “To my sister Nan who has taken a lot of heat for her brother who loves her.”
The president’s sister was active in a range of environmental and cultural organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and she was a great admirer of Eleanor Roosevelt.
She took classes at Radcliffe College in her senior years. Friends and family said she had a keen wit and sense of humor, often signing her letters — she was a voluminous letter writer — “the Dragon Lady,” according to a 1989 Boston Globe profile. She was also a skilled tennis player.
A regular visitor to Greenwich, Ellis went to her mother’s bedside at Greenwich Hospital when she caught pneumonia in 1989.
Ellis is the second to last of the five Bush siblings to have lived in Greenwich; she was predeceased by Prescott, George, and William “Bucky” Bush. She was the only daughter in the family.
She is survived by three sons Alexander, John and Josiah Ellis; a daughter, Nancy Walker Ellis Black; nine grandchildren; and a brother, Jonathan James Bush.
Memorial arrangements have not been announced.