Along about this time, something was going very wrong with the secret societies at Andover prepschool.
Andover's historian, as quoted above, affirmed that `` until the Society crisis of the 1940s, A.U.V.
continued strong and successful. '' But a few months after Poppy Bush and Rocky Rockefeller left
the school, Headmaster Fuess and his trustees announced they were closing and banning the secretsocieties forever. This set off a storm of controversy.
Bush's A.U.V. had been humiliating students and teaching anti-Christian rituals since 1877. Fuess
was himself a member of one of the Societies. What had happened, to precipitate this drastic
decision?
The great Society crisis at Andover was highly charged, because so many of the alumni and parents
of current students were leaders of government and finance. An ugly scandal there would
reverberate around the world. Whatever really prompted the close-down decision was kept a tight
secret, and remains wrapped in mystery today, a half-century later.
Headmaster Fuess claimed that an event which happened nine years earlier had moved him to the
decision. This event was duly recorded in the Andover history book:
`` In 1934 onealumni had joined the undergraduates for part of the ceremonies that were held in a barn on the undergraduate had been killed during the course of a Society initiation. A group of
outskirts of Andover. On the way back the initiate rode on the running board of a car driven by one
of the alumni. The roads were slippery, and the car crashed into a telegraph pole, crushing the boy,
who died in Dr. Fuess's presence in the hospital a few hours later. ''@s2@s7
But this tragedy had been brushed off by the school administration, with no suggestion of
interfering with the satanic Societies. Was there another, significantly worse disaster, that happened
to Class of 1943 secret society recruits?
When the alumni heard about the decision, they exploded into action. They accused Fuess of fascism '' and attacked his star-chamber proceedings. '' A Boston newspaper headline proclaimed, (^)
10,000 Andover Alumni Battle Trustees on Abolishing Secret Societies. '' The headmaster, releasing no specifics to back up his proposal, said, the purpose for which the secret societies
were founded no longer seems apparent. '' His allies said, quite vaguely, that the Societies promoted exclusiveness, '' operated on a''@s2@s8 special privilege basis, '' and created `` social cleavage.
The stealthy shut-down decision, having now become loudly public, had to be squelched. Andover's
Board of Trustees president, Secretary of War Stimson, settled the matter and kept a lid on things
with his familiar refrain that the war effort should not be disturbed. Whatever had pushed Fuess andthe trustees to act, was never disclosed. The Societies were quietly closed down in 1950.
Secretary of War Stimson made a famous speech in June 1942, to Poppy Bush and the other
graduating Andover boys. Stimson told them the war would be long, and they, the elite, should go
on to college.
But George Bush had some very complicated problems. The decision had already been made that he
would join the service and get quite far away from where he had been. For reasons of family (which
will be discussed in Chapter 7), there was a very special niche waiting for him in naval aviation.