Barbara Bush’s Life and Philanthropy Left Their Mark on Maine
“Ganny’s Garden” by the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust. Statuary is of her hat, her favorite book, Pride and Prejudice, and her Keds, which gardener Elizabeth Spahr says were always mismatched. Photo by Fred Bever for Maine Public
Barbara Bush made an indelible mark on the state of Maine, through her generous philanthropy – and the force of her personality. Her death yesterday at 92 is a deeply-felt loss for Kennebunkport, the family’s summer home.
A little after sunrise, John Doyon is on his usual walk near the bluff where the Bush family compound, Walker’s Point, rises out of the sea. He says when the American flag is raised on the lawn, Kennebunkport knows the Bushes have arrived, and summer is on it’s way.
“So typically mid-May and again taken down in October,” says Doyon. “So it’s seasonal but you always know – if you’ve not actually seen them come into town, you know that they’ve arrived by virtue of the flags being up.”
Kennebunkport has been a place of summer refuge for generations of Bushes since George H.W. Bush’s father, the late U.S. Sen. Prescott Bush of Connecticut, married Dorothy Walker in the town in 1921.