[8]
The Bush family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1925, and Prescott took a position with W. A. Harriman & Co. (which later merged into Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.) the following year.[9] Bush spent most of his childhood in Greenwich, at the family vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine,[b] or at his maternal grandparents' plantation in South Carolina.[11]
Because of the family's wealth, Bush was largely unaffected by the Great Depression.[12] He attended Greenwich Country Day School from 1929 to 1937 and Phillips Academy, an elite private academy in Massachusetts, from 1937 to 1942.[13] While at Phillips Academy, he served as president of the senior class, secretary of the student council, president of the community fund-raising group, a member of the editorial board of the school newspaper, and captain of the varsity baseball and soccer teams.[14]

George H. W. Bush at his grandfather's house in Kennebunkport, c. 1925

Bush in Phillips Academy's 1942 yearbook

World War II
Bush in his Grumman TBF Avenger aboard USS San Jacinto in 1944
On his 18th birthday, immediately after graduating from Phillips Academy, he enlisted in the United States Navy as a naval aviator.