A Little Sister Remembers

Though Draper Kauffman died a quarter-century ago, he still lives in the heart of his younger sister, Betty Lou, now Elizabeth Kauffman Bush, who spends part of each year at her home in the Moorings.

Elizabeth first began writing a book about her brother’s extraordinary life 10 years ago. “The research was overwhelming,” she recalls. “And twice I gave up the project entirely — once for four years and once for two years. But my husband, Prescott, and my daughter, Kelsey, encouraged me to carry on.

Though Kauffman knew his little sister as Betty Lou, nobody calls her that today. As Elizabeth Kauffman Bush, she is the wife of Prescott Bush, Jr., the older brother (by two years) of George H. W. Bush, which makes her the sister-in-law of our 41st president and an aunt by marriage of the 43rd. And everybody knows her simply as Beth.

Read the entire article in the January 2005 issue