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Norman Bush

Posted 2008-04-28 by Judy Wight Branson
Daily Courier, Prescott, Arizona
Friday, April 18, 2008

Norman Bush, a 35-year resident of Prescott, Ariz., died peacefully April 15, 2008, at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center Hospice at the age of 88. Mr. Bush is survived by his wife, Jill Ann Bush; two sons, Norman Glenn and Theodore Allan Bush; and three grandchildren, Nicholas Gabrean Gill-Bush, Alex Bernard Bush, and Emily Ann Bush.

Mr. Bush was a Staff Sergeant who served during WWII with the 341st Corps of Army Engineers, Co. D, and worked carving out the first leg of the Alcan Highway starting at milepost 0.0, Charlie Lake, just outside Fort Nelson, British Columbia, Canada. His own story of this time of war is documented in the book “Alaska at War,” a publication funded in part by the Alaska Humanities Forum, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Quest for Truth Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Defense Legacy Program.

Honorably discharged from the service in 1945, he moved to Phoenix, Ariz., to help his father, James Bush, deliver eggs for the Desert Egg Company while working nights at Cudahy Packing Company as a cost accountant. He later earned a two-year accounting degree on the GI Bill and after his marriage became an auditor for Arizona Title and Trust.
During his rise in the title business, Mr. Bush worked his way from auditor to escrow office to vice president of Phoenix Title and Trust, to president of Central Title, and eventually became president and CEO of Great Western Mortgage in the mid-1960s. After an illness in the late 1960s, Mr. Bush retired from the title business to become a real estate speculator, acquiring property in the greater Phoenix area. Among his many accolades, Mr. Bush received diplomatic papers from then Secretary of State Wesley Bolin on Dec. 29, 1964.

In 1973, Mr. Bush and his son Norman Glenn built two homes in Groom Creek, five miles south of Prescott in the Bradshaw Mountains, and was one of the first “green builders” in Prescott, building three passive-active solar homes in Prescott Valley.

There will be a memorial service for Mr. Bush at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 20, 2008, at the Unitarian Fellowship House. He will be interred at the Prescott National Cemetery at 1:30 p.m. April 21, 2008, with full military honors.

He will be greatly missed by all who knew him.

Information provided by survivors.




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