"By the time was in, tap week was not a week in which the majority of juniors held their breath waiting for this event to occur."īush, however, took refuge at Bones, a society that paid homage to the corporate raiders and striving politicians who had filled its rooms every Thursday and Sunday night since 1832. "It was a time of some political upheaval on campus, so you had a division of those who were kind of committed to traditions at Yale and others who were anti-tradition and very disparaging of it," says Schmoke, who rejected Bones when the club tried to tap him. Schmoke, the former mayor of Baltimore who was a Yale freshman during Bush's senior year, describes the society as a polarizing symbol on the campus in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Every spring, Bonesmen would go after new members by tapping a student's shoulder and demanding: "Skull and Bones - accept or reject?" But more than ever, campus rebels were shouting "Reject!" There were psychedelic music and pot parties, and students were questioning the blue in Yale's blood. Outside the windowless mausoleum, protests against the Vietnam War were building as the school year progressed. There's a high initial expectation of trust and inviolable safety - that nothing will leave there." "You can say what you really think, what you believe, and you can be questioned on it, but you certainly can't be ridiculed for it. "It was just openness with impunity," Cohen says. "George was very feeling and sensitive at a time when that wasn't quite in vogue yet," says Cohen, still a Bush friend. Some Bonesmen remember Bush eagerly embracing the tradition - opening up so much now they can hardly believe he is running for president, given how vulnerable he seemed then. In a patrician version of group therapy, Bush and the others revealed tales they didn't expect to share with their future wives, members recall. The details of their private lives became Bones business. Surrounded by creepy death images carved into the architecture, the men began with their birth and kept going.īones was partly conceived as a debate society, but in an even bigger way a tomb of its members' secrets. "There's a basis of bonding - in an organization like ours, it's a jumping off point that historically has allowed a comfort zone."Īfter the evening immersed in sexual pasts, the men were each given their own night to tell their life history, or "LH," whose contents the brothers swore to take to their graves. "You don't get together two nights a week for a year and do nothing but chat and play pingpong," says Cohen, now an Atlanta dentist. The talks, he argues, were designed to build trust and move beyond superficial campus relationships. "I've never been in a coffin in my life," says Ken Cohen, a 1968 Bonesman. was born.Ĭontrary to legend, several -Bonesmen said, no one lay naked in a coffin for the storytelling. Bush offered his testimonial in the same tomb where 20 years earlier his father had shared his sexual exploits - a ritual of confession the elder Bush performed as a young husband soon after George W. To establish a climate of acceptance, each man was granted a Sunday night to retell his sexual history in a ritual known as "CB," shorthand for connubial bliss. At the start of Bush's senior year, the rituals were no different, and the men gathered for ceremonial soul-baring - what was seen in the club as a sort of "rebirth" into the Bones order - behind the cold stone walls of the crypt. For the past 168 years, Bonesmen have submitted to personal confessionals to seal their brotherhood. The Bones bonds run deep, "to the marrow," as they say. Bush invited about six of his fellow Bonesmen to his wedding - they were among the few Yale men there - and the crew gathered at the Four Seasons hotel in Austin to celebrate his 1994 upset victory in the governor's race. Among the members of the 1968 Bones class, many are still close to the Texas governor. Now, many members of the club are hoping to add "W' memorabilia to that room. A study devoted to the presidencies of two former -Bonesmen, the senior Bush and 1878 graduate William Howard Taft, is seen as a place of honor in the tomb. Monuments to Bones prestige sit among the society's collection of skeletons, coffins and assorted death symbols.
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