The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

Bundy is from Boston. The rest of the world which is not from Boston thinks of him as being very Boston and the name as being very Boston. This is not true, since the Bundys are from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the name by itself means very little in Boston history, a view corroborated by Shreve’s, a famous jewelry store in Boston. In 1966, when Bundy was leaving government, a group of his aides in the White House decided to give him something better than the traditional silver ashtray and came up with the idea of silver dice on a silver tray, something to roll as a means of determining foreign policy. In Washington several jewelry stores said it couldn’t be done, but since most of his people were from Cambridge in the first place, they remembered Shreve’s, and one of them was dispatched to arrange it. Silver dice on a silver tray? Yes, said a proper old gentleman at the shop. He thought it could be done. And what name would go on it? “McGeorge Bundy,” said the White House aide. “McGeorge Bundy . . . McGeorge Bundy . . . Bundy . . . oh, yes, isn’t he the boy who married Mary Lothrop?” Bundy is by Boston standards not a Bundy but a Lowell (on his mother’s side. “His father is from Michigan someplace,” a Bostonian noted). Katharine Bundy is also a Putnam, which by Boston standards is very good too, but the pedigree is on the Lowell side, as is much of the determination and the drive. The family descended from Percival Lowle, who came to America in 1639 and sired a great fami...