McGeorge Bundy - Early Life

Early Life

Raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Bundy came from a wealthy family long involved in Republican politics. His mother, Katherine Lawrence Putnam, was the daughter of two Boston Brahmin families listed in the Social Register. His father, Harvey Hollister Bundy, was from Grand Rapids, Michigan and was a diplomat who helped implement the Marshall Plan.

Bundy attended the elite Dexter School in Brookline, Massachusetts and then the Groton School, where he placed first in his class and ran the student newspaper and debating society. He was then admitted to Yale University, one year behind his brother William. At Yale, where he majored in mathematics, he served as secretary of the Yale Political Union and then chairman of its Liberal Party. He also wrote a column for the Yale Daily News. Like his father, he was inducted into the Skull and Bones secret society, where he was nicknamed "Odin". He remained in contact with his fellow Bonesmen for decades afterward. He graduated Yale in the class of 1940.

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