Norfolk City Virginia USGenWeb Archives Obituaries.....Bush, Ralph Everett November 7, 1981
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Robert Woolfitt http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00034.html#0008401 October 25, 2022, 9:25 am

Virginian-Pilot  November 6 & 12, 1981
NORFOLK—A funeral Mass for Ralph Everett Bush, Norfolk building company chairman, 
who died Wednesday in Richmond, will be offered at 10 a.m. Saturday in Sacred 
Heart Catholic Church. Entombment will be in St. Mary’s Catholic Church Cemetery 
Mausoleum.

A Christian Wake service will be held at 7:30 p.m. today in H.D. Oliver Funeral 
Apartments, Norfolk. The family will be at 1207 Pembroke Towers, Norfolk.
Memorial donations may be made to a charity of the donor’s choice.

RALPH E. BUSH

Builder Ralph E. Bush, who was 78 years old when he died last week, specialized in 
housing for low- and moderate-income families, as well as the unaffluent elderly. 
That’s not to say he didn’t venture also into the luxury-apartment market. 
Pembroke Towers in Norfolk’s Ghent section and the Crawford One high-rise building 
in downtown Portsmouth (the latter a joint project with the late George T. 
McLean), and Virginia House in Virginia Beach are nearby examples of that facet of 
his career. But it was his leadership in multi-housing development for masses of 
people that gained for Mr. Bush national recognition and respect.

Through the corporations he spawned, he added nearly 14,000 dwelling units to the 
nation’s housing inventory, most of these in Southeastern and Northern Virginia, 
but some also in Maryland and Washington, D.C. And his reach extended beyond these 
areas, too. In the early Sixties, for example, he was awarded the contract for 
construction of five high-rise apartment houses and a five-story parking garage in 
downtown Cincinnati. Professional Builder magazine repeatedly listed him among the 
"housing giants of America," putting him in the company of those mass builders who 
transform the American landscape. Urban-renewal agencies sought his guidance in 
constructing and rehabilitating low-income housing.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush was involved effectively in this region’s civic institutions. 
He was director emeritus of Medical Center Hospitals, which he had aided for many 
years as a member of its building committee, and a member of the Norfolk State 
University Foundation development committee. He sat on the President’s Advisory 
Council at Virginia Wesleyan College. And he was a very visible Democrat, active 
at local, state, and national levels.

A native of North Carolina, but reared in Suffolk, Mr. Bush graduated from the 
University of Virginia. He identified with this area and contributed substantially 
to its progress. That he had a long, honorable, and happy life here sharpens the 
regret at his passing.

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