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Sharon Bush Wasn’t Invited To George H.W. Bush’s Funeral

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The Bush family gathered in Washington to bury a president, but one name was conspicuously missing from the guest list.

George H.W. Bush died on November 30, 2018, at 94, setting off a week of state funeral services that drew presidents, foreign dignitaries, and the extended Bush clan to Washington and Houston. Absent from those private family services was Sharon Smith Bush, who spent 23 years married to Neil Bush, one of the late president’s five children. Her exclusion wasn’t an oversight — it traced directly back to a bitter 2003 divorce that never fully healed.

• Sharon Smith Bush was married to Neil Bush from 1980 to 2003, and the couple had three children: Lauren Bush Lauren, Pierce Bush, and Ashley Bush.
• The marriage ended after a widely reported deposition in which Neil admitted to extramarital affairs during trips to Asia.
• Neil remarried Maria Andrews, a volunteer from Barbara Bush’s literacy foundation, in 2004 — just a year after the divorce was finalized.

A Marriage That Produced a Fashion Icon

Neil and Sharon’s union, which began in 1980, produced three children who each carved out their own public profile. Lauren Bush Lauren became a well-known fashion designer and philanthropist, later marrying David Lauren, son of designer Ralph Lauren — a pairing that made her name, somewhat improbably, Lauren Bush Lauren. Pierce Bush and Ashley Bush rounded out the family, growing up largely removed from the West Texas political stage their grandfather and uncles occupied.

For over two decades, Sharon was a fixture at Bush family gatherings, tied by marriage to a dynasty that had already produced one president and was building toward a second with George W. Bush’s rise to the White House. That standing evaporated once the marriage collapsed.

The Deposition That Ended the Marriage

The 2003 divorce turned ugly fast. Neil’s own deposition became the centerpiece of the split, with him admitting under oath to affairs during business trips to Thailand and Hong Kong. The testimony was picked up widely at the time and cemented the divorce as one of the more publicly humiliating splits inside the extended Bush circle.

Sharon Bush was told by Neil’s secretary that the funeral was already at max capacity — there would be no room for her.

Neil didn’t stay single long. Within a year of the divorce being finalized, he married Maria Andrews, whom he’d met through his mother Barbara Bush’s literacy-foundation office. That quick turnaround, on top of the affair admissions, left Sharon on the outside of a family that had once counted her as an in-law for 23 years.

Locked Out of the Family Circle

By the time George H.W. Bush’s funeral arrangements were being made in early December 2018, Sharon Bush’s estrangement from the family was well established. According to Page Six, she was informed by Neil’s secretary that the service was at capacity and there was no room for her — a rejection that made headlines precisely because of who was doing the excluding. Divorces inside famous families rarely stay private, and this one is a familiar pattern among the splits chronicled in pieces like Celebs Who Started Out Friends And Ended Up Enemies, where a warm relationship curdles the moment lawyers get involved.

The episode also fits a broader theme running through political dynasties, where marriage grants access to a family’s inner circle and divorce can just as quickly strip it away — a dynamic explored in Royal Family Members That Are Nothing Like They Seem. For Sharon, 23 years and three children with a Bush weren’t enough to secure an invitation once the marriage ended.

Lauren Bush Lauren, Pierce Bush, and Ashley Bush attended their grandfather’s services as Bush grandchildren in good standing. Their mother watched from outside a family she’d once been part of for more than two decades — the secretary’s phone call standing as the final word on where she stood.