Gussie Busch

Early life

August Anheuser Busch Jr. was born on March 28, 1899, in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was August Anheuser Busch Sr., the President of Anheuser-Busch. His mother was Alice Zisemann. His paternal grandfather, Adolphus Busch, was the German-born founder of Anheuser-Busch.

Anheuser-Busch

Starting at lower levels to learn the family business of Anheuser-Busch Company, Busch became superintendent of brewing operations in 1924 and head of the brewing division after his father's death in 1934. After his older brother Adolphus Busch III's death in 1946, August A. Jr. succeeded him as President and CEO.

He led the company to become the largest brewery in the world by 1957, having previously competed with Pabst and Schlitz for the top spot. He expanded it from a single site in St. Louis to operating nine separate breweries nationwide. By 1973, Anheuser-Busch had "aggregate beer sales of 26,522,000 barrels." In 1964, under his leadership, production at the St. Louis facility alone reached the ten million barrels-per-year mark.

Described as a showman and salesman, Busch began using the Clydesdale team in 1933, putting them into service to commemorate the end of Prohibition by having a team "haul the first case of Budweiser down Pennsylvania Avenue for delivery to President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House." He made their image part of the company logo and had them appear regularly at public events.

In May 1975 Busch was forced to step down as CEO and chairman of the company after a boardroom coup led by his son, August Busch III. He had become increasingly difficult to work with due to his grief over the loss of his youngest daughter at the end of 1974. He was allowed to remain president of the Cardinals and use the company perks associated with that job only if he represented the move as voluntary on his part.

A year after being forced out, Busch considered working with the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company on a hostile takeover in an attempt to regain his leadership, but decided he could not be the one to take the company away from the family, a move that was not made public for ten years. The extent to which Busch had been sidelined, too, was not publicly known during his lifetime. Divisions in the Busch family resulting from the coup persisted long afterwards, playing a part in InBev's 2008 takeover of the company.

St. Louis Cardinals

In 1953, Cardinals owner Fred Saigh was convicted of tax evasion. Facing almost certain banishment from baseball, he put the Cardinals up for sale. When Busch got word that Saigh was seriously considering selling the team to interests who would move the team to Houston; he decided to have Anheuser-Busch get into the bidding in order to keep the Cardinals in St. Louis. Ultimately, Busch persuaded Saigh to take less money ($3.75 million) than what he was being offered by out-of-town interests in the name of civic pride, and also achieved a marketing tool.

As chairman, president or CEO of the Cardinals from the time the club was purchased by the brewery in 1953 until his death, Busch oversaw a team that won six National League pennants (1964, 1967, 1968, 1982, 1985, and 1987) and three World Series (1964, 1967 and 1982). When his son, August Busch III, ousted him as president of Anheuser-Busch, the elder Busch remained as president of the Cardinals.

Although the Cardinals were the dominant baseball team in St. Louis, they did not own their own ballpark. Since 1920, they had rented Sportsman's Park from the St. Louis Browns of the American League. Shortly after buying the Cardinals, Busch bought and extensively renovated the park, renaming it Busch Stadium (but only after a failed attempt to rename it as Budweiser Stadium). The team played there until Busch Memorial Stadium was built in the middle of the 1966 season.

In 1984, the Cardinals retired a number, 85, in Busch's honor, which was his age at the time.

Personal life

Busch married four times, having a total of eleven children. Two of his marriages ended in divorce, and his fourth wife, the former Margaret Rohde, died in 1988.

At the time of his death, his surviving children (with married names) were Carlota Busch Giersch of Pasadena, California, and Lilly Busch Hermann (wife of Bob Hermann) of St. Louis, both daughters of the late Mrs. Marie Church Busch; August A. Busch III of St. Louis and Elizabeth Busch Burke of Middleburg, Virginia, both children of the late Elizabeth Overton Busch; and Adolphus A. Busch IV and Beatrice Busch von Gontard, both of St. Louis; Peter W. Busch of Vero Beach, Florida; and Trudy Busch Valentine, William K. Busch and Andrew D. Busch of St. Louis, all six the children of Gertrude Buholzer Busch.

His youngest child, daughter Christina Martina Busch, died at the age of eight in a car accident while on her way home from school in December 1974.

Death and legacy

Busch died in St. Louis on September 29, 1989, at age 90, of pneumonia.

Fred Kuhlman took over as Cardinals team president. Seven years later in 1996, Anheuser-Busch sold the Cardinals to a group of investors led by William DeWitt, Jr.

In 2014, the Cardinals announced Busch among 22 former players and personnel to be inducted into the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum for the inaugural class of 2014.