“There’s not enough adjectives to describe this man and this family,” Ms. Clement said. “He sort of would talk about the epitome of what family should be — it’s ‘family first.’ He doesn’t say it as a cliché. He’s probably the guy that defined it.”

Ken Raynor, who has been the golf professional at the Cape Arundel Golf Club in Kennebunkport since 1979, played hundreds of rounds of golf with Mr. Bush, and went on salmon fishing trips with him in remote parts of Canada. Mr. Raynor said he had learned of Mr. Bush’s death when he woke up early Saturday morning in Florida, where he works over the winter.

“I always looked at him as a second dad,” Mr. Raynor said.

He said he had spent time with Mr. Bush in October, the day before the former president left for Texas.

“I kind of got to say my goodbyes to him on that Thursday afternoon, which was emotional for me, but I know that he’s in a better place, and obviously Bar’s been waiting for him,” he said, referring to Mrs. Bush.

[Read: Mr. Bush’s stamp on America endures even in the Trump era.]

In recent years, the Kennebunkport Historical Society has housed a rotating exhibition of Mr. Bush’s mementos, from his golf clubs to the jumpsuit that he wore when he sky-dived on his 90th birthday, landing on the grounds of St. Ann’s Episcopal Church. The executive director, Kirsten Camp, said the society had recently taken down an exhibition on Mrs. Bush to put up a Christmas display, but she had come in early Saturday morning to bring out some of the Bush family items.

She said the fact that Mr. Bush’s death had come on the first weekend of Christmas Prelude, the town’s annual Christmas celebration, meant that the town was packed and that the reporters who had come were having a hard time getting around.

“I think President Bush would be kind of chuckling a little bit,” she said.

Mr. Bradbury knew Mr. Bush both through the Conservation Trust, of which Mr. Bush was a strong supporter, and through a family grocery store he used to own, where the Bushes would often do their shopping.