Jan 18, 2018
Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover, his wife of nearly 45 years, were two of the most significant, most influential Americans of the entire 20th Century. Unlike any president and first lady who came before and only a handful who came after, they were true partners. Considering how this adventurous couple came of age in the late Victorian years, this indicates something quite extraordinary — almost singular — about each of them. So, if all you know about the Hoovers is the fact that he was president when the stock market crashed in 1929, and nothing about her, you might want to spend a few minutes with their great-granddaughter, author, and CNN contributor, Margaret Hoover.
Key Takeaways:
[1:06] From her earliest memories, Margaret was aware that her great-grandfather, Herbert Hoover, had been somebody special in American history. She has a picture of herself at three, sitting in the back of a golf cart with Barry Goldwater in front of her great-grandparents’ gravesite in West Branch, Iowa.
[2:17] Margaret was also told about her great-grandmother, Lou Henry Hoover, and her accomplishments as a partner of her husband the president, together taking on the world in a time of extraordinary social, industrial, and geopolitical changes.
[3:14] Stanford graduates and world-wide adventurers, Lou Henry and Herbert lived like millennials. They had circled the globe five times before aviation, having lived among people of several nations. They understood the different governments and economic systems around the world, what worked and what didn’t.
[4:01] Herbert knew he was advantaged as an American. An orphan, he was in the first class at Stanford. Lou Henry was the first woman to graduate with a degree in the hard sciences at Stanford. They met in Geology Lab. When Herbert graduated, he had $40 as a self-made product of American economics.
[4:33] As an orphan, Herbert had been separated from his siblings and raised by various relatives. In one cottage, his room was under the stairs. In any other country, it would have been unlikely for him to amount to anything. Living up to his Quaker values, he worked the graveyard shift in a mine at $2 a week after graduating from Stanford.
[5:40] A renowned mining engineer in San Francisco took him on as a stenographer. He later recommended Herbert to go explore properties in the Australian outback for a mining engineering firm out of London, named Bewick, Moreing & Co. He discovered the most profitable vein of gold in the outback, that still produces to this day.
[6:03] Herbert returned and married Lou Henry; the next day, they went to China. They were there at the Boxer Rebellion, in the last camp of foreigners rescued from Tianjin by Marines and escaping on a German mailboat. Before leaving, Herbert was organizing a foreign mining acquisition and Lou was organizing the encampment under daily siege.
[7:23] Their Chinese adventure marked the beginning of their travels exploring the tide of revolutions sweeping the world at the start of the 20th Century. After the Boxer Rebellion, they saw the rise of Bolshevism, Fascism, and other “isms” around the world. Herbert had mining properties on five continents by the outbreak of WWI in 1914.
[8:04] In 1922, with firsthand experience how the old and new governments of the world worked, Herbert wrote American Individualism to crystalize how the American system of government and economics was better than the others. He had seen the rivers of blood of Bolshevism. The world didn’t accept these lessons at the time.
[8:42] The Hoovers were the first international couple of prominence. Later in the White House, they would speak privately together in Mandarin Chinese.
[9:03] In 1914, Herbert, then a mining consultant, and Lou Henry, set up in the Savoy Hotel in London, at the request of U.S. Ambassador Walter Page, to help 150K Americans stranded when no credit was accepted. He lent over $1 million of his money to help them sail home. After the ordeal, he found that all but $40 had been repaid.
[11:28] At that moment, Herbert recognized the
inherent goodness in the ordinary American. He realized he could
rely on Americans for their voluntary spirit and good-naturedness.
The experience also elevated the Hoovers in the eyes of the
diplomatic set. Then, a massive food crisis hit 8 million people in
occupied Belgium.
[12:15] Ambassador Page asked Herbert to help feed the Belgian
people. He organized international food relief to deliver 40 000
tons of food in November and 80 000 tons every month from December
2014 to the end of the war.
[12:54] President Woodrow Wilson named Herbert Hoover as the first and only head of the U.S. Food Administration. Lou Henry was named the head of the Food Administration’s Women’s Committee. She asked a willing nation to ‘Hooverize’ or conserve, for the war, through Meatless Mondays, Wheatless Wednesdays, and drives.
[13:41] Lou Henry had also just become involved in the new movement of the Girl Scouts to get girls hiking and camping, as her father done with her, growing up.
[14:56] Lou Henry became Vice President and then National President of Girl Scouts, and became Chairman of the national board. She asked First Lady Edith Wilson, to serve as Honorary National President of Girls Scouts. The First Lady has since traditionally served the Girl Scouts as Honorary National President.
[15:18] Lou Henry started a Girl Scout Troop in Washington, D.C., which was an integrated troop. As a Quaker, she believed in the ‘individual spark’ of every person. She wanted every girl to have the same outdoors experience she had gotten. She was instrumental in establishing the Girl Scouts as a national organization.
[15:56] In the 1920’s, Lou Henry Hoover was one of the most important white voices for racial equality. As First Lady, she invited, one at a time, the wives of all the members of Congress to tea. This included the African-American wife of Congressman De Priest of Chicago. In response, Herbert invited Congressman De Priest to meet with him.
[17:19] Lou Henry designed the first Presidential Retreat at Camp Rapidan in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Herbert was an avid fisherman of all kinds of fishing, from casting to deep-sea fishing. Camp Rapidan is preserved as part of the National Park Service. The Hoovers also built and funded a school for children of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
[18:36] Lou Henry was an athlete and equestrian. She raised $700K in the late 1920s for an organization that promoted women’s athletics.
[18:47] Margaret would like to have five to ten minutes to chat with Lou Henry if she could get a sense of her charisma and delightful personality. The best parts of learning about Lou Henry have been reading the letters of those who interacted with her.
[19:40] Margaret Hoover was born 33 years after her great-grandmother died, quite suddenly in New York, in 1944. She was born 13 years after her great-grandfather died, in 1964. And she couldn’t be more proud of them.
Mentioned in This Episode: