William Henry Harrison’s tomb sits within a towering edifice, perched atop a hill, visible from throughout the valley below. By contrast, Herbert Hoover’s, along with that of his beloved Lou, rests at ground level, surrounded by nature, obscured within the larger park preserving his childhood home and presidential library.
There’s something appropriate to that juxtaposition. Harrison, born into an elite aristocratic family, sought glory all his life, and reasserted that drive even in death. Hoover, orphaned at 10, never pursued the spotlight, but rather sought to serve humbly.
Like Harrison’s, Hoover’s presidency occupies little more than a footnote in my historical memory. If you had asked me before today what comes to mind with Herbert Hoover, I’d have said the Hoover Dam and Hoovervilles, the latter being symbols of the economic despair that accompanied the Great Depression, which unfolded during his watch.
That all changed, though, because the American Discovery Trail–finally rejoined following my detour to Iowa 80–led me to West Branch, Hoover’s birthplace. I spent the day listening to Herbert Hoover: A Life, by Glen Jeansonne, and if it veers more towards hagiography than biography at times, I couldn’t help but be astonished by how little I had known about the man, and how unfair the popular perception of Hoover has been.
After losing both parents, Hoover was shipped to Salem, Oregon, to live with relatives who were working to establish what would eventually become George Fox University. Already a hard worker, Hoover grew into an even more disciplined and devoted young man, with dual loves for nature and mathematics. Eventually, that proved to be enough to get him into Stanford’s pioneer class, where he majored in engineering. Before long, Hoover was one of the world’s foremost mining engineers, taking on leadership roles at mines in Australia, China, and Russia, and amassing a fortune in the process. All of that is just a preface to the major work of his life, though.
When World War I broke out, Hoover was living in England. After Germany swept through Belgium panic arose about how the captive Belgian populace would be fed, as the Germans disavowed all responsibility. Hoover was sought out as a man who could make things happen, and he embraced the challenge, founding the Commission for Relief in Belgium. Somehow, he managed to amass and distribute two million tons of food to Belgium’s nine million victims, averting an even greater humanitarian crisis.
That would prove to just be the beginning of a remarkable career of service, particularly in the realm of food insecurity, war victims, and children. Dubbed “the Great Humanitarian,” Hoover took a lead role in confronting post-war food challenges in Europe, and then attending to even more dire challenges in post-Revolution Russia. After World War II, he once again was thrust into the brink, serving on behalf of President Truman to help starving and malnourished Europeans. Neil MacNeil, a colleague of Hoover’s, declared that Hoover “fed more people and saved more lives than any other man in history.” That’s a tough one to prove definitively, but there’s no doubt that Hoover saved millions and millions of people through work which he performed voluntarily, at no cost, and often at substantial personal expense.
And yet, Hoover today is mostly remembered for the failure of his presidency. It’s fair to wonder how much of that blame is justified. There are few more debated issues in American history than the causes of the Great Depression and the degree to which the New Deal ameliorated those economic challenges or perpetuated them. And really, the seeds of a number of FDR’s initiatives seemed to have been planted during Hoover’s years. There’s an argument to be made that Hoover was just incredibly unlucky, as he had called for reforms as Secretary of Commerce and was ignored, the issues that persisted as a consequence contributed to the Stock Market Crash when he was president, he made some initial progress with staunching the bleeding, only to have a subsequent European crash undo most of those gains.
What stands out the most, though, was how FDR and the rest of the Democratic Party capitalized on turning Hoover into a dirty word, evoking him as a symbol of Republican failure in every election for the next twenty years. Hoover, a man who had saved so many lives, experienced the first major failure of his life when the spotlight was brightest, and then was defined by that singular defeat for the decades that followed. And that, in turn, made indelible marks in Hoover’s historical record.
I was left thinking of Hoover as the Republican Jimmy Carter–a person of remarkable decency who, whether because he got supremely unlucky or was in over his head, failed in his most famous role, and yet did more good over his life than the majority of his fellow American presidents.
The town of West Branch celebrates Hoover every year on August 10. This year, incidentally, is the 150th anniversary of his birth, so the town is already ramping up for a big party. Hoover’s family’s cottage is well preserved and open for visits, as are many of the surrounding houses. That area, a national park, blends smoothly into the well-manicured Main Street. It’s a beautiful place to spend an afternoon and pay homage to a man who deserves better than what history has given him.
