Herbert Hoover...and old trucks!

Herbert Hoover's two room boyhood home

Notice the rag rug carpeting

On Saturday, September 15th, we drove to quaint West Branch, Iowa, to visit the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum as well as his boyhood home, a tiny two-room cottage built by his father and grandfather. Born in 1874 as the middle of three children to a traditional Quaker family, Herbert Hoover spent his early childhood years fishing in the nearby stream and learning the value of education and hard work.

One room schoolhouse

West Branch schoolhouse

His father, Jesse, a blacksmith by trade, opened a farm implement business in 1878, and moved his family to a larger home just down the street. Sadly, in 1880, Jesse died of a heart attack. In keeping with the emphasis on education in the Quaker community, the children’s mother, Hulda, saved money for their education by being thrifty and taking in sewing. As a prominent speaker in the Quaker community, Hulda was frequently called to other Meetings and eventually she caught a cold on one of those trips. In 1884, she died of pneumonia that had developed into typhoid fever, leaving the children orphaned.

Friends' Meetinghouse, West Branch, IA

And although it was a very sad time for the three of them, he remembered that none of the extended family talked about the ‘burden’ of adding more children to their own broods, but rather they fought for the joy of adding the Hoover kids to their homes. 'Bert' lived for a year with an aunt and uncle on a farm in West Branch before he was sent to live with Hulda’s brother, Dr. Henry Minthorn and his family in Oregon.

Herbert Hoover Presidential
Library & Museum

Dr. Minthorn, as superintendent of the Friends Pacific Academy, enrolled young Herbert in the school. Later, in 1888, the family moved to Salem, Oregon, and Herbert worked in his uncle’s Oregon Land Company. In 1891, Herbert attended the first class of Stanford University, graduating in 1895 with a degree in geology.

Exhibit of White House china

He worked in the California gold mines for a few years before taking a position with a British firm that sent him to Australia as a mining engineer. His ability to find a lucrative vein of ore earned him praise, a high salary and the nickname ‘the doctor of sick mines’. By 1900 he earned more per year than even the president of Stanford and became a self-made millionaire by the age of 40. In 1899 he married his college sweetheart, Lou Henry, who also grew up in Iowa, loved the outdoors and graduated with a degree in geology from Stanford.

In 1900 the new couple moved to China to develop coal mines and locate gold. After a wave of anti-Western sentiment spread through the country, the Hoovers survived the Boxer Rebellion, an uprising of Chinese nationalists. Never one to stand by, Lou aided in the nursing of the wounded and helped locate food, medicine and clothing for the injured as well as occasionally (and improbably) standing guard at a barricade before they and other Americans were rescued by the U.S. Marines 10 weeks after the siege began.

Exhibit about Hoover's Belgian relief efforts

Perhaps one of Hoover’s early examples of his Quaker upbringing came at the outbreak of World War I when he left his lucrative career in mining to help stranded Americans return home from Europe. With Belgium torn apart by war, he served as the Chairman of the Commission for the Relief of Belgium. By 1918, Hoover had been appointed as Director General of the American Relief Administration, a position he used to feed over 350 million people in 21 countries. Hoover’s unrelenting pace kicked into overdrive to secure the resources to feed starving citizens across Europe and the Soviet Union.

Ads to promote a
Hoover 'War Garden'

We read about the massive outpouring of thanks from the recipients of Hoover’s aid. After food was delivered in flour sacks, many of the sacks were repurposed into beautiful embroidered items sent back to Hoover. Through the Commission for the Relief of Belgium 20,000 Belgian lace workers were put back to work. With its 600 years of history, the lace industry was in danger of failing during the heavy bombing of Belgium. But Lou lobbied for Americans and British to buy the lace to support the industry and aid the Belgians. On the homefront, Hoover encouraged Americans to grow a ‘War Garden’ to help feed themselves and aid the war effort.

Hoover's many Commerce Dept. projects

Under both Presidents Harding and Coolidge, Hoover served as the Secretary of Commerce, considered at the time a 'backwater' position. But Hoover, in his characteristic style, worked 16 hour days in the role, and in the process created divisions to deal with housing, radio and aeronautics. His Fisheries Bureau helped save Alaskan salmon and he convened a meeting of fishermen and oilmen to protect the Chesapeake Bay. His Commerce Department also sponsored a commission on street and highway safety after more than 20,000 traffic-related deaths the previous year. And Hoover wrote the first federal highway safety code to streamline the sometimes conflicting laws from one jurisdiction to another. He extolled the virtues of standardization within American industry, especially in home building so that average Americans could service their own homes and save money.

The Boulder Dam (now the Hoover Dam) is still considered the largest public works project ever completed, larger even than the Panama Canal, and Hoover was responsible for its construction. In 1921, after 18 days of round-the-clock negotiations between the officials of the affected states, Hoover managed to balance everyone's interests and construction began on the dam in 1931. In 1927, a massive flood of the Mississippi River left over 600,000 people homeless, the largest natural disaster in the country's history. To this, Hoover organized tent cities for the refugees, simply explaining to each township he visited that thousands would soon arrive and they needed everything from sewers and water mains to doctors and meal halls assembled and built within hours. He raised $15M for the Red Cross to help with the relief effort.

With his large-scale humanitarian efforts and tireless work as the Secretary of Commerce, Hoover easily won the presidential election in 1928. But while the country assumed he could do anything and expected nothing less, his administration was soon marred by the Black Tuesday stock market crash in October 1929 that began the Great Depression. Despite an enormous amount of reform and drastic measures to stem the tide of widespread economic blight, his efforts were not enough. (Even as Commerce Secretary he had repeatedly warned of the unchecked speculation in the market and urged reforms and restraint. Unfortunately, his warnings went unheeded by both Harding and Coolidge.)

Elaborate carving of Hoover's life

According to the park brochure, Hoover ‘introduced banking reform legislation, created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, developed an agricultural credit system, and convened an economic conference to promote trade and stabilize currencies.’ Despite these and other efforts, his second presidential term was not to be. Franklin Delano Roosevelt swept the 1932 presidential election and many of Hoover’s projects became the basis for FDR’s New Deal programs, designed to relieve the economic depression many blamed on Hoover.

For the next 12 years, Hoover was excoriated for the country’s ills until the second World War broke out. President Truman tapped Hoover to help administer food relief to the war torn countries of Europe and the Soviet Union both during and after the war. Lou died in 1944 after sharing her husband’s passion for helping those in need. After being recruited in 1917 by the founder of the Girl Scouts, Lou served continuously as a boardmember or officer in the organization, helping raise funds for development including a kitchen in Washington, DC, where girls could learn to cook.

Hoover's apartment at the
Waldorf Towers in New York

In his later years, Hoover counseled President Truman, and a deep friendship developed despite their political differences. In 1947 Truman asked for his help on re-organizing the executive branch of the government and the Hoover Commission managed to trim out a lot of bloat. His simple one-page reports showed, for instance, an alarming amount of Army surplus (some dating to the Civil War) and no inventory to account for it, among a host of other ridiculous federal expenditures, like the operation of a distillery in the Virgin Islands and a railroad in Panama. Over 70% of the Hoover Commission's recommendations to 'do more with less' were instituted by Truman after his re-election in 1948. Eisenhower, in 1953, again asked Hoover for help trimming the federal government and eliminating waste. As late as 1961 Robert McNamara (JFK's Secretary of Defense) was publicly grateful to Hoover for the billions saved in defense spending. Having restored his former golden boy image and survived the onslaught of blame during FDR's years, Hoover died in 1964 at the age of 90 still working his typical 16 hour workdays.

Graves of the Hoovers

After touring the museum, we strolled past the restored tall prairie land to the couple’s gravesite. In Quaker fashion, the plain tombs bear only their names and dates of birth and death. No plaque or signage denotes Hoover’s legacy as a humanitarian or president, just a simple flag flying over the gravesite.

After walking around the pretty grounds back to the car, we found the Agave Mexican Restaurant for a tasty lunch. We also drove around West Branch and admired the old homes and businesses along the two main streets of the historic section, just beyond the boundaries of the Herbert Hoover park.

Antique gas pumps

After lunch we drove out to the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum, an exhibit of founder Bill Moon’s collection of antique trucks. We began with a trucking documentary by country music legend, Leland Martin. The film showed interviews of a dozen truckers who talked about what they haul, how long they've been driving, why they like trucking and how they manage to have a family in spite of the sometimes long absences. Many of them mentioned the freedom of being on the road with no one to answer to on a regular basis. Sounds like RVing.

Cutest/funniest looking item in the collection

We strolled into the exhibit hall where more than a hundred old trucks of various origins and conditions were displayed. The orange Curtis & Son moving van was our favorite for its color, its silly looking shape and the fact that it was in a movie (The Hours). It was actually made in 1954 by Fageol, a now defunct company.

We also saw a tractor made in 1918 by Avery. This ingenious company used wooden pegs around the wheels instead of tires. The pegs provided traction on farms and could easily be replaced by the owner when they wore out. Smart!

1918 Avery Tractor

The dozens of trucks were each interesting and served, during their lifetimes, completely different purposes. We saw an Army truck that had been converted to a cement mixer by its second owner. A giant post hole digger had been added to the back of another to help a county in Iowa dig holes for telephone poles more than 50 years ago. We even saw a really old U.S.P.S. truck outfitted with skis for use in the snow.

1958 Kenworth 'Bullnose'

In the middle of the showroom, we saw this 1958 Kenworth 'Bullnose' truck, bought by its first owner for $25,000. The design was revolutionary for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the cab over engine design shortened the overall length of the truck, allowing the truck to fit within newly established federal and state length restrictions. Secondly, a mechanic could conceivably work on the engine while standing up, and thus, save labor time. Mr. Moon's Bullnose truck was the very last of its kind built by Kenworth.

The trucking museum was surprisingly interesting and we really liked touring it...the 'Nethercutt Museum' of trucks. Nice. We spent what little remained of our awesome day enjoying the sunshine and listening to the kids in the campground playing and riding their bicycles.