![]() Many of the elements about Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover’s story I think actually really appealed to the millennial generation in the sense that first they were certainly Americans, but they were globally oriented. Outside of the 1874 part, it sounds like they could’ve been a couple of millennials. RH: They each went to Stanford, they each went off together to live a most adventurous life around the world. And extraordinary changes and transformations happened in industry and geopolitics during that time and they were intimately involved as witnesses and participants in each of those elements. I mean they were born in 1874 and Herbert Hoover lived until 1964. Herbert Hoover was half of Lou, and Lou was half of Herbert Hoover, and together they were this partnership that took on the world in a time when the world changed really significantly. But Lou Henry Hoover was, and it was always imparted upon me, half of Herbert Hoover because they were this couple. MH: Because was an extra…She was also in her own…I actually despise the term “in her own right” but that’s always what they said because we come from a culture where it is easier for people to talk about the accomplishments of Presidents and less of their wives. RH: Now on the flip side did your family tell you nearly as much about your great- grandmother, First Lady Lou Henry Hoover? It started early and it’s baked in the cake. A picture of me with Barry Goldwater on the back of a golf cart in front of my great-grandfather’s grave–that sort of says it all. I was born in the late ‘70s when many of these economic and political battles were still brewing around the legacy of the New Deal and what really had happened during the Great Depression and the ideas of smaller government and the modern American Conservative movement were ascendant. There is an image of me at my great-grandfather and great-grandmother’s gravesite in West Branch, Iowa, which is the site also of Herbert Hoover’s birth cottage, the cottage in which he was born, and his Presidential library.Īnd on his birthday, August 10 th, every year as a child. MH: I would say I had awareness that he had been somebody special in American history from very, very early in my life, probably my earliest memories. 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.Ībout how old were you when you learned your great-grandfather had been President of the United States and what did your family tell you about him when you were little? And considering how this adventurous couple came of age in the late Victorian years indicates something quite extraordinary, almost singular about each of them. Unlike any president and first lady who came before and only a handful who came after, they were true partners. Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover, his wife of nearly 45 years, were two of the most significant, most influential Americans of the entire 20 th century. She served as chairwoman both before and after her time as First Lady, and as honorary chairwoman while First Lady – a tradition that began, at Lou’s suggestion, with First Lady Edith Wilson. Having been raised with a passion for nontraditional activities like camping, hiking, and sleeping under the starts, she saw the outdoor-oriented skills taught by the Girl Scouts as an important path to self-empowerment for girls. While the Hoovers did most things together, Lou’s involvement with the Girls Scouts of America was a labor of love from the organization’s founding in 1914 to her death in 1944. It also helped crystallize the couple’s beliefs in the power of American individualism, the superiority of our economic model, and the inherent generosity of the American people – beliefs that would shape their actions for the rest of their lives. Their roles in helping Americans navigate life in London as the city was paralyzed by war and then in arranging for food to be imported to Belgium – saving the lives of millions – for most of the war in brought them to great prominence, setting the stage for Hoover’s eventual foray into politics. ![]() Both graduates of Stanford, they traveled the world together and were first-hand witnesses to and participants in such events as China’s Boxer Rebellion and the crisis of Americans trapped in Europe at the outbreak of World War I. ![]() ![]() Henry Hoover and his wife Lou Henry Hoover were true life partners at a time when tradition and society called for women to stay at home while men worked. Listen to the podcast to learn more about their lives and how they regarded, and influenced, capitalism and the market economy in America. ![]()
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