Happy 151st Birthday to Herbert Hoover!
Happy 151st Birthday to Herbert Hoover, and Happy 70th Birthday to the Hoover-Minthorn House Museum!
By Nolan Rettig
When Herbert Hoover was born on August 10th 1874, it was as the second son of Jesse and Hulda Hoover in the small town of West Branch, Iowa. This alone sets him apart from other presidents, as he was the only one to have been born in Iowa and the only one besides Richard Nixon to have been raised a Quaker. Despite the reputation Quakers had for stringent rules, however, much of Hoover’s childhood was carefree and defined by a close relationship with his parents and grandparents. His older brother Theodore would later recall that his grandfather:
“spoiled Bert by giving him everything he asked for. [O]ne day his earnest desire was for a keen hatchet, which was given him, as everything else was; and as a result he will show you […] a very peculiar scar on his left forefinger where he all but cut it off.”
Despite an ideal childhood, Hoover’s distinction as one of the three orphaned presidents came when he was only nine years old, also making him the youngest president to have been orphaned.
At first, Hoover and his siblings were cared for by their father’s brother Allen, but they ultimately moved to Newberg to be with their uncle Dr. Henry John Minthorn. It was because of this uncle that Hoover had made it past his second birthday, with his family thinking him dead from croup until Dr. Minthorn resuscitated him. Unfortunately for Hoover, he would struggle with croup throughout his childhood and it was the main reason he moved west to be with his uncle. Because Dr. Minthorn and his wife Laura headed Newberg’s Friends Pacific Academy (now George Fox University), it would also mean the Hoover children received a better education then had they stayed in West Branch. In fact, starting with young Bert, each of the Hoovers would go on to attend Stanford University, with Bert enrolling with the inaugural class at seventeen and meeting his wife Lou Henry while there.
The Hoover’s in 1888. Herbert had gone ahead of his siblings to Oregon, with the photo being taken shortly after they had reunited.
Hoover at eighty-one, finally able to sit in a parlor chair that was off limits to kids.
Though paved with tragedy and hardship, the road to Hoover’s presidency featured a plethora of blessings in disguise, and he was never one to ignore them. When Hoover returned to his childhood home in Newberg for his eighty-first birthday, it was as someone that had come full circle; as a youth, he would spend the Summers picking potato bugs off crops for twenty cents a day. Since then, he’d attended one of America’s most prestigious universities, administered food relief for the twentieth century’s worst wars, and had even climbed to the top to become President of the United States. In fact, his career was far from over by 1955, having been appointed the head of several relief commissions by presidents Truman and Eisenhower to repair the post-war world. This continued effort to solve problems like world hunger meant that when Hoover passed in 1964, he was remembered for making each of his ninety years count and helping the country in ways that reached beyond the Depression.
