Lou Hoover outside the Girl Scout Little House in Washington, DC, ca. 1925. In a recent blog, I summarized Lou Hoover’s long involvement with the Girl Scouts. In doing so, I gave scant attention to some significant firsts. Among these was the creation of the first Little House for Girl Scouts. A photograph with this … Continue reading Lou Hoover, Grace Coolidge and the Girl Scouts Little House
by Spencer Howard In August, 1928, Lou Henry Hoover visited her hometown of Waterloo as part of a trip through Iowa to kick off Herbert Hoover's Presidential campaign. While Lou expected to be the center of attention, she did not anticipate the persistence of a local photographer who saw a business opportunity. As the appointed … Continue reading Waterloo Movie Makers, or, The Gift that Would Not Stop Giving
3/25/24 First Lady Grace Coolidge, honorary president of the Girl Scouts with Lou Henry Hoover, President of the Girl Scouts, at a re-dedication ceremony of the"Girl Scout Little House" in Washington DC. Lou Henry Hoover’s involvement with the Girl Scouts spanned decades. Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of Girl Scouts, recruited Lou Hoover in 1917 … Continue reading Lou Henry Hoover and Girl Scouts
A valentine from the Hoover collections. Last year, I wrote on the Valentine’s Day Cards received by President Hoover (https://hoover.blogs.archives.gov/2018/02/14/valentines-day-cards/). I was surprised not only by the variety of cards in circulation in the early 1930s, but also by the large number of card manufacturers. Growing up when and where I did, I assumed that … Continue reading Valentine’s Day Cards – The Rest of the Story
Barack Obama was the most recent President to smoke cigarettes. He did his best to keep his habit out of the public eye knowing that it was frowned upon. Before the habit was socially stigmatized, many Presidents smoked. Herbert Hoover was one of them. A recent reference question concerning Hoover’s choice in pipe tobacco led … Continue reading Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
By Thomas F. Schwartz A previous blog described Christmas gifts Lou Henry Hoover gave to people in 1930. Made from century-old pine beams original to the White House and removed in the 1927 renovation by Calvin Coolidge, some of the oral histories conducted with associates of Herbert Hoover conflate these gifts with the 1929 fire … Continue reading The Oval Office Roasting on a 1929 Christmas Fire
by Spencer Howard Continuing Coningsby Dawson's tour of post-World War I Vienna, his writings sought to convey the absolute desperation of the people – primarily children – who were dependent on the American Relief Administration. In this dispatch, he describes his visit to one of the child-feeding stations: Today I visited one of the strategic points … Continue reading Christmas in Vienna, 1920 – Part 3: Caring for the children
by Spencer Howard In December 1920, as Coningsby Dawson toured Central Europe writing articles to promote the American Relief Administration fund drive, he sought to inform his readers about not only the immediate work of the ARA, but also to offer a wider view of the newly independent nations that were struggling to recover from the … Continue reading Christmas in Vienna, 1920 – Part 2: The Dorotheum
by Spencer Howard The year 2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I. As far as most Americans were concerned, that was the end of the war – the fighting stopped, the doughboys soon came home, and the Versailles Peace Conference concluded an acceptable peace. In much of Europe, the … Continue reading Christmas in Vienna, 1920 — Part 1: A visit from Santa
This third installment in the saga of Hoover’s ties with American Presidents gets tricky. Hoover’s connections to Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft were small, self-contained universes which allowed for easy translation into a blog post. This is not the case with Hoover and Woodrow Wilson. Their contacts were frequent, their engagement deep, their conjoined … Continue reading Herbert Hoover and American Presidents of the 20th century, Part 3
