Lou Hoover encounters Stanford’s “Animal House” College is a time for both refining one’s education as well as gaining important life lessons. Often these lessons consist of doing things that seem like harmless fun until one realizes how incredibly stupid they were in retrospect. Such is the case with former First Lady Lou Henry … Continue reading Stanford’s “Animal House”
The main celebrity story of early 1932 was the kidnapping of the twenty-month old son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. On March 1 sometime after 9 pm when the baby’s nanny put Charles Jr. to bed and 10 pm when the nanny did her usual check, someone abducted the baby. The state police were called … Continue reading CSI: Past and Present
– the 1928 Republican National Convention Herbert and Lou Hoover in the doorway of their home the morning after he was nominated for president in 1928. by Spencer Howard In June 1928, Republican Party held its quadrennial convention to nominate candidates for President and Vice President of the United States. Before the primaries and caucuses … Continue reading Nominating a Candidate
A stereotype frequently attributed to Herbert Hoover is that he was cold and aloof. He did not have an official White House photographer (that would come with his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt) and refused to have his family and private life as fair game for media coverage. Unlike later Presidents that used the media to … Continue reading Hoover and the Teleprompter
The eminent Hoover biographer, George Nash, describes Charles Michelson as "the Democratic Party's chief publicist and spin-meister," who, during the Hoover Administration, "orchestrated an unremitting barrage of disparagement of Hoover's shortcomings: a foretaste of what later generations would call "the politics of personal destruction." Michelson's job was an unrelenting flow of criticism, often as ghostwritten … Continue reading The Politics of Personal Destruction
Author Charles Rappleye is an award-winning investigative journalist and editor. He has written extensively on media, law enforcement, and organized crime. The author of Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution; Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution; and his new book - Herbert Hoover in the White House: The … Continue reading Herbert Hoover in the White House
On August 10, 1962, Herbert Hoover celebrated his 88th birthday by attending the dedication and opening of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library -Museum in West Branch, Iowa. Accompanied by friend and former president Harry S. Truman, Hoover fondly reminisced about growing up in West Branch and celebrating the Fourth of July with firecrackers purchased by … Continue reading Herbert Hoover a Superhero?
– Mabel Walker Willebrandt by Spencer Howard For much of the Prohibition Era (1920-1933), the most prominent Prohibition enforcement official was also the highest ranking woman in three presidential administrations -- Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt. Appointed by President Harding in 1921, Willebrandt prosecuted Prohibition cases and tax fraud, and oversaw Federal prisons. In … Continue reading “The First Lady of the Law”
The Hoovers continued the tradition, which began during the Theodore Roosevelt administration, of sponsoring concerts or "musicales" at the White House, usually following important dinners or receptions. The Hoovers' tastes, and therefore the programming, tended toward classical music. Some of the renowned artists who performed at the Hoover White House included opera stars Margaret Matzenauer … Continue reading White House ‘Musicales’
New Exhibit April 23 - October 23, 2016 Hoover and Prohibition When President Herbert Hoover entered the White House in 1929, prohibition was already the law. The 18th Amendment was ratified in 1919 and took effect nationwide in 1920. It called for a ban on alcohol sales in one year. States struggled to enforce prohibition and the federal government … Continue reading Ain’t Misbehavin? The World of Gangsters
