I have blogged before about how much I love the state of Iowa – and I feel so grateful to have been back to Iowa four times in the last four months … far more often than has been the case in recent years.   This most recent visit took me officially to Dubuque to do music and worship for the Grace Institute… but in the 12 hours of free time I had on Saturday (between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.) I decided to pop down to the Amana Colonies to eat lunch at the Ronnenburg Restaurant and to look for an anniversary gift for Kathy (which I found.)  It was only as I was pulling out of the parking lot that I realized that this might be a good opportunity for me to finally see an Iowa landmark that has been on my Wish List for decades:  West Branch, Iowa – the home of former U.S. President Herbert Hoover.   I had only the vaguest notion of where West Branch was,  but I was pretty sure it was somewhere in the east central part of the state,  and I wondered if it might be within reach.  With no Iowa roadmap immediately handy (I had one somewhere in the car, but given the current state of my backseat,  there was no way I was going to easily or quickly find it) I took out my iPhone, brought up Google Maps,  typed in Amana Colonies, IA and West Branch, IA (isn’t modern technology amazing!), pressed the arrow for getting directions,  and lo and PRESTO! –  discovered that West Branch was only 33 miles away!

Most people who know me well would never nickname me Mister Impulsive.  Not that I’m one to lay out every last detail of a trip way ahead,  but it’s uncommon for me to take leaps into the unknown,  and on those rare occasions when I do so,  it’s apt to blow up in my face.  (One of the most famous instances of that was after some sort of gathering in the Twin Cities – maybe my Uncle Paul’s funeral – when I impulsively decided to stay put in Minneapolis and just crash on a friend’s bed.  I knew several different people who lived in the Cities and was sure that I would be able to track one of them down and bum a place on their couch.  What an adventure it would be!  Except that none of them seemed to be home- and this was back in the Stone Age, years before the internet, email, cell phones, or Facebook existed, and it was much trickier to get in touch with people.   To make a long story short,  I ended up sleeping in my car that night in a Truck Stop along I-35,  and I didn’t try anything remotely impulsive for some years after that.

Anyway, back to Herbert Hoover.   I had done no research into West Branch, Iowa or what’s even there.   (Was his birth place still standing?  Or was there just a plaque on the site, next to a couple of picnic tables.)  Then I remembered that a recent Carthage graduate named Katie Schmidt (a music/history double major) had waxed rhapsodically about the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, and on the strength of her recommendation I decided that this 33-mile side trip would be worth my while.  So I took off, hoping that I would find it and that I would be glad I found it.

And was I ever!!!  It turns out that this particular weekend just happened to be Hoover Hometown Days,  a two-day festival in West Branch in which the downtown streets are cordoned off – live entertainment and various booths and displays are everywhere – and admission to the Herbert Hoover Library is free!   My impulsiveness had been richly rewarded!  I drank in every bit of the festival- as well as the winning charm of this lovely town, which had more than a whiff of Mayberry about it.  The small home where Hoover was born is indeed still standing,  and it was inspiring and moving to step inside it and to imagine what it was like for a family to live in two rooms with a combined space smaller than my living room. And Katie Schmidt was right-  the Herbert Hoover Museum is a splendid celebration of this Great American with all kinds of fascinating information about all that he achieved.

And that’s where the story of Herbert Hoover,  the only U.S. President from Iowa, really is compelling.   While it’s true that his presidency was and is widely regarded as a failure- rightly or wrongly – there is no denying the enormous difference he made in the lives of countless millions of people by overseeing groundbreaking humanitarian relief efforts in Belgium during the First World War … and Germany and Russian after the war.  One of the most astonishing things to see in the Hoover Presidential Library is an array of thank you cards, notes, pictures, and albums sent to Hoover from grateful people all over the world, who believed – and rightly so – that they would not have escaped certain starvation without the aid that he organized and implemented. I’m not sure there’s another U.S. President who can be credited with helping to save the lives of millions of people before ever becoming president.  Later as Secretary of Commerce (under Harding and Coolidge)   Hoover oversaw all sorts of development and regulation efforts- including regulation of the brand new radio industry.   And it was also during his tenure as Secretary of Commerce that Hoover himself was present in 1927 for what is believed to be the very first television broadcast ever attempted.  So while it’s easy to think of Hoover as a quaint figure from a bygone era, in fact he was a mover and a shaker and very much a man who embraced every new and exciting possibility in his world.

It’s true that he was no dynamo as a speaker,  and it’s ironic that the new medium of radio played a significant role in his political downfall, since he had no chance of competing with the charismatic FDR over the airwaves.  But he was a compassionate and intelligent man,  as well as a man of unassailable integrity,  and had he become president at a different moment in our history,  he might have been far more successful.   I think it speaks volumes that one of the key figures in drawing Hoover back into the public spotlight some years later was President Harry S. Truman, a democrat, who deeply admired Hoover despite their political differences and who put him to work.  They remained friends until Hoover’s death in 1964.

I learned so much about Hoover from visiting his Presidential Library-  but the single thing I remember most vividly is something from the World War One display, which celebrated his relief work.  It was there that I read these words:   Gallantry, like the sight of hungry children, moved Hoover deeply.  When two English ladies sent him a dozen silver buttons snipped from their gowns, he returned all but one “which I shall keep as a reminder that there are people like you in the world.” Hoover may have believed deeply in the importance of people taking responsibility for their own lives,  but he also knew that people sometimes need and deserve help- and he knew that compassion was an essential human trait and he built his life upon it.  There is something so moving about the generosity of those two English ladies,  Hoover’s gratitude for it, and his own generosity in returning their donation to them with those words of appreciation.  Imagine a world where we lived our lives with that kind of love for others.  John Lennon may have called us to imagine such a thing in his famous songs, but long before Mr. Lennon was born,  Herbert Hoover was imagining the same thing …. and doing something about it.

May his example continue to inspire us.

pictured above:  this is the humble house in which Herbert ‘Bert’ Hoover, who later became quite wealthy, was born.    The Presidential Library right up the road includes precious mementos from his life such as a small toy train with which he played as a child …. the small picture album belonging to one of his elementary schoolmates, in which he wrote a cute little poem …. souvenirs which Hoover and his wife owned from the time they spent in Australia and China early in their married life …. and the aforementioned thank you’s from grateful people around the world.  Some of them were actually sent to Hoover decades after the fact,  indicating that people remained grateful to Hoover many years after their lives had been spared.  What impact.  At the library, one can also see film footage of Hoover’s inauguration (he was sworn in by Chief Justice/former President William Howard Taft) and hear excerpts of his inaugural address…..  and much, much more.   I don’t think you have to be a presidential nerd like me to appreciate all that this beautiful facility has to offer.