4:00 P.M.

April 25, 1991

Herbert Hoover:
Some Personal Footnotes

by Northcutt Ely

Assembly Room, A. K. Smiley Public Library

INTRODUCTION

"Soon no one will know what you and I know." I forget who wrote that, but I quoted it to Marica recently. She said that it wee time that we put some of our recollections on paper, starting with our memories of President Hoover. This is our joint effort.

I served in the Hoover administration from 1929 to 1933 as Executive Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, who was Mr. Hoover’s closest friend.

In later years I was Mr. Hoover’s attorney in a number of matters, and Marica and I saw him frequently.

Upon Mr. Hoover’s death, in 1964, at the age of 90, I had the honor to serve as co-executor of his estate with his two sons.

These recollections are not reports of earth-rattling events. Nor is this a biography of Mr. Hoover. These are merely personal footnotes to the last half of Mr. Hoover’s extraordinary career.

OUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE HOOVER FAMILY

Marica and I first became acquainted with the Hoover family when I was a student at Stanford, in the 1920’s . The two Hoover boys, Herbert Junior and Allan, were my friends. Mr. Hoover was Secretary of Commerce. The Hoovers were spending most of their time in Washington, but they had a home on the campus. Their swimming pool was made available to the friends of their sons. Marica was in school at Berkeley, and when she came to Stanford on dates, we spent long hours in and around the Hoover pool. Mrs. Hoover invited us in for tea on one or two of these occasions, and we became acquainted with one of the most gracious ladies whom either of us has ever known.

HOW I BECAME ACQUAINTED WITH MR. HOOVER

I came to know Mr. Hoover through my friendship with Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, President of Stanford University.

In my junior year at Stanford I became Editor of the Stanford Chaparral. The Chaparral was a humorous magazine, or at least we thought it was. At the time, President Wilbur was under attack from a group of alumni who did not like his determination that we should get a better education at Stanford than theirs had been. I wrote editorials defending Wilbur. He was astonished. The editors of the Chaparral had had a long relationship with the President of the University, of an entirely different sort. Wilbur naturally formed a high opinion of my sagacity.

I came to know Dr. Wilbur also through service on Men’s Council, the student disciplinary body. Our sentences were reviewed by President Wilbur. On one occasion, when a boy came before him for the third time, Wilbur asked "Why are you always in trouble?" The answer: "I think I am just trying to find myself." Wilbur: "I would discourage that search. It might prove successful." -

Wilbur and Hoover, as I later discovered, had the same wry sense of humor. Perhaps that is one reason that they had become such close friends when they were working their way through Stanford, Hoover in the class of ‘95, Wilbur ‘96.

SERVICE IN THE HOOVER ADMINISTRATION

In 1929, when I was working in New York, Dr. Wilbur, whom President Hoover had appointed Secretary of the Interior, offered me a job as his Executive Assistant, his personal lawyer, to work on special assignments. I accepted.

Although my job was a minor one in the federal hierarchy, I was to work on several matters in which President Hoover wee intensely interested, and that was very exciting for a 25 year old.

One was the Colorado River controversy, which was headed for the Supreme Court. Hoover, when Secretary of Commerce, had been chairman of the Colorado River Commission, which drafted the Colorado River Compact, dividing the waters of the Colorado River System. This was under attack by Arizona.

Another assignment was the litigation over Hoover’s oil conservation policy. Hoover had served in the cabinet during the Teapot Dome Oil scandals in the Harding administration. He announced when he took office that "there will be complete conservation of oil in this administration", and directed Wilbur to stop issuing prospecting permits on the public domain. This order was also under attack, and was to go to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court decided both cases in favor of the administration, on the same day. As I had worked on the briefs, the Solicitor General, who argued the cases, gave me the quill pens that advocates receive when they argue cases in the Supreme Court.

At about this time, oil was selling at 25 cents a barrel in consequence of over production, and the waste of oil and gas was enormous. The oil industry devised a scheme for world-wide curtailment of production, by agreement among the companies. The industry’s chief executives came to Washington to ask the blessing of the Hoover administration. I was present at a meeting in which Dr. Wilbur read them the opinion of the Attorney General, warning them that if they went this route, they would go to jail for violation of the anti-trust laws. But there was another way: Mr. Hoover, remembering his work on the Colorado River Compact, proposed that they ask the American oil producing states to enter into an interstate compact, to enforce conservation and stabilization of oil production by state orders. States are not subject to the anti-trust laws. Wilbur put me to work on Hoover’s proposal, and published the results of this research. The Interstate Oil Compact came into existence in a modified form, but not until 1935, after we left office. I have the pen with which it was signed.

Just before President Hoover took office, the Boulder Canyon Project Act was passed. Among other things, it authorized construction of a high dam on the Colorado River, but on condition that before Congress would appropriate money, the Secretary of the Interior must have in hand contracts for the sale of power which would repay the government’s investment. Hoover, when Secretary of Commerce, had had a hand in all this. There was bitter controversy between advocates and opponents of public power projects. Dr. Wilbur sent me to LOB Angeles to negotiate the required contracts. Ultimately, everyone accepted Secretary Wilbur’s allocation of power, the contracts were signed, and President Hoover was able to sign the act appropriating money to commence construction.

During those four years I had the opportunity to meet President Hoover on several occasions, and to become acquainted with his laconic and efficient way of doing business. His highest compliment for anyone was "That’s a good job." He had the gift of cutting through a presentation and getting to the core problem and deciding it. One of Wilbur’s sayings was "Don’t postpone decisions. If you are 80 percent sure that you are right, act. Don’t delay until you are 100 percent sure. If you do, you’ll be dead." This embodied Hoover’s own way of doing business.

Both men delegated responsibility and the authority that went with it. Their confidence in you inspired self-confidence, beyond any previously tested level of performance.

Perhaps in consequence of this, Mr. Hoover had an extraordinary number of close friends, men who felt an attachment to him which was almost filial in nature. These were mostly people who had served under him in one or another of the many phases of his career: as a mining engineer, as the man who organized the Commission for Relief in Belgium and literally saved the Belgian population from Starvation, who served as Food Administrator in this country during the first world war, was Director of the American Relief Administration in Europe after the war, served as Secretary of Commerce for eight years, organized massive relief following disastrous floods in the Mississippi River basin, and so on. There was a fraternal feeling among these men, who felt privileged to call Mr. Hoover "Chief". Their loyalty was reciprocated. In the course of time I became one of that group.

On the lighter side, let me tell you of our first social occasion at the White House.

Marica and I had been married only a few weeks when we were invited to the White House for a dinner dance in honor of the two Hoover sons and their wives.

Naturally, we were excited. I wanted especially to be the one to buy Marica’s dress for her first White House party. I remember that dress well. When she brought it home, she said that the men would like it, but she wasn’t sure about the women. The dress fit her perfectly, but it was cut very low in the back. We decided that she should wear something more conservative.

When we reached the White House, we discovered that my girl had been seated at the President’s right. The young lady at the President’s left was wearing an exact copy of the dress that Marica had nearly worn. The combined effect would have been spectacular.

Mr. Hoover was a deeply religious man, but not ostentatiously so. He was true to the "inner light" that guides Quakers. Marica and I saw the Hoovers frequently at the Friends’ meeting house in Washington. The building was one of his anonymous benefactions. The spirit never moved him to speak in meeting when we were present, but I remember his remarking privately, several years later in another context, that "In every direction I look, the country seems confronted by a precipice, but I have faith in God."

In this narrative, I am deliberately avoiding discussion of politics. I am prepared to defend the accomplishments of the Hoover administration, but this is not the time or place for it. I shall simply say that Mr. Hoover was a very great man who stood up with heroic courage against adversity of a magnitude which would have destroyed a lesser man.

MR. HOOVER AS EX-PRESIDENT

We came to know Mr. Hoover very well after he left office.

The present-day public has little realization of Mr. Hoover’s enormous activity during the three decades between his defeat in 1932 and his death in 1964. He wrote books, gave speeches, became the elder statesman of the Republican party, and, in many eyes, he was the embodiment of the conscience of the Republic. He never sacrificed his principles, never quit.

For President Truman, Mr. Hoover made extensive journeys overseas to organize programs to relieve hunger in Poland, Germany and central Europe, devastated by the second world war. He was received as a hero in these nations, honored by their governments and people. His advice was increasingly sought by Congressional leaders. For Presidents Truman and Eisenhower he headed the two Hoover Commissions, recommending the reorganization of the Executive Branch. President Kennedy urged him to head the Peace Corps, but he declined because of his age, 88. He and President Johnson were on cordial terms. He accumulated 85 honorary degrees, and a large number of commemorative medals. Despite Franklin Roosevelt’s enmity, Mr. Hoover and Eleanor Roosevelt were mutually courteous and considerate, particularly during the bereavement that each of them suffered.

Mrs. Hoover died suddenly in 1944, and the Chief’s last 20 years were lonely ones, relieved by hard work, and his great gift for friendship.

MR. HOOVER’S WORK HABITS

Ex-President Hoover wrote his books and speeches long-hand on yellow tablets. He would edit this material, sometimes rewriting it several times before turning it over to a stenographer. He kept four secretaries busy.

In his last few years, he was busy editing his Presidential papers. I represented him in the negotiations with the government for establishment of his Presidential Library. The National Archivist, who would have control of this collection, remonstrated with me when he learned that Mr. Hoover was editing his papers. He would have been even more troubled had he known just what the Chief was doing. He was tearing up a lot of them. Hoover was determined to leave nothing behind that would embarrass anyone. His practice had been to write comments or instructions in the margins of the communications that he received while President, and pass these on for action. Some were quite pointed. Dr. Wilbur returned chuckling from one meeting at the White House, in which he and Mr. Hoover agreed that a prominent politician defied all the laws of biology: he was a cross between a corkscrew and a stinkbug. On another occasion, the letter of an office seeker bore a simple notation: "Avoid him."

But Mr. Hoover was not going to leave behind him anything of this sort to embarrass someone who would be unable to defend himself, nor was he going to permit his discarded longhand drafts of speeches to be preserved. Of course, to an archivist, this is the very essence of his trade, preserving drafts of papers in the handwriting of the official, showing successive changes. No wonder the archivist was upset.

Mr. Hoover had great facility for use of the English language. By the time he finished any writing, his sentences were short, simple, direct, and full of punch. More than one person remarked on the similarity between Hoover’s best prose and that of Winston Churchill. It was hard to believe that at Stanford Herbert Hoover was conditioned in English, and that he was a poor speller until well into his thirties.

He became a member of the Board of Directors of the company operating the Waldorf Astoria, part of the Hilton chain. He told us that, being a Quaker, he felt a little odd serving on the board of a company that was kept in the black only by operating fourteen bars; he had never thought of himself as a saloon keeper.

MR. HOOVER AND PRESIDENT TRUMAN

After Franklin Roosevelt’s hostility toward Herbert Hoover, the Truman administration was like fresh air. The two men were good friends. He frequently mentioned recent telephone conversations with Mr. Truman, but never directly quoted the President. When President Truman sent him on those two trips around the world to set up relief organizations, Hoover was in his mid-seventies. He returned exhausted. I recall his saying: "Every molecule in me wants to sit down."

TRUMAN AND THE NAME OF HOOVER DAM

During the Congressional debates on the Swing Johnson bill, the proposed dam on the Colorado River had been referred to as Boulder Dam. When Secretary Wilbur commenced actual construction in 1931, he named it officially Hoover Dam. Congress reacted favorably, and five successive appropriation acts referred to it by that name. A committee chairman said "Now Congress, as well as the Secretary, has named this dam."

After Mr. Truman left office, I was invited to a breakfast meeting at which he was to speak. I was the only Republican in the room. He delivered a give-‘em-Hell speech denouncing President Eisenhower and all Republicans. When he finished, the toastmaster said that President Truman would make his way to the door to shake hands with us on our way out. As I stood in line, I remembered Marica’s admonition about such occasions, "Just remember that the poor fellow is bored to death, and don’t just say, how do you do. Think of something to say." So I did. As we shook hands, I said, ..Mr. President, I honor you for a reason you may not expect. It’s because of your considerate treatment of Herbert Hoover." He pulled me back into the line and said, "What did you say?" and I repeated this. He said, "Oh, that man, one of the great men of our time, and think of what he’s had to go through." He shook my hand warmly, while the rest of the gathering were asking each other, ‘What did Truman say? Did he say something good about Hoover?" It was a fine moment.

MR. HOOVER AS A CANASTA PLAYER

Mr. Hoover’s chief of staff in New York was his long time secretary, Bernice Miller,. Marica and I had known her as "Bunny" ever since school days. Occasionally, she would phone Marica or me in Washington and say, ..The Chief is lonely; how would you like to come up and have a game of canasta?" We had long, pleasant visits while playing canasta, at which he was very good.

We had discovered that the Chief liked caviar, the real sturgeon stuff. I was traveling a great deal in those days. When coming home through Tehran, I bought sturgeon caviar at the airport. Sold by the pound, it was relatively inexpensive. Much of it ended up in Suite 31A at the Waldorf, consumed during our canasta games.

MR. HOOVER AND HIRAM JOHNSON

Mr. Hoover and Hiram Johnson, former governor of California, had both been proposed for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1920. Franklin D. Roosevelt had unsuccessfully urged the Democrats to nominate Hoover, calling him the best qualified man in the country. As you know, the Republicans nominated Senator Harding. Johnson retained an abiding hostility toward Hoover, which he expressed many times.

Afterward, during private practice in Washington, I became well acquainted with Senator Johnson. When the Mexican Water Treaty was before the Senate for its advice and consent, in 1944, and Johnson was doing his best to defeat it, I asked Mr. Hoover to write a statement of his own objections to the Treaty, which were very strong indeed, in a form that I could give to Johnson. Hoover produced a fine document. After I carried messages back and forth between the two of them several times, Senator Johnson asked whether I was going to see Mr. Hoover soon. I told him I was. He said, .."Please tell him that while we have quarreled in the past, I have come to realize over the years what a great man he is and how much he has done for our country. Tell him he has my respect and good wishes."

I delivered this message to Hoover. His response was "Tell Hiram I feel the same way about him," and of course I did so.

Johnson was feeble, and died soon after. I was proud that I had had something to do with the reconciliation between these two great Californians.

MR. HOOVER AND THE BOHEMIAN CLUB

One of Mr. Hoover’s great joys in life was his membership in the Bohemian Club of San Francisco. The club was founded more than a hundred years ago by a group of writers, actors, artists, and musicians. As the years went on, it attracted a membership of lawyers, business men, college professors, politicians, and, indeed, prominent men from all over the country. The club owns a grove of several thousand acres of beautiful Redwoods along the Russian River. Each year it holds an encampment there during the last two weeks of July. The membership of the Fortnightly Club would constitute a typical camp, and would be very much at home there.

Guests soon learn that a different set of values prevails in the Grove. Men leave their rank behind them at the entrance gate. A talented young violinist is more highly esteemed than a bank president. The motto of the Club is "Weaving spiders come not here". Everyone has his guard down. The great forest is full of laughter and music.

At the Grove, Mr. Hoover was in his element. Every afternoon his camp held open house, and there was a steady stream of visitors from all over the world, coming to pay their respects to the Chief. In his earlier years, he was a teetotaler. Later on, he drank one or two martinis during the course of the afternoon.

I never saw him outdoors without a hat. He usually had a pipe. He had a habit of looking down while listening intently to what a visitor had to say, then raising his head abruptly, looking him in the eye and giving a brief response, which showed that he had taken in everything that had been said.

Mr. Hoover was a great fisherman; he wrote a book about it. He said that fishing cleansed the soul; all men were equal before fish. Dr. Wilbur did not agree with that egalitarian view. He was an elitist, claiming that a fisherman has to be smarter than the fish.

On one occasion, when Dr. Wilbur returned to the Grove from a fishing trip on a stream in British Columbia, he said his guide did not have a scale or a tape measure, but in order to prove the size of a huge fish, he had stretched it out on a roll of toilet paper and had brought the roll with him. He spread it out on a table, and sure enough, it was a real long fish. Mr. Hoover looked at it for a moment, and said, "I’ve seen toilet paper used for many purposes, but never before to commit perjury."

On another occasion, Dr. Vannevar Bush was a guest. He explained how the atom bomb had been developed, with the aid of the first giant computer. The computer had occupied a whole wing of a building, and used immense amounts of power. I suppose that a desktop computer nowadays does the same job. When he had finished, Clarence Budington Kelland, whom I remember as my favorite boyhood author, said, "Dr. Bush, could you build a omputer that would write a novel?" Before Bush could answer, Wilbur said, "From reading Bud’s stories, I thought he already had one." Before Kelland could counter that, Hoover said, "What Bud needs is a machine that will read his stuff." Kelland had been shot up twice before he could get off the runway.

Mr. Hoover was cartooned as a stuffy type, but this was not so, especially at the Grove. One of his stories was about the Gideon Bible that he claimed to have found in a hotel room. In its front were citations for people who are in distress, for those who are depressed, for those who have suffered a great loss, for those who are ill, and so on. At the bottom of the page, according to Mr. Hoover, was a bit of handwritten advice: "If none of this works, call Mabel, 698-6223."

MR. HOOVER AS A REFUGEE

Mr. Hoover and I had a close friend in common. He was Nate Milnor, a wealthy and generous man who delighted in entertaining his friends. He had a fishing lodge on Silver Lake in the Sierras, and was a member of a club which owned most of the shoreline of Walker Lake, a few miles away. Nate invited my sons and me to occupy a cabin at Walker Lake, at a time when he was entertaining Mr. Hoover in his home on the other lake. Two of my boys and I spent a week there. Craig was sixteen and Haines was six. Mike, our other lad, was away somewhere.

When the week was over, we drove over to return our key. As we were about to leave, the Chief pulled two giant folding knives out of a drawer, and gave one to each boy. He explained, "These knives are used by German sailors to cut canvas." I told him he was going to be in trouble with Marica for giving her kids those frog-stabbers, but he said he thought he could handle that. As we drove away, my little boy said, "I wish that Uncle Hoover was President forever." I had never referred to Mr. Hoover as Uncle, but I learned later that he had been addressed in that way in hundreds of letters from German school children.

Next time I saw Mr. Hoover, I told him what Haines had said. He answered, "Being President forever is not a cheering thought, and I need cheer. But tell your little boy that I appreciate it. I have a special regard for the esteem of young people."

In between these two encounters with Mr. Hoover, a dramatic event took place. Nate’s house, in which the two of them were staying at Silver Lake, caught fire during the night and rapidly burnt down. The two men and the household staff barely escaped through the French windows.

Hoover and Milnor made their way to a boat. The outboard motor would not start. Milnor manned the oars and rowed them across the lake. Mr. Hoover bailed water, while sparks from the burning house streamed down on them, burning holes in his hat. When they reached the other shore, spectators helped them into a truck, and drove to a nearby house. Enroute, Hoover said, "I have helped a good many refugees in my time, but this is the first time I have been one."

MR. HOOVER AND STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Herbert Hoover’s devotion to Stanford University was part of his very soul. He called it the best place in the world, and longed to return there during his long absences overseas. He became a trustee in 1912, and served for nearly fifty years. He was largely responsible for the choice of all of Stanford’s presidents after the first, for the decision to keep the Medical School, and for the establishment of the Business School and the Food Institute. Hoover devoted untold hours of work and much of his own fortune to the University’s business, and raised scores of millions of dollars for Stanford. After Mrs. Hoover’s death, he gave his campus home to the University to be the President’s residence.

Most important of all, he created the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford, in which he lodged the enormous collection of wartime historical material that he had caused to be assembled. He raised the money to build the Hoover Tower and to acquire huge additional collections of documents.

He had planned that the Hoover Institution would be his Presidential library, where his official papers would be lodged. An Act of Congress authorizes the establishment of such Presidential libraries, to be built with private funds but maintained with federal appropriations. However, he became so outraged over the attacks by the left wing of the Stanford faculty on the Hoover Institution, and with their efforts to obtain control of what they called its "governance", that he reversed that decision, and elected to establish his Presidential Library at his birthplace in West Branch, Iowa.

Mr. Hoover asked me to negotiate the necessary contracts with the government, and to negotiate with the Stanford Board of Trustees for the recovery of his papers. I argued with him, as best I could, that his Presidential papers belonged in his great monument, the Hoover Institution, but he set his jaw like granite. Those documents contained sensitive information, he said, and he was not going to let any Marxist professor get control of them. Fortunately, most of the Stanford Board of Trustees were his old friends, and their attitude was that if the Chief wanted his papers, he should have them. So it was accomplished.

Two years before Mr. Hoover died, Marica and I spent a happy week with him in Key Largo, Florida as his guests on a houseboat, the Captiva. The routine each morning was for everyone to come up on deck in bath robes when the gong sounded, to have coffee and orange juice with the Chief, who would be finishing his reading of the morning newspapers. After a brief visit, we would go downstairs to dress and come up again for breakfast with him. After breakfast the guests would go out to fish.

On one occasion, while Mr. Hoover was listening to our report on the day’s fishing, an excited neighbor insisted that the Chief come to see his catch of big fish. We went along. The owner waited for the President’s praise, but he only said "You obviously stumbled into an old fishes’ home," and went back to his houseboat.

MR. HOOVER’S FUNERAL

In 1961 Mr. Hoover had telephoned me, asking if I would serve as co-executor of his estate, with his sons, Herbert Junior and Allan. I responded that of course, I would be honored.

A few days before Mr. Hoover’s death in 1964, Herbert Junior phoned me that the end was near and I would be receiving instructions about the funeral from the Army’s ceremonial unit, which was in charge of state funerals for former presidents, five star generals and five star admirals, as well as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington.

In due time the sad call came from the Army, and Marica and I went to New York.

Herbert Junior told us that there would be three funerals, one in New York, one in Washington, and one at the burial site in West Branch. An Army officer had come to see President Hoover to discuss funeral arrangements, a rather macabre subject to discuss with a sick man. The Army had proposed that the whole Corps of Cadets would come down from West Point, to escort the casket from a service in St. Bartholomew’s Church, which is across the street from the Waldorf, to Penn Station, where a funeral train would be waiting to take the body to Washington. Mr. Hoover said that he didn’t want traffic to be tied up by a parade of the cadets through New York City. He would compromise. They could send a small detachment from West Point to be present at the church, but that was all.

The next morning Marica and I attended the funeral. At the four corners of the casket stood an honor guard of members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. The Hoovers had sent invitations to the Chief’s friends, all over the country, and seats had been designated for each of us. We sat immediately behind Robert Kennedy and members of the Kennedy family. Senator Goldwater, a close friend of Hoover, was there; this was at the height of the Johnson-Goldwater election.

Seating arrangements had been thrown into disorder by the announcement of President Johnson that he planned to attend. On the insistence of the Secret Service, he had a whole row for himself and his staff, and the row immediately in front of him was left vacant, as was the row immediately behind him. The guests who had expected to sit in those assigned seats had to stand at the rear of the church. The service itself was brief, as Mr. Hoover would have had it. President Johnson and his people left first. The rest of us filed past the casket and out to the front steps of the church where the cadets were in formation, standing at attention. They presented arms as the funeral party came out to board the limousines. It was an emotional moment.

We were driven to Penn Station, where we boarded the funeral train. Our seats happened to be across the aisle from Mr. and Mrs. Nixon.

An Army officer explained that when the train arrived in Washington, we were to proceed to the station’s private entrance and take positions which would be marked with our names in chalk. We did so.

We had been cautioned not to talk, because the news media had telescopic microphones aimed at this area. Directly opposite us stood President Johnson. He bowed politely to each of us, and we bowed back, as if we were old friends.

When the casket made its appearance, it was lifted onto a horse-drawn caisson, and escorted to the Capitol. We followed slowly in automobiles. Cannon boomed a salute during the short ride from Union Station to the Senate wing of the Capitol. There we lined up in formation again, while the casket was carried up the steps to the main floor by men from the armed cervices. It was a dreadful assignment, to carry that heavy casket up that .long flight of steps. One soldier's hat blew off, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The casket was placed in the Rotunda of the Capitol, and an honor guard from the services took its positions. We were instructed to come back the following morning.

After the service in the Rotunda, we were escorted to the airport, where former Presidential planes were waiting to take us to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

From the airport to West Branch, thousands of people lined the highway. The overpasses were manned by soldiers, to guard against terrorist attacks.

In West Branch we were escorted to the burial site. Mr. Hoover’s body had already been interred, and the service was held at his grave. It was side by side with that of Lou Henry Hoover. He had had her remains moved from Palo Alto.

Senator Goldwater had flown out in his campaign plane. President Johnson was absent this time.

Taps were sounded, and we said goodbye to a great man and a great woman who had been our good friends.

The guests were slow to leave, reluctant to part company, knowing that all of us in that assembly shared a special relationship to Herbert Hoover.

It was not a melancholy occasion. Someone remarked on how fine it was that Mr. Hoover had lived long enough to see himself restored to the affection and esteem of the American people.

Others said what a pity it was that Mrs. Hoover had not lived to see that transformation.

Finally, someone quoted the Chief’s own explanation of how his restoration had come about: "I outlived the bastards."

And on that cheerful note we parted.

SOME OF THE BOOKS BY HERBERT HOOVER

The Challenge to Liberty, Charles Scribner Sons, 1934.

Addresses Upon the American Road: 1933-1938, Charles Scribner Sons, 1938.

Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, MacMillan & Co., New York, 1941.

The Problems of Lasting Peace, Doubleday Doran & Co., Garden City, New York, 1942..

Appeases Upon the American Road: 1955-1960, Caxton Printers Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho, 1961.

On Growing Up, (correspondence with children) privately printed,

Fishing for Fun and to Wash Your Soul, edited by William Nichols, Random House, 1963.

An American Epic, Henry Regnery Co., Chicago, 1964.

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Martin, Stanford and Hoover and Academic Freedom: A Collection of Published Reports on the Relationship between Stanford University and the Hoover Institution, Hoover Institution Press, 1985.

McLean, Hulda Hoover, Uncle Bert: A Biographical Portrait of Herbert Hoover, privately printed 1974.

McLean, Hulda Hoover, Hulda’s World, A Chronicle of Hulda Menthorn Hoover 1848-1884, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Assn., 1989.

Morley, Felix, For the Record, Regnery/Gateway, Inc., 1979.

Nash, George H., Herbert Hoover and Stanford University, Hoover Institution Press, 1988.

Nash, George H., The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer 18741914, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association, Inc., 1983.

Nash, George H., The Life of Herbert Hoover: Humanitarian 19141917, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association, Inc., 1988.

Robinson, Edgar Eugene and Paul Carroll Edwards, Editors,

Memoirs of Ray Lyman Wilbur, 1875-1949, Stanford University Press, 1960.

Smith, Richard Norton, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, White Plains Publishing Co., Inc., 1984.

Smith, Richard Norton and Timothy Walsh, Editors, Farewell to the Chief: Former Presidents in American Public Life, High Plains Publishing Co., Inc., 1990.

Wilbur, Ray Lyman and Arthur Mastick Hyde, The Hoover Policies, Charles Scribner Sons, 1937.