I really wanted to stop at the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site on our way back from Iowa. I nagged my wife for a week. We were driving literally right by the site. My brother told me it was a guaranteed clean bathroom on I-80. Maybe this was what finally made her crack. Or maybe it was the knowledge that I would sulk about not stopping for hours, and bring it up from time to time for years. Or maybe she didn’t want to drive in the huge Iowa thunderstorm that was building over our heads. Whatever the reason, she relented and we stopped.

What was so appealing about Hoover? Basically nothing. The draw was that it was a National Park Site and one of the 400 plus sites I decided to visit. Beyond racking up another park, there was no draw. I didn’t know much about Hoover. He came after Coolidge and before FDR. He didn’t do much about the depression. He is mentioned in the song that Archie and Edith sing at the beginning of “All in the Family.” He wasn’t a great leader like Lincoln or Washington, and not charismatic like Kennedy. Not very interesting, I thought. Turns out Hoover is interesting.

First, the house he was born in is tiny. I might have expected that, if I had thought about it, but I think that my definition of tiny is a lot bigger than the definition for anyone living in the 1800’s. I’ve been reading a lot about minimalism lately, but the scale of this house for a family of five is just not possible by today’s standards. The tiny house movement has nothing on this place. The house consists of two rooms – small ones – and a back porch (or summer kitchen, as they called it). They moved the woodstove from the living room out to the summer kitchen to make space during the warm months. Although the Hoovers moved to a larger place when Bertie was three, they spent several years here. The National Park Service has a program for schools that explores the difference between wants and needs. The Hoovers probably didn’t have many possessions that could be categorized as ‘wants’ when they lived here. The minimalist dude who boasts of only owning 155 items would probably be hard pressed to fit all his stuff in this place.

Hoover’s father was a blacksmith. When did factory made goods replace the village blacksmith? I thought the phasing out of the blacksmith would be taking place by now, and perhaps it was as Jesse Hoover later opened a farm implement store. Hoover was born in 1874, and although I associate him with the Depression, the United States was still rough then. Jesse James was still robbing trains. Custer was still alive, and U.S. Grant was President. Hoover was the first President born West of the Mississippi. Iowa wasn’t quite frontier, but it was out there just the same.

Hoover’s father died when he was just six and his mother died when he was ten. Hoover was sent to live in various relatives’ homes, eventually being separated from his siblings and sent to live with his uncle’s family in Oregon. Life wouldn’t have been easy.

Besides the cottage, the site has a replica blacksmith house and Friends Meetinghouse, as well as some other historic buildings. Hoover’s grave and Presidential Library are up the path a ways. When our friend was describing the site, all she said was, “There is one very strange statue there.” She was right. The statue is of the Egyptian goddess Isis, who sits veiled and overlooks the birthplace. It is a little creepy, and what is Isis doing in Iowa anyway?

The statue of Isis, the Goddess of Life, was a gift to Hoover from Belgium in gratitude for his relief efforts after World War I. Hoover was a humanitarian? My impressions of Hoover were that he did nothing to ease people’s suffering during the depression, so that he helped Belgium after the war didn’t fit. The exhibits in the visitor center tell of Hoover’s core values rooted in the Quaker faith, and his belief that private charity was better than a government handout any day. The scope of the crisis during the Depression challenged these beliefs, because the problem was so great that private charity wasn’t enough.

I was so intrigued by the concept of Hoover as a humanitarian, that I read a biography about him after we got home. I grabbed the shortest book at the library, Herbert Hoover: The American President Series, by William E. Leuchtenburg (Author), Arthur M. Schlesinger (Editor), which turned out to be highly unsympathetic. Leuchtenburg (a FDR scholar, so maybe he is biased) points out that while Hoover espoused private charity and pulling one’s self up by the bootstraps, most of his humanitarian work relied on big government investments. However he got the funds, the people of Belgium were thankful. The American people weren’t so lucky and Hoover got booted out of office after one term.

Visiting his birthplace helped me understand Hoover. Looking at the place where he was born, it is clear that he came from very humble origins. That he was an orphan only magnifies the odds he beat on his way to becoming President. A fierce believer in the American Dream, Hoover summed it up this way:

This cottage where I was born is physical proof of the unbounded opportunity of American life.
– Herbert Hoover

Some tips for visiting:
Go find a farm stand and buy some corn. You probably don’t even need to cook it. It is that good.

Don’t wear a University of Michigan t-shirt. No, this is not due to the proximity to Iowa City and the University of Iowa. The ranger on duty there is a die-hard Notre Dame fan, and no one wants to waste their precious “clean-bathroom-break” minutes on enthusiastic recaps of Notre Dame football victories over Michigan. Michigan victories over Notre Dame? Now, that’s another story.

This part of Iowa is gorgeous with rolling hills covered in corn, big sky and large thunderclouds looming overhead. The prairie was in full bloom, and I could imagine it spreading out for miles. I felt like I was in a Grant Wood painting. Actually, I kind of was.