May 1, 2010
West Branch, Iowa
Site of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum and the above small two room house where he was born.
The lilacs in the back evoked a memory of New York also: The Rochester Lilac Festival in Highland Park there every year.
The museum was very extensive and informative. One thing that spoke to me the most was his efforts to feed the hungry during WWI with a program to send flour to Belgium principally and the feed sacks that were decorated with embroidery and drawings and sent back to the people in America who had originally provided the flour. (Do you think it was the fabric and embellishment aspects of them that attracted me to that part of the exhibit particularly??)
Sorry these images are rather hard to read but they do explain the program.
These are examples of the beautiful handwork that was done on the flour sacks:
Herbert Hoover was known as a great humanitarian through these works and was elected as President in a landslide probably because of these contributions. Unfortunately, the Great Depression was during his term which resulted in a negative view of his intentions and abilities so that he lost the next election to FDR. He later, though, worked with Harry Truman to again serve the country in a positive manner through working to end famine after WWII as well as reorganizing the Executive branch of the government.
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