Three Hoovers and Me
That long-running sitcom All in the Family always began with Archie and Edith singing a sort of pseudo-nostalgic ditty, “Those Were The Days”, which included the line, “Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.”
President Herbert Hoover was indeed emblematic of his time. In his four-year term (1929-33), he had the misfortune to see his country go from the climax of its “Roaring Twenties” prosperity to the depths of its worst Depression.
But, strange as it seems, he was only one of three contemporaneous Hoovers, not related to one another, who, in different ways, all had profound effects upon the life of this Nation – and even on mine.
Herbert Hoover had been a successful mining engineer and a leader in relief efforts during and after World War I. In 1919, he founded at Stanford University (where he’d been one of the first graduates) what became the world-respected Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. He lived to be 90, but our paths crossed only twice, and very peripherally.
The first occasion was in the early 1970s, when Dorothy and I spent several months in Western Australia, which we learned is still proud of its connection with that young engineer, who did much to help develop the gold mines we visited around Kalgoorlie.
The second occasion involved Alexander Kerensky, the man who led Russia for a few brief months in 1917, after the Tsar was overthrown, and before Lenin’s Bolsheviks took over. Kerensky spent the rest of his long life in exile. This included many years of close connection with the Hoover Institution at Stanford. He didn’t make many public appearances, but, when I was living in that area in the 1960s, I once had a chance to hear him speak. I don’t remember anything he said (he still had a thick accent), but I’d been studying Russian History, and what I recall clearly was the thrill of being able to see in person a living piece of it, which was already almost legendary.
And of course, I owed this experience indirectly to Herbert Hoover – a man whom, it is sad to reflect, is still chiefly remembered by many, not for his great Hoover Dam (which they prefer to call Boulder Dam), but from the name which was given to the numerous shanty-towns which sprang up during the Great Depression: HOOVERVILLES.
Then there was J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), who began working for what became the FBI in 1924, was soon its director, and remained in that position until his death, at the age of 77. Despite some objections, the FBI building in Washington, D.C., still bears his name. This Hoover established a reputation as a leader in the fight against organized crime. But the longer he headed the FBI, with its broad abilities to investigate practically anyone, the more powerful he became – to the point where it was said that even presidents feared him.
I myself was a subject of a rather extensive investigation by his agency – and, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act of 1974, I have the documents to prove it. My greatest offenses, in an era still tainted with McCarthyism, had been my attendance at a Communist-inspired World Youth Festival in Vienna in 1959, and my failure, since coming to the U.S. in 1956, to register under the Selective Service Act – i.e., for the Draft.
The documents I requested, and eventually received – in which, unfortunately, all names of informants are blacked out – show how meticulously my background was investigated. But the upshot, according to a report dated June 15, 1961, was the decision not to prosecute, because there was no “evidence of criminal intent.” So, I can thank J. Edgar Hoover for so conclusively documenting my innocence.
The third Hoover in this trilogy was actually a father-and-son manufacturing business originating in Canton Ohio. Their principal product, since its introduction in 1908, became so successful that eventually, to many people around the world, the name “Hoover” became virtually synonymous with “Vacuum cleaner.”
But I’m sorry to say that my own relationship to this device, and all others like it, has been decidedly negative – because I’m a great hater of NOISE, which seems inevitably to accompany all such equipment. As yet, makers and users of “cleaning” machines (including leaf-blowers) still don’t realize that noise itself is a form of pollution.
Nevertheless, thanks to all these Hoovers, America, and the world, will never be the same again.
