One of my hobbies is visiting presidential homes, and last week I crossed three sites off my list.
Herbert Hoover’s tiny birthplace is in West Branch, Iowa. He’s recalled typically as a starched collar, cold fish, but his story is quite moving and very human. His hard working, devoutly Quaker parents both died at young ages, leaving Hoover and his siblings orphaned. Hoover as a boy was shipped off by himself to an uncle on the West Coast, later attending Stanford and making a fortune as a mining engineer. He and his equally brave wife survived the Boxer Rebellion in China.
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