• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Age at death: 90

Cause of death: Bleeding from upper gastrointestinal tract;

strained vascular system

Final words: Unknown

Admission to Herbert Hoover Library and

Museum: $6.00

Though many associate his name with the bread lines of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover was also responsible for feeding millions in Europe as part of the relief efforts during World War I. Hoover gained worldwide attention for his management of American aid programs that led to his appointment as Warren Harding’s secretary of commerce in 1921. He was groomed unsuccessfully for the Republican vice presidential nomination in 1924, only to capture the top spot four years later.

In 1894 while studying geology at Stanford University, Hoover fell in love with Lou Henry, the only female student in the geology department. The two married on California’s Pacific Coast on February 10, 1899. He earned his millions as a mining engineer before entering politics. The couple entertained lavishly during their years in the White House but did it all with their own funds. Hoover never accepted a salary for his service as president.

The stock market crashed in the first year of Hoover’s administration. Unemployment continued to rise. Americans looking for a change elected Franklin Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932. Herbert Hoover attended Roosevelt’s inauguration and retreated to his home in California. He later settled in New York City where he became a vocal critic of his successor’s administration.

When war raged in Europe, Hoover returned to his earlier role as a relief organizer. During the Truman administration, he served as chairman of a commission that studied the effectiveness of the executive branch.

Entering his tenth decade, Hoover’s rapidly declining health left him nearly deaf and blind. He spent his last days in a suite on the thirty-first floor of the Waldorf Towers in New York City. On October 19, 1964, Hoover slipped into a coma. He died the next morning of massive internal bleeding at age ninety.

The former president’s closed coffin lay on public view for two days at Saint Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York City. There was also a brief private memorial service. Both of the candidates in that year’s presidential race, Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, paid their respects. Former presidents Truman and Eisenhower were ill and unable to attend.

Herbert Hoover’s boyhood home. His grave lies across the lawn to the left.

Hoover’s body was taken to Washington by train where it lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda. President Johnson placed a wreath of red and white carnations before the funeral bier. The formal state occasion included a military guard and twenty-one-gun salute. Hoover’s casket rested on the same catafalque used for John F. Kennedy’s funeral the year before. The Senate chaplain, Frederick Brown Harris, remembered that “we bear the worn bodily tenement of the oldest chief executive to this highest pedestal of honor where so recently lay the martyred form of the youngest.” He had it slightly wrong: Herbert Hoover was then our second-oldest former president. John Adams was 176 days older when he died. (And Gerald Ford passed them both, living to be 93 years, 165 days old.)

This museum display shows Hoover fly fishing, a favorite pastime

Hoover was buried in West Branch, Iowa according to his Quaker tradition. He had chosen the site himself, on a hill overlooking the two-room cottage where he was born. The simple graveside service was attended by seventy-five thousand mourners, some of whom had flown from Washington. Fifteen limousines carried the official delegation some thirty-three miles from the airport in Cedar Rapids. As the sun shone, Hoover’s coffin was lowered into the ground to the sounds of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” At the family’s request, there was no gun salute.

Lou Hoover, who preceded her husband in death by twenty years, had been buried at their alma mater. Her body was re-interred with her husband’s one month after his death.

The Hoover Library and Museum is located