Eugene Gochenour Memoirs Part III

I have been sharing Dad's memoirs over the past weeks. Today's excerpt continues his childhood memories from the Depression.

Gochenour family in late 1930s; Eugene is front right; his mother back right,
sister Mary back left and to her right is Al Gochenour.

"Military Road was built centuries ago for armies to travel from Buffalo to Niagara Falls. The road was elevated at the location where the house we lived in was built. On each side of the house was a gully. The strip of land where the farm house was placed was filled [with dirt] to the level of the road.

"The foundation of the house was about three feet thick, built of stone that probably came from a nearby quarry. When we first moved there the house had a dirt floor in the basement but later Dad and some friends put in a concrete floor. Huge logs with one flat side supported the floor of the house. Wooden pegs held the logs together. A cistern was located under the rear porch but of course it had not been used for dozens of years.

1865 Military Rd in the 1940s after Al Gochenour bought the
property and fixed it up. 

"The house sat quite far back from the road and one day as we sat on our front porch, to our amazement, we saw elephants walking past on the road. The elephants led a parade of horse-drawn wagons filled with lions, tigers, and other animals. Now as children we had never seen elephants, and we were amazed to see the size of them. The circus had come to town and this was their way of advertising it.

Circus passes down Military Rd at Ensminger Rd; an Ensminger family house in the background.

"The first photo shows the elephants as they passed by. Across the street is the Ensminger farm house. It sat at the corner of Military and Ensminger Roads.

"When we first moved there Ensminger Road was just a dirt road leading into the fields. The barn that sat behind the house had already been torn down, and soon [about 1960-61] the house would be intentionally be burned down to make room for a bowling alley. A childhood friend, Ridgely Ware, had lived there with his mother and aunt. As a child I remember drinking water from a well with a hand pump that was on their side lawn. I drank it with cupped hands and it was cold and delicious. Before the barn was torn down, two old horse carriages were parked in it. Ridgely was about two years older than I, but occasionally we did things together. Sometimes we would go into the barn and sit in the carriages and make believe we were driving them. There was also a well with a hand pump in the barn, but I was told that the water in that well was bad, so I never tried it.

"During the ‘40s the Ensminger barn was torn down then during the ‘50s the house was sold.

"One day early in the morning I looked out of my upstairs window and saw the Ensminger house burning. Rather than tear the house down the owners decided to have it burned down. So they got the firemen to set it afire and control it. It is an awesome sight to see a burning house with the flames reaching high into the sky. The heat was so intense it could be felt blocks away. A bowling alley was built on the lot next to where the house had been, and the house lot became a parking lot. Such is progress.

Circus parade with donkeys passing on Military Rd near Ensminger past
where a bowling alley would be built in the 1960s

"The next photo shows a donkey, pony, and horse. As you can see the previous animals had made their contribution to the highway and the fly population. Across the road is the field where there would soon be a bowling alley.

Circus parade traveling on Military Rd north towards City of Tonawanda;
the field would later house the Erie County Highway Department garage; foreground
later had a Texaco gas station and Schwinn Bicycle shop.

"The third photo shows the parade as it travels north toward the city of Tonawanda. The field across the street is where the Erie County Highway Department garage would be built. The lot on this side of the street is where a Texaco gas station and a bicycle shop would be built. The lot had once been a town dump.

"The old farmhouse had a basement only under part of the house. When we first moved there, it had only a dirt floor. The kitchen area had a crawl space under it, and when the water pipes would freeze during the winter father would have to crawl under there with a blow torch to thaw them out. Rats and mice had chewed passages through the walls and ceilings for a hundred years, and during the fall and winter you could hear them scurrying around. Our kitchen cupboards had many holes covered with tin can patches that had been nailed on probably from the time when tin cans were first made. But the rats would just chew another hole. One night a rat got into the house, and we saw it. Well, everyone went chasing it through the house trying to whack it with a broom or stick. We finally cornered and killed it. That was our excitement for that evening! A few years later when I was older, it was my job to go into the crawl space and retrieve any dead smelly rats that had ate the rat poison bait that we had set out for them. We eventually hired an exterminator who treated the house monthly.

Emma Becker Gochernour with Mary and Alice on left,
Gene on right, and Emma's brother Lee in center. Open land on right
would eventually be where Rosemont Ave. was built.

"As kids, we could always find something to eat. There was a house on Delaware Avenue that had a garage that sat quite far back from the street. There a person sat all day making the sugar cones used for ice cream cones. Broken cones were always left on the window sill for us to eat. They were like candy to us.

"Many people had fruit trees, strawberry patches, and grapevines in their yards, and we always knew when they were in season. We usually would raid them at night, but occasionally we would pull a daytime raid. The neighbors we took from probably did not even care, but to us it was exciting. We also had a Bartlet pear tree in our yard that had great pears.

"In the springtime, [my Uncle] Lee and I would pick and eat all the meadow mushrooms we would find in the fields. Eaten fresh and raw, they are very good. The second week of June is when the wild strawberries were usually ripe, and mother would spend hours in the fields picking them. She always took the dog along because she was afraid of snakes, and the dog would chase them away. Mother made jam from the strawberries. Mother would also pick dandelion leaves during the spring, and make a salad with it. Even I liked that salad.

"Near the airport and the dump was a golf driving range. During the late ‘30s some of us kids were hired to pick up golf balls from the field. We were paid ten cents for our work and we would give back five cents for our favorite candy bar, a Milky Way. We liked to go to the dump also. There we found what we thought was some neat stuff, and took it home. When our parents saw what we had hauled home, they made us put it out to the street so the rubbish man could haul it back to the dump. I often wonder if the rubbish man thought that some of those things seemed familiar!

"The Sheridan Park Golf Course had some nice hills where we could sled during the winter. One day I slid down the hill and ended in the creek. It was a long freezing walk home! There was also a pond where we ice skated on.

"When summer came, I would go to the fields next to the golf course to find golf balls that the golfers had lost. Then I would sell them back to them. One day I found and sold twelve dollars worth of balls, with which I bought a portable radio. Since they were new on the market at that time few people had them. The radio was large by today’s standards. I liked the smell of the plastic material that covered it. The plastic looked like leather, and the radio had large batteries. It was great to take anywhere and have music.

"During the '30s and '40s I had many ways to make money. I picked up pop and beer bottles from along the roadways and took them back to the store where I got two cents each for them. I had a paper route, cut lawns, worked in the field with John Kuhn, and got a weekly allowance of twenty-five cents from mother for my home chores. During the fall and winter, I went to the housing project where I received a dollar for each ton of coal I could carry from the street to the customer’s coal bin. My friend Dale Thiel and I would usually do the coal jobs together. We would use the customer’s trash cans to haul the coal. It took about 20 to 23 cans for the ton of coal. Also during the winter, I would shovel snow from people’s driveways and sidewalks, for two or three dollars.

"The nearby horse riding stables rented out horses to the public. They made many trails through the woods and fields that we would ride our bikes on. We literally had trail bikes in those days! Also in the woods, we would build tree houses from scrap wood we found."

Memoirs of Eugene Gochenour Part II

Today I am continuing to share from Dad's memoirs about his family and life growing up in Tonawanda, NY. Today is about his Depression era childhood.

Emma, Al, Mary and Gene Gochenour

The Depression was at its worst during 1935, the year we moved to Military Road when I was five years old.

One day some of us kids were over by the railroad tracks when we saw this huge monster coming down the tracks toward us. With black smoke billowing from its smokestack, the whistle screaming as it approached the road, and the ground shaking as it went by, my first sight of a steam engine was terrifying. But it did not take long before we were used to the ironwheeled monster.

Sometimes we would put pennies on the track to have the train flatten them out as it passed by. We would count the box cars, tankers, and gondola cars, and read the names on them. A really long train had about one hundred and fifty cars and one caboose.

A huge, deserted factory was near the tracks about four blocks away, the old Jewett Stove Company, and I guess it had closed a few years before we moved there. The building’s windows were broke out and the doors were open so us kids would run through the building playing games, and looking at the piles of paper and other things that had been left there. Years later the building would become the Lucidol Corporation, where a huge explosion would occur, causing many deaths.

There were other signs of the Depression. Basements were dug on Oakridge Street by Elmwood Avenue, and when the work stopped they filled with water and became a hazard. Near the railroad tracks by the airport was a field where a business had closed. There were some old trucks, and a deep pit where a mechanic could work on the underside of them. At all these places it looked as though the people had just dropped everything and left.

But one place that had stayed in business was the Eastern States Grain Company. Huge grain elevators, or silos, sat by the tracks just somewhat south of Sheridan Drive. Spilled grain lay on the tracks there, and many birds, mostly pigeons, lived off of it. Years later when I raised rabbits, I would take a bag and gather grain to feed to them.

There were four movie theaters within probably five miles from where we lived. Three were at the Tonawandas: the Star, the Rivera, and the Avondale. One more theater was in the city of Kenmore. To get to them we had to walk to Delaware Avenue and catch a bus. Years later there were also three drivein-theaters. One was on Ensminger Road, one on Delaware, and another on Niagara Falls Boulevard.

The entrance to the Erie Canal was at Buffalo, New York, about ten miles south of where we lived. It followed parallel and next to the Niagara River to Tonawanda. Many huge factories were built, supplied by the raw material that came through the Great Lakes. On many days when the wind blew from the west, you could smell the odors from the Semet Solvay plant, and when near the Niagara River the odor and see the soda ash that emanated from the International Paper Mill.

When we first moved to Military Road us kids would walk to Two Mile Creek by the golf course. The water was crystal clear, and many fish and frogs lived there. But during the Second World War, the creek became contaminated from all the factories, and filled with black silt, killing all the wildlife. In those days no one thought of pollution, but one place it was very visible was at the Niagara River by Wheeler Street in the city of Tonawanda. There was a drain pipe from the Spaulding Fiber Company that emptied into the river there, and every day the water that came out of it was a different color. It was a strange sight to see a bright red or green stream enter the river, then mix and slowly disappear.

This picture of my father and I was taken at the porch at our side of the house. Dad is in his work clothes, sitting on the rickety porch. We finally had a fuel oil furnace, and the oil tank that fed it stands behind him. My bike is leaning against the porch. It did not have a chain guard and the pants on my right leg were all chewed up from getting stuck in the chain. One day I decided to paint my bike silver. When Dad came home and saw what I had done, he gave me a spanking. He didn’t like my artistic flair I guess!

There were still some horse stables and farms then, and their manure piles created many flies and odors. The screen door of our house was often coated with flies during the summer. We used fly swatters and fly strips to control the houseflies and horseflies.

Gochenour Homestead in Woodstock, VA

The second trip we took to my father’s birthplace in Virginia was around 1940 or 1941. At that time my father, mother, Mary, Alice, Grandfather Becker, and I went in Dad’s 1937 Buick. The trip seemed to take forever. I remember Dad showing us the seven horseshoe turns of the Shenandoah River on the way.

When we got there we stayed at the farm. On the farm they had some turkeys. I had never seen turkeys, and when three went into the barnyard, they chased me. Everybody thought it was funny except me. I was terrified! Mother and father went into town, and when they came back, they bought us kids some Kazoos, an instrument you blow into to make a tune. It probably wasn’t long before they were sorry!

Since it was Christmas time Dad and I went out into the woods and found a tree. We cut it down and hauled it back to the house. It seemed strange to celebrate Christmas when there was no snow and it was not cold. Before we made the trip, mother had bought me a pair of high top boots. They were the latest thing, and they came with a jack knife, and a knife holder sewn onto one boot. I was so proud of them, and when we went to church that Sunday, I wore them. I was quite the envy of the boys there. Soon it was time to leave. The trip was uneventful until we got near home. Grandfather got car sick, and we had to stop the car so he could heave. Nice thing to remember, huh?

One summer night father heard men talking out at the road in front of the house. It was during the year of 1937, and I was seven years old. Military Road had a speed limit of 50 miles per hour, a pretty fast speed for those times. Dad got dressed, and went out to see what was going on and found some men attempting to change a flat tire. He offered to help and was kneeling down taking the tire off of the car when a drunk driver hit the vehicle. Dad was thrown down the road about 50 feet. A neighbor from down the street who was watching was killed, and the person who owned the car with the flat tire was killed. The driver of the car that hit them fled the scene, but was caught later. Dad went to the hospital and survived, but had back trouble for the rest of his life. The day after the accident, I walked out on the street, and saw car parts, and what I thought were human brains. The man that was driving the car that fled the scene, was never prosecuted, and no one ever received any compensation. 

Years later, after my father had died, our station had become a New York Inspection Station, and occasionally a state trooper would come in and inspect our station. When one trooper came in, he saw the name on the form, and asked if my father had been in an accident years ago at this location? I told him yes, and I was his son. He said the driver of the vehicle that was hit was his father, and that the man who drove the car that killed him was rich, and had found a way to avoid liability. He said he had always kept track of that man, and said the man was struck and killed by a car two years previous.

Near the airport and the dump was a golf driving range. During the late ‘30s, some of us kids were hired to pick up golf balls from the field. We were paid ten cents for our work and we would give back five cents for our favorite candy bar, a Milky Way. 

We liked to go to the dump also. There we found what we thought was some neat stuff and took it home. When our parents saw what we had hauled home they made us put it out to the street so the rubbish man could haul it back to the dump. I often wonder if the rubbish man thought that some of those things seemed familiar! 

The Sheridan Park Golf Course had some nice hills where we could sled during the winter. One day I slid down the hill and ended in the creek. It was a long freezing walk home! There was also a pond where we ice skated on. When summer came, I would go to the fields next to the golf course to find golf balls that the golfers had lost. Then I would sell them back to them. One day I found and sold twelve dollars worth of balls, with which I bought a portable radio. Since they were new on the market at that time, few people had them. The radio was large by today’s standards. I liked the smell of the plastic material that covered it. The plastic looked like leather, and the radio had large batteries. It was great to take anywhere and have music. 

During the ‘30s and ‘40s, I had many ways to make money. I picked up pop and beer bottles from along the roadways, and took them back to the store where I got two cents each for them. I had a paper route, cut lawns, worked in the field with John, and got a weekly allowance of twenty five cents from mother for my home chores. During the fall and winter, I went to the housing project where I received a dollar for each ton of coal I could carry from the street to the customer’s coal bin. My friend Dale Thiel and I would usually do the coal jobs together. We would use the customer’s trash cans to haul the coal. It took about 20 to 23 cans for the ton of coal. Also during the winter I would shovel snow from people’s driveways and sidewalks, for two or three dollars. The nearby horse riding stables rented out horses to the public. They made many trails through the woods and fields that we would ride our bikes on. We literally had trail bikes in those days! Also in the woods we would build tree houses from scrap wood we found.

Memoirs of Eugene Gochenour Part I

My father Eugene Gochenour wrote a memoir about his life growing up in Tonawanda, NY. I will be sharing excerpts. Over the next months I will share what Dad wrote, starting with his memories of his father.

Alger Jordan Gochenour was born on March 25, 1904 on a farm at the community of Fairview, Virginia, located in the Shenandoah Valley.

The first Gochenour came to America in 1735, years before we were a nation. Jacob Gochenour and his family were Mennonites who came to America to avoid religious persecution. He acquired 400 acres in 1735 in the valley.

Henry David Gochenour, Dad’s father, was a fifth generation descendant and he was born on December 5, 1861 and died May 28th, 1924. He married Mary Stultz, born on June 4, 1864 and died on April 23, 1927. Her nickname was Mollie.

Dad’s father had operated a tanyard which had been operated by his father. Most of my father’s decedents of his lineage are buried at the Mount Zion Lutheran Church cemetery, located near the farm. I never met my grandparents, as they had died before I was born.

Father never told me why he ran away from his home as a youth but I was told that he only had an eighth grade education. He and a friend ran away together and their travels took them to New York City. They earned money by cleaning and polishing office furniture far business people. Dad was a good salesman and he and his friend had unique skills.

Dad, dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase, would go into an office building and ask the receptionist if he could talk to the person responsible for cleaning the office furniture. Since no one had ever done this service for them before he would often be taken to talk to the owner or manager of the office. Dad knew that their office was the showplace where business people met with their clients, and that their office furniture and desks were very expensive. Many of their chairs were upholstered with leather, and the desks were made from cherry wood.

After he introduced himself, he gave them a demonstration on one of the office chairs. To show that the cleaner would not harm the finish, he drank some of it. This impressed the customer, but it was harmless, since it was only water with baking soda. I don’t know where Dad learned about the cleaner but it did a great job. After he cleaned the chair, he took a clean white cloth and wiped it dry, and showed all the dirt he had removed. Then he applied the polish, and when he buffed it, it looked like new. He explained that he was aware how important the clothes business people wore were, and that the polish he used would not soil them. Dad told them he would work in the evening after they had left for the day, and would not expect to be paid until the job was finished.

Dad and his friend had many jobs at New York City but eventually he went to Tonawanda, leaving them behind. I don’t know why father left New York City, or how he came to live at Tonawanda, but once there he became an insurance salesman. In those days insurance salesman went from door to door to collect the money for the policies and that is how I suspect he met Mother. Mother at that time was living at home with my grandparents and worked at the Remington Rand Company that was located at Wheeler Street and Military Road. [Note: I heard that Al and Emma meet because Al went to the factory and he noticed her. He asked her out several times before she agreed.] Father lived at the Lincoln Hotel in North Tonawanda.

Emma Becker and Al Gochenour seated; wedding photo

Al Gochenour, 1927

They were married on December 24, 1927. Mildred Behner was the witness for mother at the ceremony, and she also became mother’s lifelong friend. It was just a small wedding. Times were good and since Dad made good money as an insurance salesman, they bought a new car and a new house. The house they bought was built by my grandfather and it was located across the street from his own on Morgan Street.

Tonawanda, NY 

Mother quit working and sister Mary was born in 1929. The Depression started in 1929 when the stock market fell and in 1930 I was born. The insurance business deteriorated and Dad lost his income and in 1935 my parents lost their new car and the house and they had to move.

Before we moved Dad wanted to take us all to his childhood home in Virginia. The trip was made in an Erskine automobile. To me the trip was an attempt to temporarily escape the problems they had left behind. Mother, Father, Mary, and I visited relatives that lived on the farm that had been Dad’s boyhood home. Both his mother and father had died years before, and a brother and his family lived in the old homestead.

1865 Military Road in 1935

After the trip to Virginia we moved to an old farmhouse on Military Road in the Town of Tonawanda. The house was [made into] a duplex and there was a family living in the large side; their name was Morrow. Roy and Winnie Morrow had five children: Buster, Audrey, June, Sunny, and Tommy. Tommy was my age, the rest were older. I was five years old when we moved there but I still remember how impressed I was with the huge grassy front yard.

Our side of the house had not been lived in for years, but the rent was only ten dollars a month. In the kitchen was a wood burning cooking stove that also heated the house. An outhouse served as our toilet. During the winter blankets were hung over the doors to keep the heat in the living room and kitchen. The upstairs bedrooms where we slept were unheated. Thick comforters made it hard to roll over when sleeping since they were so heavy. Chamber pots were kept under the beds during the winter. As a boy I do remember opening my bedroom window and urinating outside. There are some advantages boys have! Mother never questioned why she never had to empty the pot.

Dad worked jobs like cutting fire wood and at a cemetery until he was hired at the Buffalo Bolt Works located in North Tonawanda.
Mother would  take Mary and I to visit our Becker grandparents and mother’s brother Levant who lived at 520 Morgan Street in the City of Tonawanda. It was a fairly large house with a porch that went across the whole front. When you walked in the front door there was a large banister that went to the upstairs bedrooms. It had a large living room, a dining room, and in the kitchen sat a large wood burning cooking stove. During the winter shoes were all around the stove drying.

John and Martha Kelm Becker, German refugees from Russia

One of the favorite foods my grandmother cooked she called perugans [pierogies]. They were about the size of a ping pong ball and consisted of a cheese coated with ground up potatoes then deep fried.

Grandfather raised pigeons and would occasionally kill some young ones for dinner. One day when I was back by the garage where the pigeon coupes were I stumbled on to a hornet nest. I had never seen hornets before and when one stung me I just jumped up and down, and hollered. This caused more hornets to sting but I finally ran away from them. Grandfather heard all the noise, and came
back to see what had happened. When he saw that I was all bit up he put on some mud on to take the sting away.

Sometimes when we would visit I would play with the neighborhood kids. We played kick the can, hide and seek, and sometimes we would stomp on cans till they stuck to our shoes then klomp around the street.

I am not sure how old I was when my grandmother died but I do remember she was laid out in the dining room of their home. After a few years grandfather married a lady called Mrs. Pete. Grandfather also outlived her and spent the rest of his life a widower. My uncle Lee was still living with grandfather when he married Mrs. Pete but soon after joined the army, and served in Korea. He was the youngest, and the last of the children to live on Morgan Street.

Murder and Baseball in Depression Era Detroit

Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression-Era Detroit by Tom Stanton is a thrilling and terrifying read.

Stanton begins his narrative in 1933 as Frank Navin signs Mickey Cochrane in hope that his Tigers would finally win a championship under his watch. At the same time a series of unsolved murders in the Detroit area were ruled suicides. Stanton weaves the narrative thread of winning teams and murderous mayhem through 1936 when the Black Legion was finally identified.

Detroit became the "City of Champions" when wins by the Tigers, Redwings, the Lions, and Joe Louis brought together a city crushed by the Depression.

Detroit was also the 'automotive capital of the world', attracting workers from the South to factory jobs. The largest Catholic congregation met in the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, MI, now a national shrine. When it burned down in 1935 controversial Father Coughlin rebuilt it with money contributed by his radio followers. He preached a mixture of worker's rights, government control of railroads and major industries, Antisemitism, and he supported some Fascist policies. President Roosevelt finally shut his radio station down in 1939.

It was also a time when the Black Legion's reign of terror pressed men into membership on threat of death, flogged or executed backsliders, and assigned hit men to kill targeted 'enemies' of America: Catholics, Jews, Socialists, Communists, African Americans, liberal lawyers and newsmen. The leaders' ultimate goal was to depose President Roosevelt and take over the American government--to save it from Communism.

Reading about the Black Legion carrying out their meetings and activities in locales known to me was sickening. The group grew out of the ashes of the KKK. Men were invited to a club or gathering, but when they discovered what was really going on it was too late to back out. Pledges were signed at gunpoint and members given a bullet to remind them that betrayal meant death. It was a reign of terror. Bigwigs ordered regular 'joes' to carry out abductions and executions. At least one African American man was murdered just for sport.

Black Legion robes and guns found by police

Membership climbed into the tens of thousands across the Midwest, reaching into the ranks of police, courts, and elected officials. It was said all of Oakland County's government were members! I live in Oakland County!

When Captain Marmon came from Lansing to investigate he soon announced the Black Legion was responsible for at least 50 Michigan deaths. Old cases were reexamined; murders had been ruled as suicides. But his investigations were stymied. Cover-ups prevented following through on leads. J. Edgar Hoover ignored demands for action. The Ford Motor Company would not allow permission for the police to drain Ford Mill Pond, said to hold bodies. Major-General Bert Effinger of the Black Legion lived in Lima, Ohio. The local police would not execute a search warrant on his house. Effinger went missing.

Had it not been for a Legion member's confessions and telling police of activities and crimes no one would have been brought to justice. The downfall of the Black Legion was a relief for thousands who spent every day in fear.

I am not a sports fan myself but my limited knowledge did not prevent me from appreciating, or following, the book's saga of the Tigers. I now know who Schoolhouse Rowe, Hank Greenberg, Micky Cochrane, and Frank Navin are! I proudly can say I now know why Navin Field is important to my acquaintance who is involved in vintage baseball played there and why the Navin Field Grounds Crew are fighting the installation of artificial turf on the field. I do love when history books make one understand and appreciate the present! Stanton is able to bring these men to life.

This multi-layered book offers a full picture of Depression Era Detroit. It has always been a complicated city.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

"Once in a blue moon, a city bears witness to the best and the wort of times. Such was Detroit's fate more than a generation ago as the Tigers, Lions and Red Wings reached new sports heights while the Black Legion too often ruled the night. It's a great tale and Tom Stanton has done a marvelous job telling it." Tim Wendel, author of Summer of '68

Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression Era Detroit
Tom Stanton
Rowman & Littlefield
Publication June 1,  2016
ISBN 978-1-4930-1570-2 hard cover $26
          978-1-4930-1818-5 eBook $24.99

How "The Great Humanitarian" Herbert Hoover Failed as President

A man was quoted in my local newspaper as saying that the idea of having a businessman as president is a good idea, but it had to be the right man. The speaker added that he had lost faith in politicians.

Americans have elected a number of businessmen to the presidential office. Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the President by Charles Rappleye show how the 'wrong' businessman failed to alleviate the ills of the Depression and failure of farms during the dust bowl days.

I requested the book because I wanted to know how a great humanitarian who orchestrated massive relief efforts to Europe, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, came to be remembered as distant, uncaring, and unmoved by American's sufferings.

Rappleye's detailed study on Herbert Hoover shows how his personality, experience, and beliefs impacted and derailed his presidency.

Hoover's intractable belief in the importance of charity at home and non-government involvement in relief were based in his own life experience. He grew up in rural poverty, was orphaned as a child, lived with uncles on an Indian reservation and in a sod hut, and scrambled to get an education. He became an successful engineer. That was life as he knew it, and he expected others could do as he did. He believed 'charity at home' was essential to building American character.

Hoover's success also meant he believed anyone could do the same. "If a man has not made a fortune by 40 he is not work much," Hoover said in his thirties. (My grandfather was born to a single woman, orphaned at age nine, worked hard to get through college, and had a long and varied career. It is done. Gramps also had intelligence, an uncle who rewarded academic achievement, and an excellent high school education.)

Hoover also believed in the power of positive thinking. He wanted to keep up morale. But suffering Americans thought Hoover was out of touch. Behind the scenes, Hoover's wife Lou handled the hundreds of letters and requests for help, aiding those she could, and giving of away his presidential salary to charity.

Farmers were starving, their children did not have clothing so they could attend school. Urban unemployment in some cities soared to 40%. It was feared that "slackers" would misuse government relief. Instead of direct relief the president worked with business and labor leaders and banks, increased Federal spending, limited immigration, increased tariffs, and increased taxes to keep a balanced budget.

Hoover recalls Richard Nixon: both of Quaker parents, both thin skinned and prone to anger, both sending staff to break into political enemies offices, both disdained by the press. Hoover was a pacifist.

'Bonus Army' of unemployed WWI veterans came to Washington D.C. to demand the bonus promised. The homeless men and families were installed in empty buildings and in a camp along the Potomac. When disorder sprouted up, and reports that radicals and communists had infiltrated the camps, Hoover was convinced to give carte blanch to Army Chief of Staff MacArthur. Mac Arthur was to return them to their camps. MacArthur ignored the president's instructions and the veterans were routed out of the city by soldier using tear gas and swords. Hoover failed to repudiate MacArthur for disobedience. Hoover was vilified as cold and heartless.

This book shows how hard Hoover tried to solve the problems of the country, but also how his fatal flaw of personality left him the legacy of being an ineffectual president. He was a shy, private person who avoided eye contact and read his speeches. As the publisher's promo says, Hoover had "a first-class mind and a second-class temperament"-- the "temperament of leadership."

The idea of electing a businessman to the presidency as a response to mistrusting politicians is not a good option. History has shown that businessmen make for failed political leadership. Consider the failed presidencies of businessmen like Warren G. Harding and Jimmy Carter. In fact, according to studies and ratings NO president with a successful business background is among the top rated. The skills of business and the ability to lead in government are not the same.

Presidential success is based on empathy, persuasive eloquence, and compromise. Hoover's failure to appear empathetic and his ineffectiveness as a speaker clearly hurt him. Considering the hundreds of thousands of lives he saved after WWI and WWII organizing relief abroad I know he had empathy. What a complicated man.

I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Herbert Hoover in the White House
Charles Rappleye
Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: May 10, 2016
$32.50 hard cover
ISBN: 9781451648676

Herbert Hoover/Curtis silk campaign handkerchief. Collection of Nancy A. Bekofske