Many use the radio. And then talk a little bit about how this will help the Hoover Family and their approach . [inaudible] [inaudible] this is a recent account. And so the way it goes. [inaudible] [inaudible] we are helping so valiantly and you are going to be helping as delicately as well as long as the need lasts. Ever faithful to trust is a constantly diminishing demand. In some way, this included his tracks to the nation. Absolutely. She is the first first lady to make a National Radio talk and to try and push this voluntarist message, which is very much something that Herbert Hoover is doing at this time. And its interesting that she is doing these talks about the girl scouts movement, which in 1932, she comes up with a plan after the formulation. They formulated it. But its basically this effort to try to muster the resources of the girl scouts into a more coordinated and organized effort to help out coordinating with state Police Agencies and she actually has an individual who at the same time was working with the president by that timeframe as well. And so we are very moved by the voluntarist work. And we are trying to urge the nation to kind of work went others as the girl scouts are doing. They are actually coordinating within the administration. So she is complement and his policies. Host on this question about dealing with the press, she kept something so private that her papers were not open until four years after her death because it would violate the privacy of people she helped with financial aid. He spent time with her sisters, right . Yes, her papers would not be opened until 40 years after she passed away. Because of concerns about things that may have been written about people and her correspondence, she was very interesting. She really made a lot of use of the radio to try to promote their causes with the girl scouts and also to push terrorism. Host we have a call from west covina, california. Caller thank you so much for taking my call in your outstanding program. There has not been any mention of whether or not they had children. Did they have children and did they die in infancy, or did they live and do they have successes . Thank you very much. Guest they had two boys, herbert and alan. They had been born in london because this is where berg was working at the time and the hoovers lived there. And one of the interesting things is their older son, herbert junior who was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1931 he went for his physical time to serve in the reserves. Tuberculosis at that time was a very serious disease and it was not always curable. This was preantibiotics. And they actually had herbert junior living there for the beginning of his convalescence and they continued his convalescence and this proceeded. During the year that herbert junior was convalescing, they invited the daughterinlaw and children to live in the white house there were children and that wasnt necessarily successful because they didnt want the children photographed and they didnt want things written about them. This was a period a time when the nation was transfixed by the lindbergh baby kidnapping. Im wondering whether that affected your sense of security for the white house and whether or not this was worrisome to other children in the family. There was increased security after the lindbergh kidnapping in order to protect and whatever children might feel at various times. But there is also an increased fascination, especially about the scale of the depression that continued. Security is certainly a very important factor in the white house at this time. And also very vigilant. Host how is the marriage affected by the Great Depression . They had always been close partners, but they were not disclosed in the partnership during the white house. Burke kind of pulled into himself a little bit, and was not as communicative as he had done. It took a total. One of the hoovers sons is supposedly said that he felt that his parents being in the white house for those four years was a mistake because of the stress that on the relationship. Host Jennifer Sherman sends a tweet trust thing that i realized that the real role of first lady of the United States is advisor and chief or gamekeeper. The next is stephen who is watching us in new york city. Caller hello, i wanted to know where the hoovers the wealthiest while the poor families . Host they certainly were wealthy. Where did the wealthiest . Guest i do not know. The interesting thing was we have to consider them compared to like someone like ted kennedy fortune worry bush fortune. [laughter] host they believe that George Washington was the wealthiest if you can calculate everything here based on this and in todays dollars it is anywhere from 75 to 19 million. They even think he might have been wealthier and his successor, fdr, who had inherited this and have made it from scratch, all of his wealth. He was one of the wealthiest. Host the next caller is from virginia. This is dan on the air. Caller thank you very much for taking my call i was one of where the library was. Host i am so sorry, i push the button at the wrong time. Lets take another question. Questions or santa fe. Caller thank you for taking my call. I am a native of iowa. My only real experience with the hoovers was a Television Series called baxters of the white house. Host we are going to stop that question because of was given early in the program. Some had seen the same series. And you said that they were not always the best but the people that worked in the white house . Guest we have to be careful about Herbert Hoover and the telling of the story. There was money to be made because people made money off of telling that storys. Host the accounts exist, but the veracity something to be looked at. Guest yes. Host we visit the smithsonian oftentimes. We hoover was a fashionable first lady and we have two of hr first ladies on display. Heres one dress that is Something Like a Garden Party Dress very the. The other one is a reception dress. And this is a reception dress worn for the girl scouts of america. She was not only the honor your president , been enacted active girl scout before time in office. Taking a tour storage area, we will see more than the long dresses and more pieces that belongs to lou hoover. This is a pair of shoes that she wore in her white house portrait. She made best dressed list before she became the first lady and was the first first lady to appear in the magazine called the vote. Dressed in grecian folds, this was something she donated to the museum to be worn worn by her mannequin in the first lady exhibit. It was worn with the shoes and represented mrs. Hoover and the of is a good example. Here is a blackandwhite silver pattern and a wonderful addition to the exhibit. Host that is the view of some of the first lady collection at the smithsonian. It has been so helpful to us. What did she do to change the white house during her tenure . Guest one of the things that she did was on the social side, which as we talked about was how things are structured. Im thinking of the structure of the actual building. So one of the things that she did was refurbishing on the second floor. We saw this in one of the earlier clips, drawings of butterflies and flowers, she did drawings of what she wanted the bookcases to look like on the second floor. She was also involved with the redoing of some of the downstairs areas, not the green room, which had been started under Grace Coolidge and furnished by a committee that had been appointed by congress. But she did some refurbishing and the blue room as well. Host these were years of prohibition. What were their attitudes of prohibition . Sometimes they would have parties with alcohol inside the townhouse. Guest i believe that they respected prohibition and hoover had campaigned in 1928. And he was officially in favor of prohibition. As we mentioned earlier, lou hoover had chaired the committee in 1924 in on Law Enforcement and i had heard that on his way home from work he was the secretary of commerce and it was the entire territory and that we had a cartel at the end of the day. So i think that hoover certainly had a quaker background, which allowed him to be more protemperance. Host how popular was that at this point . Guest it is still unclear whether it was bad. So its difficult for people to get a real feel of the nation. As we mentioned before, the campaign of al smith was decisive in part because he is suggesting not a repeal of prohibition, but may be a revision of it to give the states the chance to vote as it was known in those times. By 1932, prohibition has been incredibly unpopular. In large part because of the kinds of negative impact that it had in terms of organized crime. In 1932, Herbert Hoover sort of said maybe he will be okay with certain kinds of things at the state level. But the democrats had committed to repealing prohibition. Host suis watching us in colorado springs. Caller good evening and thank you for this program. It was mentioned earlier that the rivers hoovers were multimillionaires prior to the presidency. Im wondering how they made their money. Thank you so much. Guest Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer and he was also paid very well for that and he also invested in minds that were important. Host is the criticism of the man in the white house used to mount, here are some quotes from a lot of the first individuals to give you some sense of what the personal reactions were. Lou hoover said i was incensed that much reading about the president having president having no thought for the little man defending all his energies towards saving the plutocrat. And for his part, heres one from Herbert Hoover that said she was oversensitive and the status of political life were known doubt hurt. Guest i believe the first one i recall correctly is the letters that she wrote to her children trying to justify and kind of frame the legacy, talking about how he had always been concerned about the little man and how angry and upset she was about the way he was being treated in the way he was being pretty well ripped apart in the press. Bert is just a husband who sets his ways going on with his wife and had a response to it. But this is also in his response to his memoirs. And it is sometimes in his memoirs, his memory is a little bit different from what actually happened. Host despite his deepening depression, Herbert Hoover makes a piece for reelection. So what does this tell us about the 1932 election outcome . Guest at first to stand for the election, he is not necessarily committed to running for reelection during that time. The idea of the incumbent president actively seeking the election is a little bit unseemly and Herbert Hoover had immense respect for them in the office that he holds. So he decides that he was going to make a couple of speeches and was going to be very dignified and restrained and then overcome this in the fall of 1932 that he had been in serious trouble. And then in september, maine was a traditional republican territory and this was again a preopinion poll of time and an indication that he was in trouble. So he then essentially embarked upon what we would call crisscrossing the country and getting a number of addresses and returns home to his home in palo alto to wait out the results and it is a landslide against him. It is almost bigger than the one in this area. So it is a very rapid turnaround for a man to have such high hopes. Host how old was she in that election . Guest this was a stop to her and i think that one of the reasons why she wanted to invite the woman. It was to try to some do cementing of the fence is that she hadnt done the previous 3. 5 years. Shes she is continuing to do her work with the girl scouts and for age and to promote volunteerism. And she is trying to see that he gets reelected by her support. Host do we know their personal reaction to the outcome . Guest there is disappointment, but she says that we are still here and still moving on. So i think that there was some hurt in some of those combinations at the way they have been treated when they tried so hard with a bit of relief that the responsibility will not be there much longer. Host there is a deep connection with palo alto, california. Herbert hoover designed house there and we will learn about that next. We are at the lou hoover house here at Stanford University. It is significant because this was the primary residence of the hoovers and known as the family headquarters, and it is significant as it relates to lou hoover because she was the one who designed it. Worked with several architects to come up with the plans and they gave her advice and she was the driving force behind the design of the house. It was something that really impressed the architects who helped her with the formal blueprints and plans, that she had such a strong grasp of design and how she wanted the house to look even though she was not an architect and that was not her professional training. She was a geologist, but she had a very good sense of space and design. How she wanted the house to look. It was something that she was intimately involved in and we are lucky to have a lot of the original drawings and correspondence related to the design and construction back at the hoover archives and Stanford University archives. We are looking at the building and design of the house. It is especially important because it shows how involved lou henry was in designing house. Here are some of the drawings from the design of the house. We have some details of the cabinets that are going to be installed. Here we have some design details that were lightly sketched by herself and a lot of her influence came from her travels in the southwest of the United States. Pueblo architecture and from her travels in north africa when she traveled with Herbert Hoover. So there is definitely an influence of native cultures and native american cultures as well and in influencing the architecture of the house. You can see the initial design for the arches above the doorway and then that was changed. There are definitely a lot of arches in the house as well. What we have here are floorplans of the house. Showing details of the rooms. The living room there. The terrace there. You can see that the rooms are designed in a way where they easily exit out and to the outside be outside and outdoors and it is a great legacy of hers because she designed the house and she indicated that it was inspired and had close involvement in all aspects of the houses creation. Host obviously a connection with the Stanford University campus only brightened over the years as this was a major part of the campus there. Where did the money from that come from . Was endowed by them or was it part of a private contribution . Guest i am not sure about the hoover institute. The one rinconsito del mar mexican lou hoover was still alive, she was very active in building a Musical Community there. But later possibly after her husband passed away, she was involved with everything. Host what about the preservation and west branch, iowa . Guest yes, that is where he was born and it was attempted by lou hoover to purchase it and the family was not interested in selling at the time. At some point they were able to acquire that property and it is now the hoover president ial library with the restoration of the buildings from his childhood host it was dedicated in 1962 and by that time lou hoover had passed. But Herbert Hoover was there for the dedication. Lets show you that next. The records of supreme action by the american people. The devotion and sacrifice to their ideals. In these records there are many unfavorable remarks made by political opponents, as well as the striking affection i are friends. We may hope that future students will rely upon our friends. [applause] state. Host Herbert Hoover lived until he was 90 years old and he set a record. Guest until after he was the longestserving expresident of all time and jimmy carter had just took that position laster. Host gerald ford and Ronald Reagan lived longer than he, surpassing the record of Herbert Hoover until that time. So tell us about the death of lou hoover. Guest lou hoover had continued to be very physically active as we have talked about earlier in the shell. She was still riding a horse and camping and sleeping on the ground up until her late 60s. She had wanted to continue to live in palo alto. Herbert had enjoyed the stimulation of new new york city and they had the east coast and west coast kind of marriage until about 1940 and he convinced her to make her base with him there in new york city and they lived in an apartment in waldorfastoria and she had gone out to dinner with a friend in january of 1944 and she changed her mind and said no, lets take a cab. She said goodbye to her friend and went upstairs to her apartment and he was getting ready to go out with a friend of his and he said, let me just say goodbye to lou hoover and he went into her room and she was collapsed and already dead on the floor. She died of a heart attack. Host timothy of sun city, california. You are on. Caller hello, i am the grandson of jean henri large the sister of lou hoover and i just want to express how great of a lady she is and how much i appreciate her as well as her husband. I was born in palo alto and i just wanted to express that they really did care for their kids and grandkids and relatives. Host we hope that we have done a fair job tonight. Thank you for your call. Well, before you go onto her legacy, where is she very . Guest she was originally buried in palo alto and then they actually exhumed her body and now she is next to herbert at west branch. Host when the government opens again and all these institutions are back, you can go to west branch and visit the Herbert Hoover president ial library there. So since they were a couple who did so much better, what should the legacy be . Guest is the first lady, her legacy is the way in which you try to utilize her role as first lady to make a call to action. Also it dovetails