Herbert Hoover (1874-1964)
Filed under the name Herbert · February 22, 2026
Herbert Hoover gets remembered mostly for being president, and not always kindly at that, but what struck me reading up on him was the part before the presidency, when he led massive relief efforts that fed millions of people after the First World War. That's the kind of quiet, unglamorous good work that doesn't make it into most textbooks the way the presidency does, and it reminds me a little of the extra jobs I've taken on over the years — selling preserves and eggs at the farmers' market, nothing anybody writes down in a history book, but it keeps folks fed all the same, on a smaller scale. Feeding millions of hungry people after a war is the kind of achievement that ought to outweigh whatever came after it, in my book. I think about that with my own estranged son too, some days — that the good a person did once doesn't stop being good just because what came later got complicated. That's a lesson I'm still learning myself, at seventy-four.