TWO

Cardinal Red

Hoover stepped off the train at Menlo Park and pedaled his bicycle, packed with his clothes and meager possessions, the three miles to Palo Alto, in its own way as much a frontier outpost as West Branch, Iowa, or Newberg, Oregon. With the university’s buildings still incomplete, he took lodging at Adelante Villa, an old home converted to a boardinghouse for early arrivals. Construction workers raced to hammer and plaster together the campus’s buildings in time for an avalanche of students—no one knew exactly how many—in the midst of a vast pasture that would ultimately make Stanford the largest university, in geographical terms, in the nation. Hoover had not waited until his arrival in California to study for his second attempt to pass the entrance examination; he had crammed in the Minthorn barn every night since his failure. Now President David Starr Jordan and Dr. Joseph Swain, who also resided at Adelante Villa, helped to tutor Bert in their spare time. His chief tutors, however, were the two women who owned the boardinghouse.

The diligent, impoverished young Quaker paid for his room and board by performing odd jobs. He groomed horses and drove by buggy to Menlo Park to purchase groceries and pick up the mail for President Jordan, whom he also transported to his office on campus. Hoover’s work ethic was already ingrained, his goals were high, and from the beginning he understood his objective. Though he would enjoy college immensely, plunge into extracurricular activities with gusto, make lifelong friends, and meet the love of his life, he was driven by his goal to become an engineer, and a good one. No one anticipated how good, but they were about to find out.¹

After a summer of intense study, he faced his second, and doubtless last, attempt to pass the entrance exam. The tutoring and hard work paid dividends. Bert fared well in geometry, algebra, and American history. He scored lower on literature, yet passed easily. Needing one more subject, an elective, he picked physiology, which deals with the structure and functions of the organs of the human body. Most of his data was gleaned from long carriage rides with Dr. Minthorn, who had discoursed upon his medical practice. Hoover also bought two used textbooks, read them from cover to cover during a full day and a sleepless night, and passed physiology the next morning. Yet his nemesis, English composition, continued to haunt him. He could express himself clearly and accurately, yet he did not give the meticulous attention to spelling, grammar, and punctuation that he applied to subjects he enjoyed. He failed English 1B and was admitted on the condition that he remove the deficiency before graduation, a stipulation that would hover for almost the entire next four years. In microcosm, 1B epitomized his academic career. Bert had come to Stanford to learn, not to make superlative grades, and his interests were selective. He excelled at subjects he found fascinating and went far beyond the required reading, while skimming others.²

Now a member of Stanford University’s pioneer class, Hoover became the first, and youngest, resident of Encina Hall, the incomplete men’s dormitory, which during the early weeks lacked electricity and hot water. Encina was a portion of a quadrangle that constituted the centerpiece of the new Stanford campus, enclosing a grassy commons. Carved from Senator Stanford’s enormous ranch, the campus was surrounded by fields and meadows that evolved into rolling hills and then rose to mountains in the distance. Beyond that lay the Pacific. The budding geologist felt like Alice in Wonderland, all the delights of his mind’s eye within his reach. Inwardly, Stanford represented an equally auspicious universe to explore. Students who enrolled at the school during its early years did so because it was different from other colleges; thus, it was likely that their characters were different from those of other students. They arrived at a university evolving on the spot, one that offered a different kind of college atmosphere. Isolated from urban life, the Stanford faculty and its students relied upon one another for companionship, entertainment, and the ambience of home. Each department formed a smaller family within this larger family. The Geology Department was tightly knit, with the students and faculty developing a special kinship. Faculty invited students into their homes for casual discussions on Friday evenings, and new ideas gestated informally.³

For Hoover, Stanford marked his first independence outside a predominantly Quaker environment. The work was rigorous, the pace breathtaking, offering Bert the opportunity and challenge to grow and succeed, liberated by more freedom than he had ever known. He would grow up with Stanford, and they would forever remain connected. The university would provide something Hoover had lacked since he was orphaned: a truly nurturing environment. Stanford provided some of the best years in his life.⁴

Under the hot California sun, an intellectual garden blossomed. Hoover was eager to sink his roots into the heart of his curriculum, geology and engineering. However, the renowned professor John Casper Branner, chair of the Department of Geology and Mining, notified Stanford officials that he had been unable to disengage from his obligations as state geologist for Arkansas until January and could not join the faculty until the spring semester. Hoover was disappointed, but he found other academic manna to feed his voracious mental appetite until Branner arrived. For the first semester of his freshman year, Bert declared a major in mechanical engineering. Through the fall term he took solid geometry, algebra, trigonometry, linear drawing, freehand drawing, and mechanical engineering.

To support himself, Hoover obtained a job in the registrar’s office. He also instigated a part-time paper route, picking up the San Francisco daily, delivering it on campus, and collecting the payment, keeping part of it as his profit. This required rising before dawn and working for several hours before his first class. It was a schedule he would keep throughout his life, habitually sleeping only five or six hours, relying on his robust stamina.⁵

When Branner arrived to begin the spring semester, Hoover’s morale soared. He promptly changed his major to geological engineering and signed up for as many Branner-taught courses as he could. Branner had a well-founded reputation as a superb teacher who took a special interest in helping his students. At the onset, only eleven pupils enrolled in the Geology Department, allowing the master mentor to devote a great deal of individual attention to each. Hoover, the brightest and most industrious, quickly became his favorite, and Branner strove to draw him out of his shell of shyness. “He rarely spoke unless spoken to,” a classmate said. “It wasn’t until later I realized how much it was possible to like him.”⁶

Hoover sparkled with the arc of a shooting star, much of it purely by instinct. He was brilliant and patient, and his passion for geology rivaled Branner’s. On the basis of Bert’s experience as an office boy in Oregon, Branner hired him to assist in routine office chores, such as filing and sweeping, but soon promoted him to laboratory assistant at a higher salary. Branner was delighted because he could delegate a task to Hoover and the aspiring geologist accomplished it without further ado. Unlike Branner’s previous lab assistants, he did not pester his instructor with details. “Most men fumble jobs, have to be supervised and directed,” Branner said. “But I can tell Hoover to do a thing and never think of it again.” The eminent professor considered Bert the best-organized student he had ever met.⁷

Branner did not believe in cramming the heads of students with miscellaneous facts. Instead, he opened their minds and inspired them to think independently, to imagine and innovate. He encouraged rather than repressed originality because he knew engineers in the field must improvise. Branner gave his students a solid background in all the basic sciences. He emphasized a theoretical rather than an applied education for the engineers he taught, and he expected them to learn their practical tasks on the job. Branner significantly influenced Hoover’s personal method of dealing with subordinates in many aspects of his career, from mining to the presidency. Hoover wanted assistants who demonstrated the initiative he had demonstrated as a laboratory assistant. His later administrative style, which reflected, on a larger scale, Branner’s method, was to decentralize authority. That meant selecting able subordinates, giving them general instructions, and then permitting them the latitude to accomplish their tasks in their own way. He took responsibility for mistakes and allowed second chances. This motivated his subordinates, won their loyalty and affection, nurtured their creativity, and united them in a common goal. Hoover did not prescribe a precise manner for resolving a problem; he judged work by the result.⁸

Now taking the courses he craved, Hoover forged ahead in his second semester. He considered Branner’s Geology I, which met five days a week, intellectual caviar. His appetite for geology was insatiable. Soon he became the class star. Hoover packed his schedule with basic science and math courses and did not branch out into the humanities until his second year. Attending lectures and debates, he was especially interested in discussions that related geology to religion, including the theory of evolution, though he never considered his scientific learning in conflict with his Quaker beliefs. Only a freshman, he was in perpetual motion, dashing from one activity to another, skimping on sleep. During the second semester, he contracted measles, which affected his eyesight and compelled him to wear spectacles for two years.⁹

The relationship between Hoover and Branner proved symbiotic. Hoover spent the summer of his freshman year as a field assistant for Branner, surveying and mapping the outcroppings of rock formations in the Arkansas Ozarks. He then helped the professor compile the data and construct a plastic topographical map of the region, which won a prize at the 1893 World’s Fair. Hoover worked mostly alone, usually on foot, enjoying the outdoor exercise, which left him fit, tanned, and $200 richer at summer’s end. He lodged as the guest of local people, some of whom were moonshiners who suspected all strangers as “revenuers” but nonetheless were kind and hospitable to the young student and fed and housed him gratis. Bert scrupulously saved his paycheck, which proved essential in getting him from summer to summer.¹⁰

When he returned to Stanford for his sophomore year, Hoover moved out of the expensive Encina Hall and partnered with another student to supervise a cheaper boardinghouse they called Romero Hall. There, surrounded by poorer students much like him, Bert was drawn increasingly into political conversations with such new friends as Sam Collins, the oldest member of the pioneer class, Lester Hinsdale, and a young freshman, Ray Lyman Wilbur, also a transplant from Iowa with an aptitude for science who was earning his way through. Hoover’s working-class friends were concerned over the monopolization of campus offices and political influence by the Greek letter fraternities, which they considered arrogant and elitist. Despite representing a minority of students, the fraternities, by voting as a bloc, employing pledges as ward heelers, and adding big-name athletes to their tickets, created a political steamroller. The unorganized, less affluent students, known as the barbarians, or “barbs,” realized that they outnumbered the fraternity clique, and if they could organize, they might win elections and influence and assume control over the disbursement of funds collected by student clubs and athletic teams.¹¹

Hoover’s organizational skills, ingenuity, and persuasive abilities would have proven an asset to any political group. He fit in with the barb faction because he, like them, was poor, humble, relatively powerless, and upwardly mobile. Yet Hoover’s character and nascent ideals also drew him to politics. His Quaker modesty and innate shyness caused some to underestimate him, failing to realize that he was a highly competitive person, a strong individualist who could nonetheless work with a team, even lead one. Even when involved in activities that brought him no personal gain, Bert obtained quiet satisfaction at winning in competition. Moreover, he was an idealist. When this idealism and his competitive streak were bound to a cause and propelled by his enormous energy and drive, he morphed into a daunting political dynamo who nonetheless remained relatively low-key, preferring to work behind the scenes. He was less a prototypical politician than he was an organizer, a task at which few excelled. At first, some were surprised by his successes and considered them flukes, yet when they recurred repeatedly, it seemed as unlikely a fluke as the same apple falling on the same man’s head every time he strolled through an orchard.

Hoover’s first foray into student politics involved a face-off with an elite fraternity clique that controlled athletics and the prestigious clubs. The poorer barbs, who outnumbered the “frats” and “jocks,” were steamrollered, though they were the larger faction, because they were splintered. The key to the barbs winning their first serious political fray in the spring of 1893 was turnout. They had the potential voters, but could they furnish sufficient incentives to lure them to the polls? A barb known as “Sosh,” for Socialist Zion, created an organization designed to overpower the fraternity faction by dint of numbers. Hoover’s friend Sam Collins brought the Quaker and Sosh together. It was like striking a match to dry tinder. Sosh announced his candidacy for student body president. He and his group, now including Hoover, were considered liberals, even radicals. Since they outnumbered the fraternity faction, they focused on uniting behind a single ticket and maximizing turnout. Sosh assigned the fledgling engineer-politician to recruit the poorest, previously scorned group of students to the barb standard. Unable to afford Encina Hall, they lived in workers’ shacks left from construction of the campus. They had never voted before, nor had anyone asked them to. The persistent Hoover went from shack to shack, from boy to boy, and talked to each individually. He was relatively inarticulate, yet this made him credible to the most humble students. Transparently honest, he treated them with respect. Meanwhile, freshman “Rex” Wilbur was assigned to harvest the freshman vote, focusing on Encina Hall. Both Hoover and Wilbur delivered. Although the barbs did not sweep all offices, Sosh won the presidency and they orchestrated a stunning political upset. Their newly assembled machine would need fine-tuning before the next election. Yet they were in the game for keeps, and so was Bert Hoover.¹²

Hoover’s gift for organizing was not channeled exclusively, or even chiefly, into politics. He made an even larger impact on Stanford’s blossoming athletic program. He donned Cardinal red and made the baseball team as starting shortstop in his freshman year. Quick, agile, sure-handed, and deft, he played the most difficult position in the infield. His playing career was cut short when a bad-hop ground ball dislocated the ring finger on his left hand, possibly even causing a hairline fracture, because the finger did not entirely heal for several years.¹³

Yet if Bert was a serviceable shortstop, he proved an outstanding manager for this team of gifted freshmen, who mowed down every amateur lineup they faced and remained undefeated at the end of regular play. Stepping up a notch, the collegians audaciously challenged the San Francisco professional team. Trailing 30–0 after five innings, the Stanford Cardinal asked that the game be called for “darkness.” Hoover’s job did not involve selection of a starting lineup or other in-game duties. Rather, he scheduled the games, printed and sold tickets, collected admissions, purchased equipment, and balanced the books, daunting multiple tasks. Because the field lacked fences, Hoover and his assistants circulated through the crowd collecting admissions. On one occasion, former president Benjamin Harrison forgot to pay and Hoover was the only person bold enough to approach the former chief executive and inform him that he must ante up like everyone else. Harrison smiled and handed the manager a dollar. When Bert tried to give the ex-president his 50 cents change, the Republican leader told him to keep it. Raising his voice, Hoover informed the distinguished guest that Stanford was not a charitable institution. Harrison compromised by purchasing additional tickets.¹⁴

Hoover also managed the Stanford football team, which like the baseball team fielded an all-freshman lineup during its first year. With barely enough players to assemble a squad, they could not conduct full scrimmages because they lacked sufficient teammates. All participants played both offense and defense, and some played every minute of every game. Although football is a fall sport, the team did not get organized until January and did not play its first game until mid-March of 1892. They challenged the established team of the University of California, Berkeley, which assumed the inexperienced upstarts would prove a pushover. The ambitious manager scheduled the game at a San Francisco stadium, which seated fifteen thousand, but he printed only ten thousand tickets, the maximum number of spectators anyone expected. Yet the Thanksgiving Day extravaganza quickly exhausted the tickets, and patrons continued to stream in. Bert, his assistants, and the Berkeley manager and his helpers borrowed buckets and washtubs from local housewives and collected admission in gold and silver coins, the currency of the day. Ultimately, it amounted to $30,000, enough to finance Stanford’s entire 1893 season. Incredibly, the game was delayed for half an hour because neither team had remembered to bring a football. Bert dispatched an assistant manager downtown to a sporting goods store via streetcar. The student bought two pigskins and rushed back while the opposing team captains argued at midfield. In yet another minor miracle, the Stanford team, some of whose players were involved in their first game, upset the highly touted Berkeley gridironers 14–0 in the kickoff of what became a traditional rivalry.¹⁵

By the fall of 1894, the precocious freshmen of 1892 had become seniors and boasted their greatest team of that era. They had lured the inimitable Walter Camp, known as the father of college football, to coach the Cardinal. Camp believed that from tackle to tackle Stanford had the best line in the nation, more formidable than any of the Eastern powers. He used his vaunted defense aggressively to attack the opposing offense. Most of the games were low scoring. The players were quite small by recent standards. The largest Cardinal player, the left guard, weighed 194 pounds. The largest back, the fullback, weighed 174 pounds, and the quarterback weighed 147 pounds. Berkeley also boasted an exceptional line and an elusive back in Wolfe Ransome. After Stanford’s stunning defeat of Berkeley in 1892, the teams had tied during the following year, making 1894’s the decisive game. During the first half, a Stanford guard burst through the line, blocked a Ransome punt, scooped up the ball, and raced for a touchdown. Stanford won, 6–0. Even more compelling was a final, three-game barnstorming tour in California after Amos Alonzo Stagg, the legendary coach, challenged the strongest team in the West to face his powerful Chicago team, the dominant team in the Midwest. Chicago won the first game at Pasadena on Christmas Day, Stanford countered with a victory on December 29, and on January 1, the Cardinal defeated Chicago at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. The savvy Cardinal had reaped a small fortune, which restored the Athletic Department to solvency, but the faculty forbade such barnstorming thereafter. Hoover, who had helped inspire the scheme, considered the limitation reasonable, although the closely bunched games had helped balance the books of an athletic department chronically in debt.¹⁶

At the beginning of the 1894 season, the Cardinal gridiron squad, having proven itself on the field, was on the verge of its most successful season. Yet Bert kept a close eye on the till because the team remained $1,500 in debt. Further, his Quaker principles impelled him to treat all individuals equally. The playing field, the same one used for baseball, remained unfenced, and the manager and assistant manager still circulated through the grandstand collecting admissions. Just before kickoff at one game, Hoover asked his crew if every patron had paid. They replied that everyone had, with the exception of President Jordan and his guest. Bert bounded over and informed Jordan and his companion that they must comply with the rules and pay for admission. Jordan promptly did, as did his guest—Andrew Carnegie.¹⁷

During his junior and senior years Hoover packed his schedule with as many science and engineering courses as possible. He took classes in geology, mineralogy, chemistry, advanced geology, French, ethics, and hygiene. He enrolled in German, but the language proved difficult. Bert stopped attending class without formally dropping it and failed the course, the only one he flunked in college. He never became fluent in any second language, though he learned to speak French haltingly. Beyond his love for science and mining engineering, Hoover selectively took humanities classes that interested him, such as history, economics, and English literature, and passed them. His retentive memory was a formidable asset in courses dealing with history and classical literature.¹⁸

Bert continued to splice together jobs to keep himself solvent as he scurried between classes and miscellaneous extracurricular activities. He sold his newspaper distribution business as a sophomore and began the more lucrative task of picking up student laundry for cleaning and returning it to individual rooms, employing assistants. As a senior, he added a more ambitious responsibility, importing entertainers to campus, guaranteeing them a flat fee, and retaining any remaining profits from ticket sales. Among the speakers he hired was William Jennings Bryan, who subsequently became the Populist and then the Democratic candidate for president in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Hoover was unimpressed by Bryan’s oratory, which he considered more ballyhoo than substance. The recruitment of speakers and performers was a risky venture and sometimes the impresario lost money. For example, Bert lured the world-famous Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski to campus, guaranteeing him $2,000. The concert netted only $1,600. Bert offered to give the entire sum to the pianist and an IOU for the remainder. Paderewski generously declined the full amount, gave Hoover a percentage, and canceled the remainder. Years later, Hoover fed Paderewski’s native Poland after World War I, returning the favor. When Paderewski thanked him, Hoover said there was no need to; Paderewski had once been generous to an indigent student.¹⁹

Hoover’s most lucrative pay came from summer work. After mapping the Ozarks for Professor Branner in 1892, Bert spent the following two summers performing a similar task for Dr. Waldemar Lindgren, another famed Stanford geologist, and working chiefly in California’s High Sierras. As he had for Branner, the fledgling engineer helped construct a topographical map of the region, received college credit for his work, and was listed as a joint contributor to the project. In the fall of 1894, he returned five weeks late for the opening of the fall semester, putting him behind in his classwork for what became the most frenetic semester of his academic career at Stanford and requiring strenuous efforts to graduate on time the following spring. Nonetheless, Hoover immensely enjoyed the outdoor work and the scenic beauty of the Sierras, which whetted his appetite to graduate and become a professional mining engineer.²⁰

While mapping the Sierras with Lindgren in 1893, Hoover also mapped out in his mind a blueprint for untangling Stanford’s student finances, a hodgepodge of clubs and athletic organizations resembling scrambled eggs, with little cohesion and no central oversight. Many of them, mired in debt, were compelled to disband every year, default on their arrears, and reassemble the following year. When Bert returned from his summer job for his junior year, he approached the leaders of his faction with a sweeping plan to reorganize student finances and outlined his ideas for a new student constitution. There would be several officers, with all funds channeled through a centralized treasurer, who would maintain scrupulous records. The barbs decided on a ticket of the three H’s: Lester Hinsdale for president, Herbert Hicks for football manager, and Herbert Hoover for treasurer. The elections were to be held during the spring semester of 1894, the constitution ratified in a student referendum, and the newly elected students would serve for academic year 1894–95, Hoover’s senior year. Bert was particularly reluctant to assume another burden because he was already overcommitted and his grades could suffer. The treasurer would be paid because of the amount of labor involved, yet Hoover said he could not accept pay derived from a constitution he himself had written. The barbs pleaded for Bert to run. He was universally respected and could balance the books, and his faction did not believe they could win without him. Hoover ran because of the duty he felt to implement his plan.²¹

The election in April set precedents. Fences were plastered with posters and sidewalks were covered with chalk. The turnout was enormous: about 85 percent of the student body voted. The barbs captured all the important offices. After a mixed result the previous year, the barbs were now the most powerful faction on campus. Hoover’s stronghold remained Encina Hall, his ward, which the barbs carried decisively, complemented by the poor students in the old construction shacks, who had been brought into the mainstream of campus life. Following the election, the entire student body assembled in the chapel to debate and vote on the constitution. After a heated argument on a torrid California afternoon, the students approved the new charter, which remained intact for more than a generation. The campaign marked the pinnacle of Hoover’s career as a campus politician, although he would not take office until the following academic year, when the constitution became effective. He had emerged as the intellectual leader of his faction, having demonstrated an ability in debate to strike to the heart of an issue like a dagger. Due to his shyness, he was not one of the most popular students, yet he became one of the most influential. His presence was crucial to the success of the ticket. The turnabout since the freshman year of an ironclad fraternity-athlete monopoly on offices and power was revolutionary.²²

The pace of Hoover’s life accelerated, crammed with course work, labs for Branner, student politics, odd jobs, and full-time summer employment. Although he remained reserved, Bert made a multitude of friends, often forged in political combat and athletic administration. However, his group of friends was eclectic, with more than engineers, athletes, and student politicians among them. He was admired as Stanford’s most versatile student, constantly busy, able in many areas, unselfish, an individual of impeccable intellectual and fiscal integrity. Tall and thin, about five-eleven, he was usually clad in a double-breasted blue suit, which he changed frequently into yet another suit identical in style and color. He had an unlined, rotund face, and his eyes were wistful, yet snapped to attention at the sight of a friend.

During the spring semester of his junior year his stamina was tested when he contracted typhoid—the disease that had killed his father. He recovered but lacked money for the infirmary bill, so Professor Branner paid. The geology professor seemed a teacher, mentor, employer, and guardian angel rolled into one. Hoover fell behind in his studies but recouped before departing to map the Sierras with Lindgren for the last time, in the summer of 1894. Before leaving, he failed the English 1B exam once again. This left only his coming senior year to make up the deficiency.²³

Hoover’s essential adult personality had emerged, and his basic traits would vary little thereafter. Quiet, unobtrusive, craving neither credit, nor fame, nor money, he led by action. He labored patiently and assiduously, yet he received bursts of inspiration and his intelligence was complemented by his self-discipline and an unerring intuition about people. His achievements in extracurricular activities appeared surprising, given his introverted personality, yet this success was repeated consistently. He was neither flashy nor ostentatious. Those who got to know him, however, found him to be a “people person,” adept at persuasion in small groups, a stimulating conversationalist, tolerant, meticulous about details, yet someone who also grasped the big picture. Contented and even tempered, he did not flaunt his views and could compromise, yet Bert was firm about principles nonetheless. When he walked across campus, most students knew him. Friends stuck to him like cement. A group of Stanford friends became the core of his later relief operations and his public career. “I believe one of the great elements in his success has been his ability to do any part of any job,” a classmate explained. The classmate, a fraternity man, said that Hoover had bids from many fraternities, including his own, because they believed he would add prestige to their ranks, yet the young geologist declined for financial reasons and because he considered fraternities elitist. His later success did not surprise his Stanford friends. Moreover, “It is worth mentioning that none of his old pals were ever jealous of him,” his fraternity friend added. “This is characteristic of all those who have ever been associated with him—they are ever after boosters of Herbert Hoover.”²⁴

Hoover enjoyed a spectacular career at Stanford. The climax occurred during act 4, his senior year, when he fell in love. As with many things about his young life, it appeared to be a fluke, yet flukes happened to Hoover with a remarkable consistency. The Iowa-born Quaker who arrived at Stanford to major in geology fell for a woman who not only was of Quaker heritage and born a few miles from his own hometown in Iowa, but also was Stanford’s first female geology major, and only the fourth in the nation. The two were equally smitten. The first love of his life, she would be the last. The beautiful, bright, athletic sorority girl with an iridescent personality had many suitors, yet she chose one of the shiest and least sophisticated with women and, superficially, among the most awkward in social situations. Meeting Lou Henry supplied the one element missing in Hoover’s busy, rewarding life, which quickly became the fullest and most joyful it had ever been.²⁵

Professor Branner was the maestro who orchestrated the introduction, asking Bert to help Lou ascertain the geologic era of a laboratory rock specimen. Lou already knew Bert by reputation and had been eager to meet him. He was not quite what she had expected, as he had assumed gigantic proportions in her imagination on the basis of the pump-priming Branner had done. Lou craved geology and the outdoor life as much as her paramour did. She could ride, shoot, fish, hike, camp, and bicycle and was equally adept in the wilderness or dancing in the ballroom. Despite her tomboy upbringing by a nature-loving father, she possessed all the subtle feminine graces. “She had that blush of a woman,” one of her friends observed. “If she has it, she doesn’t need anything else. If she doesn’t, nothing else matters.” Hoover recognized her qualities. “As I was Dr. Branner’s handy boy, I felt it my duty to aid the young lady in her studies, both in the laboratory and in the field,” he wryly wrote.²⁶

As a couple they had complementary assets. Vivacious, well-read, and an articulate conversationalist with an appreciation for humor as well as for the fine arts, Lou was a fearless, adventurous woman with radiant blue eyes and a contagious grin, consistently upbeat and gifted linguistically. Bert’s new paramour became fluent in five foreign tongues and in addition read Latin. She was a brilliant creative writer in genres as varied as fiction, biography, and lyrical descriptions of nature. Still, the ultimate arm of her intellectual arsenal was common sense. Her mind was comparable to Bert’s, quick and deep, yet she had a nurturing, feminine grace and lacked his ferocious drive. Her passion for geology, however, was comparable. She did not want to become a professor, or the president of a woman’s college, of which she was fully capable. She wanted to become a professional mining engineer like her future husband, to climb down mine shafts and judge the quality of ores, to work in the outdoors, to do what male mining engineers normally did. That was an unrealistic aspiration in her time, but she dreamed big. It was highly unlikely that a mining company would hire a woman, or that male miners, often laboring in isolated, rugged environments, among rough men whose avocation was original sin, would accept a woman as their boss. Yet during the first years of her marriage to Bert, she came as close to realizing that ambition as was possible under the circumstances, accompanying her husband almost everywhere, providing analysis and common sense, and enjoying the fulfillment of “roughing it.” In those early years before public responsibilities overwhelmed Hoover, it was an exceptionally companionate marriage.²⁷

Some of Lou’s sorority sisters considered Bert beneath her social status, yet social status meant little to Lou, nor was she deterred by the opinions of others. In fact, she admired Hoover more because he earned his education the hard way. Neither of them took shortcuts. Certainly she had potential suitors who were wealthy and polished, who were articulate and descended from aristocratic families. Yet Lou was not a superficial person. She could see inside Bert and she understood and appreciated him as no other woman ever did. If he was a diamond in the rough, he was a diamond nonetheless, with a noble heart. He treated her with respect but not with false flattery. She admired his mind and his tenacity. Yet Lou was also fiercely independent—like Bert, an individualist. “It isn’t so important what others think of you,” she said, “as what you feel inside yourself.” Their attraction was entirely mutual. Later, Lou told a friend that she had majored in geology at Stanford, “but I have majored in Herbert Hoover ever since.” There was not an iota of competition, no one-upmanship. From the time they met until she was buried they never argued publicly.²⁸

The relationship quickly progressed from the dating of rocks to the dating of couples, with hardly a rocky moment. One Friday, Bert, dressed in his best double-breasted blue suit, called on Lou at Roble Hall. With her polished social graces, Lou was more sophisticated than he was, had seen more of America, and had far more experience with men than Hoover had with women. Yet she was a freshman while Bert was a senior. Her route to Stanford and geology was circuitous. She had earned a degree in education from the California State Normal School (now San José State University), taught third grade for about a year in her hometown of Monterey, California, and then worked as an assistant cashier at her father’s bank. Inspired by a lecture by the touring Professor Branner, she took the audacious step of enrollment at Stanford as a geology major, a decision supported by both her family and Branner.²⁹

With only two semesters before Bert graduated, the couple telescoped their courtship while Hoover experienced the busiest year of his young life, yet the relationship continued to gain momentum. Bert became a social butterfly, at least by his standards. By the spring of 1895, the couple was inseparable. Together they attended the junior hop, the charity ball, and the senior hop. Bert thoroughly enjoyed himself and Lou helped draw out his introverted personality. They also enjoyed outdoor activities together. The new campus provided clubs that specialized in hiking, camping, and fishing. Often groups of students traveled by buggy, horse, or mule to the mountains, or explored new beaches. Hoover and Lou stuck together on field trips sponsored by the Geology Department, which enabled the pair to combine work with pleasure. Sometimes the pair strolled together, hand in hand, on the pastoral campus. Bert and Lou felt comfortable together in silence, simply soaking in natural beauty. They could communicate intuitively; there were long, contented intervals without speaking in which each could feel the other’s presence. As he won Lou’s heart, Hoover’s horizons expanded beyond the Ozarks or the High Sierras. Before Bert’s graduation in May 1895 they had probably reached a tacit agreement to marry, though Lou included caveats. She must first earn her geology degree and Bert would need a job that could support a family. Meanwhile, they would correspond and visit when possible. Unfortunately, most of their correspondence has been lost or destroyed, and they saw each other only a few times during Lou’s sophomore and junior years. Bert had some doubts that he could hold on to such a desirable woman for three years, at a distance. Lou wondered if Bert might become so immersed in his work that she would lose him to his ambition. Yet the bonding proved permanent; commitment was irrevocable between them, and neither ever seriously considered another partner.³⁰

The university did not penalize Hoover for returning late from his summer of mapping with Lindgren, and gave the star student eight credits for his summer surveying. He would need every one of those credits to graduate. During the fall semester of 1894, Hoover plunged into his work as treasurer, reorganizing student financing and implementing bookkeeping methods that would be adopted by his successors. He complained that administration of the athletic teams, which generated the greatest revenue but also incurred the largest debts, consumed too much of his time. Yet Hoover was so conscientious that, although he achieved his goal of slicing through the Gordian knot of student finances, his own grades suffered. The aspiring geologist was pulled in different directions: a social whirl with Lou, the mundane daily grind that combined academic work with part-time jobs to support himself, and student government. The job as treasurer required infinite patience, yet he felt that it needed doing and he earned the appreciation of his fellow students for his unselfish, unremunerated attention to the task at hand. If Diogenes had set out to find an honest man on the Stanford campus, he could have stopped by Bert’s room at Romero Hall.³¹

Bert redoubled his classroom efforts, exploited his abilities to prioritize and to manage stress, and exerted every ounce of his resolute stamina. He did not compromise on his commitments to Lou, to the student association, or to his part-time jobs. Neither did he dodge any of the tough courses. During his final semester, he took history, ethics, hygiene, economics, and three geology courses. This involved a steady grind in and outside class, yet Bert thrived and reaped personal and academic rewards. He had to obtain university permission to carry an overload, yet he focused on graduating on time because he was exhausting his money. Miraculously, he passed nineteen credits, removed the conditions from the fall courses, and could add eight hours for his summer work with Lindgren toward graduation. Bert’s final semester represented the conquest of mind over matter.³²

Yet a major roadblock stood between Bert and his AB in geology: English 1B. Since failing it on his entrance exam and being “conditioned” to remove the deficiency, he had flunked the dreaded exam on every subsequent try. But another fluke soon appeared. One of Hoover’s sympathetic professors—and there were many—found it incomprehensible that Stanford would deny a diploma to the most exceptional geology student it had ever produced. The noted paleontologist Professor J. P. Smith pondered how Hoover could write scientific papers with impeccable stylistic clarity, yet repeatedly fail the 1B exam. He finally solved the riddle. As a student, and later as an author, Hoover infinitely, patiently, inexorably revised his work until the meaning was precise and the prose and grammar were impeccable. He could not do this on the 1B exam because he was timed. Smith took Hoover’s best paper, had him revise it out of class for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and even neatness, and brought it to the chair of the English Department. He argued that no student who could communicate so clearly, and who had satisfied his professors by writing exacting scientific treatises, should be denied a Stanford degree. Although this was a bit irregular, the English chair agreed and scribbled “passed” across the top of the paper. It had been a close call, closer yet because Hoover could not have financed an additional semester. Stanford had a heart, and Hoover would never forget it.³³

It would be misleading to overemphasize the magnitude of Hoover’s multifarious activities as an undergraduate without also remembering the sound education the young geologist achieved in the classroom and in the laboratory. For a small, private university in the foundational stage, Stanford attracted an extraordinarily talented faculty and student body. An unusual number of its graduates became successful in law, politics, science, athletics, and a vast array of other pursuits. Moreover, many of them remained connected and reached out to one another across barriers of time and distance. The engineers were a particularly close, gifted group. Professor Branner grounded his students firmly in mathematics, geology, chemistry, physics, and civil engineering to a greater degree than most prominent professors. Though rigorous, he gave them unbounded individual attention and permitted them the freedom to explore. Inside and outside the classroom, Hoover absorbed a first-rate education and a love of his craft and of his alma mater that remained with him all his life. To some extent, before and after Stanford, Hoover was self-educated, but this education was layered upon the sound, solid schooling he received at Stanford. In his professional life, he always gave preference to Stanford engineers.³⁴

On May 29, 1895, Hoover received his AB degree. He did not make the rounds to tell his friends good-bye, because he felt confident he would see them again. His idealism had been sharpened, not blunted, by his college experience, yet the practical side of Bert Hoover always remained dominant. He had set foot on the Stanford quad as an unsophisticated seventeen-year-old from a small-town upbringing, raised almost exclusively by members of his own religious sect. He was leaving his alma mater a professionally trained engineer who had forged abundant friendships that were destined to endure and were bound in common endeavors. He had learned to be efficient at managing his time and energy and had acquired an appreciation for his own leadership abilities. He had found he could be elected to office, yet he had also learned that popularity mattered less to him than making a contribution. He discovered that he could match wits with the best students in California and felt confident he could succeed in the wider world. Hoover was still naïve when he left Stanford, but he was also flexible and ambitious, and the budding mining engineer had demonstrated an ability to get along with people. Like most college graduates, he had mixed feelings. He was leaving a world he loved and entering an uncertain, larger universe.

In the late spring of 1895, the newly minted engineer stepped into a world that would challenge his wit, grit, and perseverance. The nation was writhing in the throes of the Panic of 1893, which made finding any type of engineering job almost hopeless. Yet Hoover had beaten the odds before. Those who knew him at Stanford knew that betting against him was imprudent.