The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch reopened today after being closed for 18 months for a 20 million dollar renovation.
Hoover’s great grandson, Allan Hoover III, presided over the event. He says the museum tells one of America’s most remarkable stories. “The story of a young boy deep in Quaker faith from West Branch, Iowa, orphaned by the age of 10, graduated with a pioneer class at Stanford University, setting him on a path to become a world-renowned and extremely successful mining engineer,” he says.
Hoover says that would be enough for most people by the time they turned 40, but it wasn’t enough for Herbert Hoover. “He changed the course to serve the public by creating humanitarian organizations on a scale never before seen. His wife, Lou Henry Hoover, played an important role in these efforts, raising funds back home and working behind the scenes to assure success of these critical operations,” Hoover says. He says his great grandfather helped save millions of people from starvation following World War One and then went on to become the 31st President of the United States. And after a complicated and difficult presidency, he didn’t stop.
“He rose from the ashes of his political defeat by becoming a hyperactive ex-president, writing speeches and books arguing against New Deal policies And he traveled the globe to further World War II relief efforts at the request of President Truman and then later other responsibilities serving President Eisenhower,” Hoover says.
He says it was a life that was extraordinary in its service to his country and others. “Toward the end of Hoover’s life, he would recount that he had much, seen much of peoples, of governments, and of their institutions, and of other human woes,” he says. “He counted 50 nations with which he had something to do, but not as a tourist. He worked with those people. In his professional years, he brought to foreign lands American technology with its train of greater productivity and better living.”
Hoover says his great grandfather cherished coming back to West Branch. “To Hoover coming back to America and his visits here to West Branch was a reaffirmation of the glory of America and his freedom of opportunity. He said he had every honor to which any man could aspire. There is no place on the whole earth, he said, except here in America where all the sons of man can have a chance at this life,” he says.
The reopening comes 64 years after Herbert Hoover held the original dedication of his library and museum. “Today is a celebration of what is possible when people come together with a shared vision. Years of planning, generosity, craftsmanship, and unwavering dedication have transformed this museum into an experience that will educate, inspire, and welcome visitors for generations to come,” Hoover says. Allan Hoover thanked the governor and Iowa lawmakers who helped push for funds for the renovation. He says the reimagining of the museum is a reminder that Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover’s story belongs not only just to his family, but to everyone.
