Dave (@Grumpy_Hoosier)

Post by Echoes of War says: Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States, and his wife would speak fluent Mandarin Chinese to each other in the White House whenever they wanted a private conversation nobody around them could understand. They weren't showing off. Before politics, Hoover was a globe-trotting mining engineer who lived and worked in China, and both he and his wife Lou became fluent in Mandarin there. So decades later, standing in the White House surrounded by staff and guests, the President and First Lady could just switch to Chinese to gossip or trade secret comments in the middle of the room, and no eavesdropper had a clue. His pre-presidency life was genuinely remarkable. Hoover was an orphan who worked his way up to become a self-made millionaire mining engineer, then walked away from business to become one of the greatest humanitarians of the century. During and after World War I, he organized food relief that saved something like nine million people in Belgium and France from starvation, and he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five separate times. As President, he refused to keep his salary and quietly gave all of it away to charity and to his own staff. To stay in shape in office, he basically invented his own sport. His doctor came up with a brutal game called "Hooverball," a mix of volleyball and medicine ball where players hurl a heavy 6-pound ball over a high net. Hoover played it at 7 a.m. six days a week, rain or shine, with a rotating group of cabinet members and officials who got nicknamed his "Medicine Ball Cabinet." Here's the tragic irony, though. For all his talent and genuine goodness, Hoover had the terrible luck of being President when the Great Depression hit. The economy collapsed, shantytowns full of homeless families sprang up across the country, and people bitterly named them "Hoovervilles" after him. One of the most capable, generous men ever to hold the office is mostly remembered for a disaster he couldn't stop. So the real Herbert Hoover: spoke secret Mandarin in the White House, went from orphan to millionaire to a man who saved millions from starvation, gave away his entire salary, invented his own punishing morning sport, and still got his name slapped on the worst slums of the Depression. That's a President. My comment: I'm a fan of Herbert Hoover. I know Democrats and communists want to smear his name and blame him for the depression. I don't think he's to blame. I don't think the FDR administration managed the depression any better than Hoover did.