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Anniversary of Hoover’s state funeral nears and ceremony set to remember him
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · October 09, 2014
In November 1963, organizers of President John F. Kennedy’s state funeral needed to move fast. The young president’s assassination shocked the nation, and certainly no one was prepared to bury him.
Yet plans were already in the works for a state funeral for President Herbert Hoover. He suffered ill health for more than a year and organizers for his state funeral had already been at work.
So the organizers for JFK’s funeral borrowed the template for Hoover’s state funeral, and the 35th president was laid to rest with a ceremony worthy of a world leader, based on the plan for the 31st president.
Eleven months later, on Oct. 20, 1964, Hoover would die of natural causes. That was 50 years ago.
To mark the anniversary of the state funeral that reached from New York to Washington D.C. to Cedar Rapids to West Branch, the Hoover Presidential Foundation will present a ceremony 3 p.m. Oct. 25 that reflects some of the details to honor the West Branch native.
October 25 is the 50th anniversary of Hoover’s burial in West Branch.
The state funeral included enormous amounts of detail, Foundation Executive Director Jerry Fleagle noted. A detailed account from death to burial fills 30 pages, not only telling what would happen, where and when, but naming noteworthy people in attendance at each stop, down to almost the minute they arrived.
On Oct. 20, 1964, Hoover’s body was placed in the main chapel of Universal Funeral Chapel in New York.
“The casket was left open,” read the account. “A few minutes later, Herbert C. Hoover, Jr., arrived; after his visit the casket was sealed and would not be opened again.”
Near the end of the account, the account closes in West Branch: “At sunset on 25 October, a winding line of people still was moving slowly past the final resting place of the nation’s thirty-first President.”
Some 75,000 people arrived in West Branch to witness the burial.
“Never have there been so many people in West Branch,” Fleagle said.
Foundation Communications Manager Brad Reiners noted that there were 30,000 people who visited Hoover in the Washington rotunda, less than half the number in West Branch.
“That is kind of interesting,” he said.
Norman “Buzz” Albin served in the Iowa City National Guard Medical Co. and he and three others were assigned to the Cedar Rapids airport as medics from before Hoover’s casket and numerous VIPs arrived from Washington until the VIPs returned and left.
He said there was an incredible amount of security, in part due to unrest on college campuses and the importance of the visitors.
“We were a year away from the Kent State (shooting) situation,” Albin said. “People in Iowa City were going around blowing up waste receptacles and breaking windows. Security was very tight.”
So many members of the military surrounded the airport, creating a human wall of security, that they could reach out and touch the next man, Albin said. No one was allowed on the second floor of the airport, no one was allowed to approach the planes without permission, and even the Hoover family was given a specific place to stand inside the fence.
“I never could prove this, but I heard that some of the sergeants and officers had live ammunition,” he said.
Asked if he thought the security level was due to this being a presidential funeral procession, Albin said no.
“Under no circumstances was anybody going to bother the foreign dignitaries or the VIPs,” he said. “Herbert Hoover’s body had no special security.”
Albin’s duty kept him at the Cedar Rapids airport. A line of 13 Cadillac limousines would drive the VIPs to West Branch, wait for the ceremony to end and drive them back to the airport. He said the limos were high-performance cars which ran close to 100 miles per hour down State Route 84, U.S. 218 and Interstate 80, and back — since all vehicles were barred from the roads, the limos encountered no traffic. The ceremony in West Branch was relatively short, about a half hour to 45 minutes, Fleagle said.
“They were back in Cedar Rapids in about an hour,” Albin said of the limos full of VIPs.
Albin also drove a Redi-Mix truck that hauled concrete to the burial site. Working in construction, he saw the former Crestview and Cookson buildings go up and get torn down, so he’s thankful that the Hoover gravesite and birthplace as well as the entire park campus, remain.
“I’ve always been very thankful that Hoover was born here,” he said.
FYI
Some highlights of the 50th anniversary marking President Herbert Hoover’s state funeral, which will occur 3 p.m. Oct. 25 at the gravesite:
• Several members of Hoover’s family will be present
• Rev. Ruthie Tippin, who once oversaw West Branch Friends Church, a Quaker church like Hoover’s, will read the eulogy delivered by Dr. D. Elton Trueblood in 1964
• Representatives of the Kingdom of Belgium will attend and lay a wreath
• The Eastern Iowa Brass Band will perform
A full schedule will be released closer to the event.
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