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Quinn: ‘Even in death ... a unifying moment’
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · October 31, 2014
After describing the life of the 31st president and West Branch native, keynote speaker and president of the World Food Organization Kenneth Quinn said Herbert Hoover lived “with a heart filled with energy and empathy for 90 years.”
Quinn stood at the podium before the gravesites of Hoover and wife Lou Henry Hoover Saturday afternoon, marking the 50th anniversary since the end of the six-day stretch from when The Great Humanitarian breathed his last in New York until he was lowered into the knoll overlooking his birthplace cottage in West Branch.
Quinn thought it ironic that Hoover’s state funeral should start in New York where Wall Street’s stock market crashed to begin the Great Depression, for which Hoover would be unjustly blamed, and that the funeral should continue on to Washington D.C., where “his embattled presidency had ended in his defeat for re-election.”
Yet he noted that both Democratic President Lyndon Johnson and Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, along with their vice-presidential running mates, appeared at the same hour to pay their respects to the former leader of the Free World. The two bitter opponents set aside a nasty campaign to occupy the same space, even if briefly, to remember a man who crossed party lines to organize relief efforts that saved millions of people.
“Even in death, Hoover provided a unifying moment,” Quinn noted.
He also noted the contrast between the sheer size of New York, the epicenter of government power in D.C., and the simple beginnings provided Hoover in West Branch.
“It is amazing to consider that during Hoover’s lifetime the technological transformations were such that when he was born in West Branch no one could have imagined such things as electricity, telephones or motorized farm machinery,” Quinn said. “And yet he lived to watch football and baseball on color TV and to honor astronauts who circled the earth in space capsules.”
He noted that the fields surrounding what would be Hoover’s final resting place were hurriedly harvested to make room for parking for some 75,000 to 80,000 estimated visitors.
“The public was then allowed to file past the grave,” Quinn said. “Their numbers were so great that even as the glowing Iowa autumnal sun was setting to the west and an intense red reflection illuminated the sky, the long winding line of mourners was still moving past the burial site paying a final tribute to a son of Iowa who at long last had returned home.”
He noted that his humanitarian efforts led to him being nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize, “which he should have won at least once.”
Today, that unifying spirit continues, Quinn said, bringing Republicans and Democrats together “around Iowa’s magnificent agricultural and humanitarian heritage” through the World Food Prize’s Hoover-Wallace Dinner.
Dr. Norman Borlaug, who found ways to breed plants so they would produce crops in intense environments and feed more people, and Hoover had fundamental similarities.
“It is remarkable to consider that Hoover and Borlaug — the two individuals credited with saving the most human beings from hunger and starvation in all human history — both had their origins in small Iowa towns just 130 miles apart,” Quinn said.
And both of them kept Iowa close to their hearts, he said.
“And, ironically, it is here, so far from all of those places where Hoover spent his life and to which he delivered so much sustenance to hungry people, that his uncommon achievements can be seen most clearly,” Quinn said. “Fifty years from now or even at the beginning of the 22nd century, Herbert Hoover will still be seen beckoning future generations of Americans to follow his example and to continue the proud legacy of alleviating hunger wherever it exists in the world.”
Organized by the Hoover Presidential Foundation, the Celebration of Life ceremony included the Eastern Iowa Brass Band playing music selections from Hoover’s 1964 ceremony, and Pastor Ruthie Tippin reading the original eulogy by Dr. Elton Trueblood.
Wreaths were laid by representatives of Belgium, the White House and the Hoover family. Other speakers included Hoover National Historic Site Superintendent Pete Swisher, honorary counsel of Belgium for Iowa and Western Illinois Patrick Van Nevel, and Iowa National Guard Maj. Gen. Tim Orr.
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