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Editorial: Preserving ideals in bronze
Op-Ed · September 07, 2017
It is not enough to simply thank Connie Laughlin for spearheading the effort that raised the money to put a statue of President Herbert Hoover in front of the elementary school that bears his name.
It’s how she worked with others to decide how they should design the bronze statue, what to put on the nearby plaque, and the words spoken at the statue’s dedication. Two of those three will remain at the site near the main entrance, the third will exist in media reports, recordings and any paper records made by the speakers.
We would encourage those who made speeches to save their remarks and give copies to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum and the West Branch Heritage Museum. The reasons for placing a statue ought to be preserved as much as the statue itself. The “why” is very, very important to recording history.
We will focus, though, on the messages sent by what most people — especially children who attend the school — will see day after day, year after year.
The plaque contains a list of those who donated, each of whom has their own personal reasons for digging into their pockets. Some are Hoover descendants who also helped promote and design the statue. Some work at the school or sit on the Board of Education. Some work for the Hoover Library, Hoover National Historic Site or Hoover Presidential Foundation. Some value West Branch history; some value the concept that in order to keep from repeating the mistakes of history, all must learn from it.
Hoover did make mistakes. No doubt topping the list are the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs’ devastating consequence of pushing us further into the Great Depression.
But that is an important lesson, too — for us.
Take a moment to chat with Hoover Site Superintendent Pete Swisher or Hoover Library Director Thomas Schwartz and you will find they both have stories of how visitors, especially those of the older generation, entered the grounds associating Hoover with just the Depression, but left with a better understanding and newfound appreciation for the man who did so much more than that, even if one only focuses on his four years in office.
Our memories cannot hold every detail of our own lives, much less those of other people’s, so we have no choice but to simplify to begin the process of recall. And while remembering some major facets of Hoover’s life will conjure up details not forthcoming at the onset, even with time, pen and paper there is only so much we can bring forth.
So we would also ask that those who donated to the statue also write down why they did so. They may not wish to share those reasons with a museum, but they ought to share it with family, or, at the very least, keep it to remind themselves.
The plaque quotes a sentence from Hoover’s speech dedicating the school in 1954, “There is no greater honor that can come to a man than to have a school named after him.”
While many associate Hoover with the Great Depression, some criticize him for doing too much, while others criticize him for doing too little. A generic look at Hoover suggests that his laissez-faire attitude toward the economy led to do-nothing policies, which made the Great Depression worse. Obviously this is in direct contradiction to Smoot-Hawley. Even “conventional wisdom” can be very wrong. A good education can separate fact from fiction, and Hoover clearly valued that.
This should also beg another question: If one believes Hoover has a bad reputation, why is it that 17 states named 62 schools after him over three decades during and after the Depression?
At the bottom of the plaque is an important detail: That Hoover is, to date, the only U.S. President born in Iowa. What did that tell us about himself? The voters? That time in U.S. history? The culture?
Then there is the design of the statue itself. Hoover is not standing on a high pedestal, or even a low one, holding a coat lapel or a sword or a horse’s reins. He does not look serious or resolute or in deep contemplation.
Instead, he sits back on a park bench with his arm over the back looking cheerful and welcoming. This was entirely intentional, as Laughlin found inspiration for this idea when seeing a similar statue of John Lennon in Cuba.
Each one of these messages — the statue and its design, the comments on the plaque, the people who donated, the location of the statue — ought not to serve as the complete and final message about the man and his 90 years on earth. These messages are only meant as stepping-off points for understanding, for hooks meant to draw one deeper into knowledge.
There’s also a question on whether Hoover, a humble Quaker, would even want a statue of himself at all. He often declined honors, so perhaps not. But he also loved children and the perspectives of such an age, and valued nurturing children’s potential. No doubt he would welcome to a school a symbol that inspired the same thoughts and emotions in others, especially to the parents who bear the greatest responsibility in rearing those children, and the educators appointed to help in that effort.
Perhaps the 31st president of the United States, knowing that his life as the Great Humanitarian had an enormous impact on the world that resonates still today, would compromise with those of us who feel it important to remember not only his life but the ideals he practiced.
We certainly should want to preserve the ideals, which are timeless, even though it is also necessary to remember the mistakes, of which the impact will fade so long as we learn from them.
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