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Lot 132
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Former President Herbert Hoover Sends General Groves Touching Acknowledgment of Tribute
Former President Herbert Hoover Sends General Groves Touching Acknowledgment of Tribute
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Description:

Hoover Herbert

Former President Herbert Hoover Sends General Groves Touching Acknowledgment of Tribute

 

HERBERT HOOVER, Typed Letter Signed, to Leslie R. Groves, July 28, 1954, San Francisco, CA. 1 p., 7.25" x 10.5". Includes copy of Groves’s Typed Letters to Hoover, January 29, 1954, July 20, 1954. Very good.

 

Excerpts

Hoover to Groves:

“That was indeed a most gracious letter.”

Groves to Hoover, July 20, 1954:

“As you approach your eightieth birthday, I wish to reaffirm to you what you already know, I am sure; that is the great respect I have for the accomplishments of those eighty years and my personal affection for you. I have considered it a great privilege, since my retirement from the Army, to have had the pleasure of seeing you from time to time and of receiving your counsel and knowing that that counsel was available to me. May I offer every good wish for the future and the hope that your stay at the Grove will prepare you for the celebration in Iowa.”

 

Former President Herbert Hoover celebrated his eightieth birthday on August 10, 1954, at a celebration in his honor in West Branch, Iowa.

Prior to the event, Hoover took his annual fishing and walking vacation at Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, California. The Bohemian Grove campground belongs to a San Francisco-based gentlemen’s club. In mid-July each year, Bohemian Grove hosts a two-week encampment of some of the most prominent men in the world. In September 1942, a Manhattan Project planning meeting took place there. After forty years of membership, men can earn “Old Guard” status. On March 19, 1953, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, Herbert Hoover became a member of the Old Guard, having joined the club in 1913.

 

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was born in Iowa into a Quaker family, but both of his parents died before he was ten years old. After living with relatives in Iowa and Oregon, Hoover became one of the first students to attend newly established Stanford University, from which he graduated in 1895. Hoover worked as a mining engineer in California, Australia, and China. He became an independent mining consultant in 1908 and traveled the world until the outbreak of World War I, building his reputation and fortune. When the war began, he helped organize the return of 120,000 Americans from Europe and spearheaded humanitarian relief efforts in Belgium, from his administrative base in London. After the United States entered the war, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to head the U.S. Food Administration. He lobbied for the job and agreed to accept no salary. After the war, the U.S. Food Administration became the American Relief Administration, which, at its height, fed 10.5 million people daily. Elected President of the United States in 1928, Hoover took office less than eight months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 plunged the nation into the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Hoover’s 1932 bid for reelection. After he left office, Hoover was a harsh critic of Roosevelt’s New Deal and U.S. entry into World War II. He particularly opposed an alliance with the Soviet Union though he worked to provide relief to countries in Nazi-occupied Europe. After the war, he became friends with President Harry S. Truman despite their ideological differences. He helped organize a school meals program in West Germany and chaired a commission to reorganize the executive departments in the U.S. government.

 

Leslie R. Groves Jr. (1896-1970) was a United States Army General with the Corps of Engineers who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. Born in New York to a Protestant pastor who became an army chaplain, Groves graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1918 in a course shortened because of World War I. He entered the Corps of Engineers and gained promotions to major by 1940. In 1941, he was charged with overseeing the construction of the Pentagon, the largest office building in the world, with more than five million square feet. Disappointed that he had not received a combat assignment, Groves instead took charge of the Manhattan Project, designed to develop an atomic bomb. He continued nominally to supervise the Pentagon project to avoid suspicion, gained promotion to brigadier general, and began his work in September 1942. The project headquarters was initially in the War Department building in Washington, but in August 1943, moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer selected the site in Los Alamos, New Mexico, for a laboratory, and Groves pushed successfully for Oppenheimer to be placed in charge. Groves was in charge of obtaining critical uranium ores internationally and collecting military intelligence on Axis atomic research. Promoted to major general in March 1944, Groves received the Distinguished Service Medal for his work on the Manhattan Project after the war. In 1947, Groves became chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. He received a promotion to lieutenant general in January 1948, just days before meeting with Army Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower, who reviewed a long list of complaints against Groves. Assured that he would not become Chief of Engineers, Groves retired in February 1948. From 1948 to 1961, he was a vice president of Sperry Rand, an equipment and electronics firm. After retirement, he served as president of the West Point alumni association and wrote a book on the Manhattan Project, published in 1962. 

 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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