Description:

Hoover Herbert

Hoover Meets with Truman & Corresponds with Constituent, who Bashes FDR, the "Prima Donna"

 

1p typed letter signed by former 31st U.S. President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) as "Herbert Hoover" at center right. Written at the Waldorf-Astoria Towers hotel in New York City on June 8, 1945. On watermarked cream stationery with "Herbert Hoover" embossed in black at top. Expected light paper folds and a few extra wrinkles. Else near fine. 7.25" x 10.5". Also comes with a letter from Hoover's letter recipient, further discussed below.

 

Herbert Hoover penned this letter Dr. Robert Alway Peers of Colfax, California, his friend and frequent correspondent, in part:

 

"I greatly appreciate your writing to me. I had a pleasant conversation with the President. He certainly wishes to go the very best for the American people."

 

"[T]he President" referred to 34th U.S. President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), who had invited Hoover to the White House on May 28, 1945, about ten days earlier. (33rd U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died while in office on April 12, 1945.) Truman, a dedicated Democrat and FDR's former Vice President, seemed an unlikely candidate to call upon Hoover, a Republican ex-president, for strategic advice. Yet Truman believed that the only living ex-president should be consulted upon matters of state. In this way, Truman sharply contrasted from FDR in his treatment of Hoover. Hoover and FDR had had a very strained relationship. FDR never invited his predecessor to the White House during his 12-year-long presidency, and the two men diverged significantly in terms of ideology and policy.

 

After their meeting in late May, President Truman appointed Hoover as the honorary chairman of the Famine Emergency Committee, founded in 1946 to address food insecurities in war-ravaged Western Europe. (Hoover had a stellar World War I fundraising and relief record. Between 1917-1919, Hoover chaired the Commission for Relief in Belgium and the American Relief Administration, two organizations which mobilized food supplies for displaced war refugees.) Later during Truman's presidency, he asked Hoover to head an eponymous commission whose findings resulted in major changes to the federal infrastructure.

 

The lot also includes the letter from Hoover's correspondent that the ex-president's reply. Very good condition overall, with light expected wrinkles, and a few minor chipped edges.

 

In the 1p typed carbon copy of a June 1, 1945 letter addressed to Hoover as "My dear Chief", Dr. Peers wrote in part, with unchanged spelling and punctuation:

 

"Nothing in many years has pleased me more than to have President Truman afford himself the opportunity of conferring with you at the White House…

 

While President Truman has promised to carry out F.D.R.'s policies he apparently, in assuming the mantle dropped by the departed, failed to inherit the wilfulness of the world's most famous Prima Donna. He seems to be willing and anxious to learn everything possible in order to properly meet and fulfill the obligations of his high office. It is my earnest hope that Mr. Truman will consult you frequently and put into practice the advice you are so well equipped, by training and by experience, to hive him."

  

Hoover's correspondent, Dr. Robert Alway Peers (1875-1970), was a Canadian émigré who relocated to Colfax, a town in northern California located about halfway in between Sacramento and Carson City, Nevada, in the early twentieth-century. Dr. Peers became a world-renowned specialist in tuberculosis treatment. He also served as the mayor of Colfax between 1922-1945.

 

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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