As Ding Saw Herbert Hoover by Jay N. Darling

Though these differences were often made public, Hoover and Darling maintained an interesting private relationship that appeared to be based on a genuine concern for the well-being of one another. (The) resulting friendship was based on mutual respect, a love of the outdoors, and individual political interest that often resulted in a difference of opinion. Those early meetings between Hoover and Ding Darling began what was to be a forty-three year correspondence between these two Iowa icons. From that time on invitations came intermittently and I got the impression that the calls came when he got fed up with the yes-men around him and wanted conversation with a free-wheeler from the uninhibited Middle West. Could I come to Washington for a week-end visit? No, he had nothing particularly in mind but he’d like to know what I was thinking about. One afternoon a call came through from the White House to my room in the Register and Tribune building. Not until ten years later (1929), after Hoover had been elected President, did Ding have any more face-to-face contacts with the man from West Branch.

Hoover that evening and realized that the cartoons that I had been drawing had not the slightest resemblance to the man on the platform. I recall what a shock I got when I first saw Mr. The cartoonists of the county (I, among them) were having a terrible time trying to catch a likeness of this stranger who had suddenly captured the imagination of the public. I remember that I had a special objective in mind. (Ding) Darling – Click here to read more about Ding Darling. Hoover was given the job of bringing practical relief to this suffering, and as a good Quaker, this job of social justice hit Hoover’s sweet spot, and as an engineer, he knew exactly how to plan and orchestrate an international relief effort of this magnitude. Children were starving, people were dying. During WW I (1914-1918), Germany’s invasion of other European nations left the continent broken and hurting. Hoover was on a national tour, soliciting support for his European Relief Fund. The other made it big poking fun at politicians.ĭing Darling, political cartoonist with The Des Moines Register, first met Herbert Hoover in 1919 at the Ft. The other was an artist with a bubbly, entertaining personality. One was an engineer – quiet, exacting and thoughtful. Born two years apart, and dying two years apart, they really had more differences than they had in common.

As Ding Saw Herbert Hoover by Jay N. Darling