5. Herbert Hoover cared so little for his children that he visited his critically ill son just once during a ten-month hospitalization with Spanish flu in 1918
Herbert Clark Hoover, an American businessman who served first as Secretary of Commerce during the 1920s, was the 31st President of the United States between 1929 and 1933. Presiding over the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Hoover imposed foreign tariffs and blamed migrants for the crisis whilst opposing federal relief efforts to disastrous effect. Emigrating to Western Australia in 1897 to work in the gold-mining industry, in 1899 Hoover briefly returned to the United States to marry his college sweetheart, Lou Henry. Producing two children, Herbert Charles Hoover in 1903 and Allan Henry Hoover in 1907, Hoover was notoriously absent from family life.
Continuing to travel for work, overseeing the humanitarian efforts of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Hoover formed few meaningful bonds with his children. In one egregious incident, Hoover’s eldest son contracted influenza in 1918 during the global pandemic. Hospitalizing and almost killing the fourteen-year-old, rendering him hearing impaired for the rest of his life, Hoover Jr. spent more than ten months in recovery during which time his father visited just once. To the credit of their mother, and the children themselves, both sons resisted the vices which plagued the children of prior absentee presidents and became successful in their own right.
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