Little Miss Hoover

I have been lucky to have a few opportunities to record some interviews with some of my grandparents. While I was living with Gma Lu I picked up a pen and paper any time she would begin to say, "I remember when. . ." In other cases, I missed opportunities, such as with Gma Willie, who has lost much of her memory to Alzheimer's. In some cases, family members are gone long before I was old enough to even ask anything. Richard Bond died when I was four, and I only have one specific memory of him. Last year I was transferring cassette recordings to MP3 files on my computer when I realized that the voice I was hearing on the recording was Gpa Bond. I burst into tears, as I had never HEARD his voice before. It was amazing.

About twenty years ago, my Aunt Marji and one of my cousins recorded an interview with Lu Penrose Bond. Gma Lu also wrote down some recollections from her childhood in a pamphlet that she shared with family members. One of those stories is about her time as Little Miss Hoover. . .



Recollections of Lu Penrose Bond
(transcribed by Lora Nehring from a cassette tape recorded by Marji Castle 2 May 1982)

"Another thing in my early childhood was when I was about seven. I may have been eight. But I know I was going to Webster School at the time, there was a lot of starving people in Eastern Europe. Their country had been overrun by the Turks, the Turkish people. This was Armenia. The United States government was trying to raise a lot of money so that they could send food to those people. And none of us have any idea what starving really means, because we have never really been hungry. We say, "Oh! I'm starving!", but we're not really. Anyway, these Armenian people really were. There were thousands of deaths from starvation.

"So in all the cities across the United States they were having programs or campaigns or whatever to raise money for the starving Armenians. And in Salt Lake CIty, I was chosen to go around making a speech, pleading with people to give money. And no one except my family and a few other people knew who I was. They called me Little Miss Hoover, because Herbert Hoover, at the time, was chairman for this fundraising committee. I went to the Chamber of Commerce meetings, Rotary club, the mayor's office, the governor's office, the Senate, the State Legislature, and they would stand me up on a table or on a rostrum and I would say the speech that I had been taught to say. And we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to send to these people. I have all the newspapers with my picture in, and articles about the fundraising.


Lu Penrose as Little Miss Hoover at the Hotel Utah - circa 1919

"And many, many years later, I went to Fresno, California, to live, where hundreds of Armenian people live. A lot of them who escaped from Armenia and came to America to live. They still celebrate and commemorate the time when their parents, grandparents,brothers, and sisters were starving in Armenia.

"I said that I went to Webster School, and I think I was about tin the second grade. On the days that I was to give talks to the organizations at their luncheon meetings, my mother would get me dressed in my very best clothes and I would go to school and then a chauffeured limousine would come to school and pick me up and take me where I had to be. And every luncheon and ever dinner that I spoke at served chicken croquettes and peas and mashed potatoes with chicken gravy and to this day I can not eat chicken croquette, but I felt very important, being picked up at school in that beautiful limousine with a chauffeur in full uniform or when he would take me back to school, I thought I was really something."

From "Merry Christmas 1980" by Lu Penrose Bond, which included some different details about the same story.

"Little Miss Hoover"

"My parents were both very achieve in politics and I believe that was strictly political that I was selected as Little miss hoover." Herbert Hoover was the Head of Armenian Relief in the United States just after the great massacre in Turkey. (Armenians celebrate each year to this date. "Remember the starving Armenians. They'd give anything to have that food" became a favorite household phrase of American parents to tell their children who wouldn't eat.)




Lu Penrose as Little Miss Hoover meets the Governor of Utah, Simon Bamberger - circa 1919

"Herbert Hoover was giving promotions all over America to raise money for the Armenians. There were Collections Stations, concerts, dances, etc., as promotions. On such successful promotions was "Little Miss Hoovers" all over America. I was selected and learned a speech and gave my plea. A chauffeured limousine would come to my school at the appointed hour and take me to give my plea to Kiwanis Club luncheons, the Governor's Office, Mayor's office, both Houses of Congress, etc. All pleas were complete with reporters and photographs. When each appearance was over, I was taken back in the limousine to school (where I was about in the second grade) to finish my day. At the present time I don't remember how much money was raised, but I know it was a great deal."


Lu Penrose as Little Miss Hoover, addressing the Utah Legislature - circa 1919

Direct line ancestry: Lu Penrose Bond --> Kathryn Bond --> Lora Marshall Nehring