My Tuesdays are meatless,
My Wednesdays are wheatless,
I’m getting more eatless each day.
My home — it is heatless,
My bed — it is sheetless,
They’re sent to the Y.M.C.A.
The bar rooms are treatless,
The coffee is sweetless,
To-day I grow poorer and wiser.
My stockings are feetless,
My trousers are seatless,
My God! How I do have the kaiser.
This humorous poem about the United States Food Administration is found in the papers of Ben Allen who served as Chief of the Education Division and who worked many times over the years with his friend Herbert Hoover.
-from the Hoover Library
Armistice Day was officially made a federal holiday by Congress in 1938 as a day to honor the end of World War I. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed HR7786, which established Veterans Day in place of Armistice Day to honor those who served in World War II and the Korean War.
Photo: DDE signing HR7786, changing Armistice Day to Veterans Day 1954. 6/1/54.
Source: senate.gov
Eisenhower’s Dog Tag
Ike’s dog tag issued pre-WWI. Ft. Sam Houston was the first home for newlyweds Ike and Mamie Eisenhower.
-from the Eisenhower Library
Source: eisenhower.archives.gov
Hemingway in Italy, 1918
On August 22, 1864, The International Red Cross was founded as part of the Geneva Convention. We found this photo of Ernest Hemingway in an American Red Cross Ambulance during World War I in Italy. Circa 1918.
The American Red Cross was established in 1881.
-from the Ernest Hemingway Collection of the JFK Presidential Library. Learn more here.
Source: jfklibrary.org
American Relief Administration Food Distribution, Poland. Circa 1919
On July 12, 1919, Herbert Hoover founded the American Relief Administration which fed 350 million people in 21 countries in the aftermath of the Wold War I.
-from the Hoover Library
Source: hoover.archives.gov
“A garden for every child, every child in a garden.”
On May 5, 1917, Herbert Hoover was appointed by President Wilson to be the United States Food Administrator.
The U.S. had just entered World War I, and Hoover mobilized Americans to produce and conserve food supplies. Among the kitchen war efforts were Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays.
Across the country, a movement to grow food in school gardens also took off. Children, women, and other civilians tended and harvested gardens to feed WWI troops.
What are you growing in your school garden?
Source: hoover.archives.gov
Fifty years ago in the White House, John F. Kennedy received the typewriter President Woodrow Wilson used to write the “14 Points” speech.
Wilson’s famous speech was addressed to Congress on January 8, 1918. In it, he proposed a 14-point blueprint for world peace. These points were later taken as the basis for peace negotiations at the end of the World War I.
Source: jfklibrary.org
Blimp It
Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first sitting president to ride in an airplane - this weekend marks the anniversary of the overseas flight he took on January 14, 1943. FDR’s distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, was the first president ever to fly, a trip that took place back in 1910 shortly after he had left the presidency.
This post is not actually about planes though. It is about blimps (yessss!). FDR may have set an additional aviation first – we think he was the first president to fly on-board a dirigible airship (a.k.a. a blimp or zeppelin).
During World War I, serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, FDR traveled to Europe to inspect US Navy facilities. Several weeks into his trip, on August 17th, 1918 he visited a base in Paimboeuf, Western France where he was offered a ride aboard a French-built airship.
This photo shows FDR aboard the deck of the “dirigible balloon” that FDR was allowed to steer as well. In his notes he described it as a distinctly curious sensation that gave him the “feeling of drifting at the mercy of the wind.”
Do you know of an occasion in which a sitting, former, or future president traveled aboard such an aircraft before 1918?
-From the FDR Library
Source: fdrlibrary.wordpress.com
