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Elvis, Christmas, And Herbert Hoover: An Iowa Epiphany

November 22, 2008

Seasonal holiday attractions can sometimes crop up in memorable places. The holly-jolly go-to destination this year (or one of them) is West Branch, Iowa, where the Herbert Hoover Museum has unveiled “A Very Elvis Christmas.”

Twenty thematically-decorated Christmas trees highlight the life of Elvis Presley. There’s a Las Vegas tree, a Hound Dog tree, a Crown tree (for the King of Rock and Roll)… you get the idea.

Herbert Hoover was not the vacuum-cleaner guy or the FBI guy. He was President of the United States during the economic Crash and the (first) Great Depression. There is absolutely no connection between Elvis; West Branch, Iowa; and Herbert Hoover (Note: they did coexist on Earth for a time. Hoover died at the age of 90 in 1964, between the Elvis movie premieres of Viva Las Vegas and Roustabout). An attraction like the Herbert Hoover Museum has to make the best of it, though, and Elvis is clearly a more upbeat choice than “Empty Stocking Christmas” or “Shanty-Town Yuletide.”

The best Christmas attractions don’t last forever, like the holidays themselves. The Elvis trees come down in West Branch on January 4.

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One Response to “Elvis, Christmas, And Herbert Hoover: An Iowa Epiphany”

1. Jim Burrows Says:
   December 23rd, 2008 at 11:17 pm

   Sorry to spoil your fun, but there’s a Hoover-Presley connection. On May 22, 1956, the former President, who was then 82, together with his son Allan Henry Hoover, took Allan’s teenage daughter Sue to Elvis’ concert in Des Moines, on 22 May, 1956. Hoover’s granddaughter liked Presley’s show so much that he traveled with her, on the next day, to Sioux City, and checked the-then 21 year old superstar’s second, and what became his last ever show, in Iowa, this time at Veteran’s Memorial Municipal Auditorium.

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