The Restoration

Paying tribute to the man whose special talents he has used on several occasions, President Truman last week signed the joint congressional resolution restoring the name of Hoover to Boulder Dam. He used four pens, asked that they all be sent to the nation's only living ex-President.

Republicans were pleased. The name of Boulder Dam had rankled in their breasts for 14 years.* G.O.P. loyalists like the Los Angeles Times, which had never referred to it as Boulder, crowed in triumph.

But Boulder City, nine miles west of the dam, was glum. Merchants, contemplating a quarter of a million dollars' worth of ash trays, sofa pillows and other knicknacks emblazoned "Souvenir of Boulder Dam," tried to decide what to do. They could get rid of them at a loss. But what if the next Congress were Democratic?

The man whose name had just been restamped on the world's maps put in a miserable week. He was nursing a cold, after having been caught in a downpour while fishing in New Jersey.

Now 72, Herbert Hoover lives quietly for most of the year in Manhattan's Waldorf Towers. His wife died three years ago. His hair is a little thinner, his face a little heavier, his stiff collars a little lower. He has given up all his business directorships, spends much of his time collecting historical records for Stanford University's Hoover Library of War, Revolution and Peace. Last February he made an exhausting, 6,000-mile trip to survey Europe's food needs.

Still a passionate fisherman, he has worked out a schedule of visits which enables him to follow the trout season from California through Oregon and Canada. In winter, he fishes in Florida. His role in politics is that of an elder statesman. Said an associate: "Of course, he talks with politicians from time to time, but just because they are old friends."

* In blueprint, the dam had been known as Boulder, since it was to be built across the Colorado River in Boulder Canyon. In 1930, when construction started, Interior Secretary Wilbur named it Hoover after his boss. When the Democrats moved in, Secretary Harold Ickes decided that Wilbur had had no right to rename the dam, changed it back to Boulder--despite the fact that the site had been shifted 20 miles southward to Black Canyon.

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