The Night Mrs. Herbert Hoover Ran Over Richard Boone's Brother

by Pa Rock

Trivia Master

Don't ask me what I was looking for on the Internet the other night when I came across this little gem of presidential and celebrity trivia.  After some more digging I discovered that there were other mentions of the of this incident on the Internet as well, though all were quick to note that it was not backed up by any official record that has yet been discovered.

 

The deed supposedly transpired around Halloween in either 1935 or 1937.  Richard Boone, who went on to a career in acting in movies and television, enrolled in Stanford University in the fall of 1935, and that same year he pledged Theta Xi Fraternity.   As Halloween approached many of the fraternity houses  at Stanford were developing pranks to help celebrate the holiday, and the men of Theta XI came up with a clever idea.    Several of them created a “dummy man” out of rags and bottles and then laid him out on a public road on the Stanford campus at a spot where it would be hard for a driver to see thee dummy in time to stop.

 

One story about that night states that they had a particular victim in mind - a member of another fraternity.  The story goes that someone in Boone’s fraternity called the intended victim and told him they needed him at their house quickly.  Then a few of the frat brothers gathered along the side of the road where they knew the victim of the ruse would be travelling, and when they saw headlights approaching the corner, they threw the dummy into the road.

 

At that point a large car came around the corner, brakes squealed, but the driver ran over the dummy cutting it in half.   The panicked driver, a woman, jumped from her vehicle and discovered, to her relief, that it was just a fraternity gag.

 

The driver of the car turned out to be Lou Henry Hoover, a woman who had been first lady of the United States just a few years earlier.   Mrs. Hoover sprained her ankle during the incident. 

 

When Mrs. Hoover got out of her car one of the pranksters, reportedly Richard Boone, jumped up and yelled “you've killed my brother!”  And at that point all of the young men ran off into the night.

 

Richard Boone never completed his course of study at Stanford and there are some rumors circulating over the Internet that the future star of “Have Gun Will Travel” was expelled from the university for his part in the Halloween stunt.

 

And while the above account remains unverified, it has been on the Internet so it is probably true!