Fact Check: Story Says Herbert Hoover Repaid Favor to Polish Pianist Who Helped Him as Student. Here's What We Found

In 1892 at Stanford University, an 18-year-old student was struggling to pay his fees. He was an orphan, and not knowing where to turn for money, he came up with a bright idea. He and a friend decided to host a musical concert on campus to raise money for their education.

They reached out to the great pianist Ignacy J. Paderewski. His manager demanded a guaranteed fee of $2000 for the piano recital. A deal was struck and the boys began to work to make the concert a success.

The big day arrived. But unfortunately, they had not managed to sell enough tickets. The total collection was only $1600. Disappointed, they went to Paderewski and explained their plight.
They gave him the entire $1600, plus a cheque for the balance $400. They promised to honour the cheque at the soonest possible.

"No," said Paderewski. "This is not acceptable." He tore up the cheque, returned the $1600 and told the two boys: "Here's the $1600. Please deduct whatever expenses you have incurred.
Keep the money you need for your fees. And just give me whatever is left". The boys were surprised, and thanked him profusely. It was a small act of kindness. But it clearly marked out Paderewski as a great human being.

Why should he help two people he did not even know? We all come across situations like these in our lives. And most of us only think "If I help them, what would happen to me?" The truly great people think, "If I don't help them, what will happen to them?" They don't do it expecting something in return. They do it because they feel it's the right thing to do.

He was a great leader, but unfortunately when the World War began, Poland was ravaged. There were more than 1.5 million people starving in his country, and no money to feed them. Paderewski did not know where to turn for help. He reached out to the US Food and Relief Administration for help. He heard there was a man called Herbert Hoover — who later went on to become the US President. Hoover agreed to help and quickly shipped tons of food grains to feed the starving Polish people. A calamity was averted. Paderewski was relieved.

He decided to go across to meet Hoover and personally thank him. When Paderewski began to thank Hoover for his noble gesture, Hoover quickly interjected and said, "You shouldn't be thanking me Mr. Prime Minister. You may not remember this, but several years ago, you helped two young students go through college. I was one of them."

Paderewski's relationships with U.S. presidents turned out to be vital for Poland. It all started in 1895 when a young Stanford student, Herbert Hoover, invited him to play in San Jose, California. The bad timing of the concert – during Holy Week – resulted in unsold tickets and a considerable financial loss. Even the artist's honorarium could not be covered in full. When Paderewski learned about this, he not only waived his salary, but paid the fee for renting the hall. His kindness was repaid by President Herbert Hoover over 20 years later, when he provided humanitarian relief to war-ravaged Poland via the American Relief Administration, thus saving hundreds of thousands of people from starvation.

Hoover cryptically claims: "When a college boy I had conducted with partners a sort of lecture bureau to relieve our deficient finances. We scheduled Paderewski for an appearance, but it did not come off for some reason or other." Paderewski is also vague in his memoirs about the first meeting with Hoover. Most Hoover biographers fail to mention the story, including the pre-eminent biographer George H. Nash begging the question: "Is it true?"

I had known Paderewski for many years. When a college boy I had conducted with partners a sort of lecture bureau to relieve our deficient finances. We had scheduled Paderewski for an appearance, but it did not come off for some reason or other. In 1915, I again met him, when I was trying to get some relief to Poland. And while we were in the war he came frequently to discuss with me the work of the Polish Independence Committee, of which he was the head—and the main financial support.

Paderewski had three concert tours in the United States in the 1890s. Only the 1896 tour took him west of the Mississippi River. Hoover graduated from Stanford in 1895 but he was working in San Francisco. With Lou [Henry Hoover, the future president's eventual wife] as a student at Stanford in 1896, it is possible he made visits to the campus to see her. Newspaper accounts describe the concert taking place February 29, 1896 in San Jose to a packed house suggesting a financial success. This would place the event not at Stanford but in a neighboring location a year after Hoover graduated. It is possible he attended the concert or in some way met Paderewski during this time frame but that is speculation.

When a Hoover supporter in September 1928 wrote to verify the story, George Akerson, Hoover's assistant, replied: "The account of Mr. Hoover's first meeting with Mr. Paderewski as outlined in your letter is substantially correct." This would lead one to believe that the $2,000 performance fee and the shortfall are accurate. But a letter by Edith Harcourt, secretary to Mrs. Hoover, in February 1938 provides a different answer to a similar query. Harcourt, responding to Dr. Rheim wrote: "Your letter to Mr. Hoover arrived after he had left Palo Alto for the East and Europe. It was brought to the attention of Mrs. Hoover.

She said that while the main import of the story is more or less accurate, nearly all of the details are not. She remembers very well the incident herself and has often heard it referred to – and even reminiscently discussed with much amusement by M. Paderewski and Mr. Hoover.

Of course M. Paderewski had quite forgotten the names of the young men to whom he had been so generous. And it was scarcely only 'a shipload of wheat' arriving unannounced in Poland that first acquainted him with America's generosity to his people. …

Then, of course, it was natural that M. Paderewski and Mr. Hoover should meet again, and that after one of their early conferences Mr. Hoover should remind the other of their encounter of years before. Their first meeting after the war may, of course, have been in Paris during the Armistice – as many later ones were. In any case, in that strenuous time, M. Paderewski would not have journeyed to Paris for the express purpose of thanking a man for a shipload of wheat which would have been but a handful to the millions hungry in Poland."

Hoover's first lengthy description of the incident was not written until 1961-63, when he began work on the section on Poland for his "Magnum Opus." Never published in Hoover's lifetime, George H. Nash painstakingly edited the various drafts and released it in 2011 as Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath. In an extended footnote, Hoover recalls the performance fee of $1,500 but he and his friends had only $150 to offer Paderewski. According to Hoover: "Paderewski laughed and proposed that we suspend the engagement until some future occasion when he was in the West. One of our members suggested we might not be able to do that as we might then have dissolved, and again offered our $150. Paderewski laughed again and said we would postpone that also. I recalled this episode to him when as Prime Minister I met him at the Peace Conference. He chuckled again."

I took up my work again and that summer, 1895, I prepared for the third American tour.

…

I met there many people for whom I still personally, or in memory, preserve a warm affection. Incidentally, I had the opportunity of meeting Mr. Herbert Hoover, then a student at Stanford University.