In 1899, Mildred Brooke, a schoolteacher from Iowa, and Theodore, an engineering student at Stanford, also from Iowa, were to be wed in a Palo Alto church.
Once the young couple had set the date, things moved quickly. The day before the wedding found Mildred on a train speeding from Iowa to California. As the train raced through the changing scenery, click-clacking closer to the big day, she passed the hours chatting with newfound friends.
Bubbling over, she described her soon-to-be husband: Reserved but a good raconteur, under the right circumstances, the life of the party.
When Mildred got off the train in California on June 6, she handed the new friends her “visiting” card. It read: “After tomorrow in Palo Alto as Mrs. Theodore Hoover.”
…to be continued…