Two years later, wanderlust struck again this time Hoover found her way to New York. Six months later, she realized her 'total unsuitability for the profession,' dropped out, found another job, and resumed college coursework at Los Angeles City College. Mid-coursework, though, she took off on a whim to Los Angeles, where she entered nursing school in 1956. Hoover took an office job after graduation at a Canton, Ohio steel company, then another near the campus of Mount Union College in Alliance, where she began to work toward a college degree. She felt much more challenged in high school - both socially, because she was overweight, and academically, because she actually had to pay attention in class and do her homework to maintain good grades.

'I slowly decided that if people's first exposure to reading was Dick and Jane, it was probable that for the rest of their lives, the very sight of a book might induce anxiety and the mad urge to cry 'Run, Self! Run! Run!'' Hoover attended the local public school, but soon found herself bored with the elementary-level curriculum. The latter two would become recurring themes in her future books. Both her mother, Sadie Hoover, and her father, Edward Hoover, were school teachers and 'amateur naturalists,' and passed on to Hoover (and her three siblings) a love of books, a respect for nature, and a fear for the future of our planet. 'One of the things that helps to create a writer is to be a lonely child - the younger the better - so that one learns to be alone and to amuse oneself in solitude.' These words by Helen Mary Hoover offer some insight into the science fiction writer's life, and what made her into the writer she is today.īorn in Stark County, Ohio, Hoover spent her childhood in a generations-old family farmhouse overflowing with books. 1942–Īs an African American raised in Harlem and educated in some of the most prestigious schools in New York City, Samuel R.Ohio Reading Road Trip | H.M. It included the county borough of Worcester, the old co… Samuel R. This was a new county, formed under the Local Government Act of 1972. The author of nearly five hundred books, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) is esteemed as one of the finest writers of science ficti… Hereford and Worcester, Hereford and Worcester. In the early 2000s the National A… County, COUNTYĪ political subdivision of a state, the power and importance of which varies from one state to another.Ī county is distinguishable from a cit… Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov County governments in the United States function as local administrative arms within the states.

Orvis by Helen Mary Hoover