Aileen & Roy: From Sod House to State House

By Mary Cochran Grimes

Book Overview

Aileen and Roy is the story of the author's parents: Roy Cochran, who rose from a sod house on a hardscrabble farm in western Nebraska to the state house in Lincoln as governor, and Aileen Gantt Cochran, a pioneer teacher and superintendent of schools in the Nebraska Sandhills. Roy Cochran's three terms as governor (1935-41) covered the most critical years in the history of the West, when the population was ravaged by drought and the Great Depression, and new state-federal programs--social security, the WPA--were coming into being. Aileen Gantt grew up in the small town of North Platte at the end of the nineteenth century and supported her widowed mother and siblings as a teacher and county school superintendent. Their story, drawn from unpublished memoirs and family letters, provides a unique and intimate picture of life in a small western town around the turn of the century. It is also the story of two remarkable people who faced the challenge of governing in a time of despair and change.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803232942
• ISBN13: 9780803232945
• Release Date: December 2010
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 202 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"