Aileen & Roy: From Sod House to State House

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 Their story, drawn from unpublished memoirs and family letters, provides a unique and intimate picture of life in a small western town around the turn of the century.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. Mary Cochran Grimes was born in North Platte, Nebraska, and is a graduate of the University of Nebraska. She received her MA in history from Yale University and has written several articles for Nebraska History Quarterly. She lives in Hamden, Connecticut.