Which President spoke Mandarin? 10 presidential past lives
Image: Donghun Shin
It’s easy to assume that the path to the highest office is paved exclusively with Ivy League diplomas, elite military careers, and political connections. However, the early lives of American presidents proved to be far grittier and more eclectic. From elite athletic combat to teenage summer gigs, these ten unexpected jobs held by U.S. presidents before entering politics show that the road to the White House can start in some truly surprising places.
1
Abraham Lincoln
Long before he preserved the Union or delivered the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln was renowned across Illinois as a fearsome wrestler. Standing at 6’4", Lincoln had immense leverage and strength cultivated from years of clearing timber.
In the early 1830s, he competed in roughly 300 matches and was defeated only once. His most famous fight happened in New Salem, Illinois, against Jack Armstrong, the leader of a local gang known as the Clary’s Grove Boys. Lincoln soundly defeated Armstrong, earning the lifelong respect of the community. He was even inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as an "Outstanding American".
2
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover’s pre-political life was defined by his career as a world-traveling mining engineer. In the late 1890s, Hoover took a job with the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company, moving to China.
To effectively manage the local operations and navigate the complex social landscape, Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry, learned to speak Mandarin. They became so fluent that decades later, the President and First Lady would speak Mandarin to one another whenever they wanted to have a private conversation in front of White House staff or guests.
3
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson’s early life was marked by extreme hardship. By the age of fourteen, he had lost his entire immediate family to the Revolutionary War, making him an orphan.
In the early 1780s, a teenage Jackson moved to Salisbury, North Carolina, to survive. There, he apprenticed under a local master craftsman to learn the trade of saddle making. The intense manual labor provided him with a practical trade before he eventually taught himself the law and began his ascent into Tennessee politics.
4
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter’s identity is intertwined with his background as a peanut farmer, but this wasn’t just a casual hobby. After serving as a naval officer, Carter returned to Plains, Georgia, following the death of his father in 1953, to take over the family’s struggling farm.
Faced with severe debts and a local drought, Carter worked the land alongside his laborers. He used his background in engineering to modernize the operation, transitioning it from a basic farm into a successful, tech-forward agribusiness.
5
Ronald Reagan
Before he was an actor, governor, or president, a teenage Ronald Reagan spent his summers working as a lifeguard at Lowell Park on the Rock River in Dixon, Illinois. Over the course of seven summers, beginning in 1927, Reagan is credited with saving a staggering 77 lives from the river’s treacherous undercurrents. Reagan took immense pride in this job, famously carving a notch into a nearby log for every single swimmer he successfully pulled from the water.
6
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson was a man driven by ambition, but his youth was spent working a variety of low-wage odd jobs across the American West. After dropping out of school and running away to California in 1924, a young LBJ found himself completely broke.
Among other trades, he took a job as an elevator operator at a hotel in San Bernardino. Standing inside a cramped wooden box for hours on end, opening doors for affluent travelers, gave the future architect of the "Great Society" an up-close look at class distinctions and human behavior.
7
Warren G. Harding
Warren G. Harding began his professional career with a profound love for ink and typesetting. In 1884, at just 19 years old, Harding used his meager resources to purchase a failing, defunct local newspaper called the Marion Daily Star in Ohio.
Harding acted as a reporter, ad salesman, and press operator. Under his leadership, the paper grew into a highly profitable business, shaping his communicative style and providing him with the perfect media megaphone to launch his political career.
8
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge was famous for his quiet and incredibly reserved demeanor, earning him the nickname "Silent Cal". It is entirely fitting, then, that one of his earliest jobs during his youth was crafting doll carriages at a toy manufacturing company in Ludlow, Vermont, in the late 1880s. Coolidge treated the position with the same meticulous, serious dedication that he would later bring to the governance of the nation.
9
Barack Obama
Long before he was dealing with global diplomacy or economic crises, a teenage Barack Obama landed his very first job at a Baskin-Robbins franchise in Honolulu, Hawaii.
In the summer of 1978, Obama spent his days scooping ice cream, a task he later recalled as being far harder on the wrists than people realize. He noted that the job taught him responsibility, hard work, and balancing a job with friends, family, and school. It also had a permanent effect on his palate: he famously admitted that he completely lost his appetite for ice cream for years.
10
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the ultimate Renaissance man, but few realize he holds a legitimate title as one of America's first true archaeologists. In 1784, intrigued by the numerous Native American burial mounds scattered across Virginia, Jefferson decided to investigate one located near his Monticello estate.
Instead of simply digging for artifacts, Jefferson applied a rigorous, scientific method that was decades ahead of its time. He dug trenches to observe the various layers of earth and carefully documented the positioning of human remains. His systematic approach earned him recognition from modern historians as a pioneer of American archaeological science.
