Aileen and Roy

Aileen and Roy is the story of the author's parents, Roy Cochran, who rose
from a sod house on a hard-scrabble farm in western Nebraska to the state
house in Lincoln as governor, and his wife, Aileen Gantt Cochran, a pioneer
teacher and superintendent of schools in the Nebraska sand hills. 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 19th 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story, drawn from unpublished memoirs and family letters, provides a unique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.