Ray Lyman Wilbur - Early Life

Early Life

Wilbur was born in Boonesboro in Boone County, Iowa, to Dwight Locke Wilbur, an attorney and businessman, and Edna Maria Lyman. A brother, Curtis Dwight Wilbur, became United States Secretary of the Navy under President Calvin Coolidge and a Judge of the Supreme Court of California. The Wilbur family moved to Riverside, California when Ray Lyman was twelve.

Wilbur graduated from Riverside High School, then studied at Stanford University, receiving a B.A. degree in 1896 and an M.A. degree in 1897. He then studied at Cooper Medical College, receiving a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1899.

While a freshman at Stanford, he met future US President Herbert Hoover, who was drumming up campus business for a local laundry. The two men became lifelong friends. Wilbur's wife, the former Marguerite May Blake was a college friend of Hoover's wife and was one of Lou Hoover's closest friends in Washington during Mrs. Hoover's years as First Lady. Marguerite Wilbur was severely injured when she fell from a horse in 1922, breaking several vertebrae in her spine and becoming permanently incapacitated. She died in 1946. The couple had five children.

During World War I, Wilbur served as chief of the conservation division of the United States Food Administration. While at the USFA, he coined the slogan "Food Will Win the War." He later became US President Warren Harding's personal physician and was present at Harding's deathbed.