Hoover won the Republican nomination in the 1928 presidential election, and decisively defeated the Democratic candidate, Al Smith. As a child, Hoover consistently attended schools, but he did little reading on his own aside from the Bible. Hoover's father, noted by the local paper for his 'pleasant, sunshiny disposition', died in 1880 at the age of 34. Hoover's mother died in 1884, leaving Hoover, his older brother, Theodore, and his younger sister, May, as orphans.