Remembering A One-Of-A-Kind President

By Jan Howard

President Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most colorful presidents in history in addition to having varied and interesting hobbies and experiences.

“He was a one-of-a-kind president,” Newtown Historical Society President Gordon Williams said during an informative and sometimes animated presentation about the late president June 9 at the C.H. Booth Library.

“He was one of the few presidents that could be called a Renaissance man, along with Adams and Jefferson,” Mr Williams said. “He had many unusual qualities,” in addition to a great gift of gab. “He was a talker from the word go.”

A flamboyant, bombastic, larger-than-life adult, Theodore Roosevelt began life as a sickly child. “Teddy had asthma, colds, and headaches, and was very timid as a child,” Mr Williams said. “He was cut off by illness from social contact. He had a grim childhood blessed by a supportive family.”

Born to a prosperous New York family in 1859, his father, also named Theodore, was an importer and philanthropist, and “a model of probity,” he said. Theodore’s mother, Martha, “was both beautiful and wealthy, with a lively interest in her children.” In addition to Theodore, there were three other children, Anna, Eliot, and Corina.

Anna was very nurturing and “a super older sister,” Mr Williams said. As a child, Eliot was tall, strapping, and healthy, in comparison to Theodore. He was the father of Eleanor Roosevelt.

“Teddy was determined to lick his illness,” Mr Williams said. He lifted weights and took up boxing. “He begins to change and embrace a strenuous life.” During his lifetime he loved riding horses and was involved with judo and Japanese wrestling. He climbed the Matterhorn, went big game hunting in Africa, and explored Brazil.

Tennis was his favorite sport. However, Mr Williams said, “He loved war more. He was a bombastic personality who thought the triumph of peace never was as great as the triumph of war.

“When things were great, it was ‘bully’,” Mr Williams said. “Men loved him, they loved his swagger. He had charisma.”

A Harvard graduate, he married Alice Lee, who, like his mother, had both beauty and money, Mr Williams said, but she died giving birth to their daughter Alice the same day his mother died.

“This was a double whammy for him,” Mr Williams said. Leaving little Alice in the care of his sister Anna, Theodore Roosevelt went west, where he made a success out of ranching and had many unusual exploits. In one incident, he shared a hotel room in a North Dakota hotel where, in the middle of the night, “a man was grabbed by the sheriff” for robbing a train.

He married as his second wife Edith Kermit, who was “wonderful and nurturing,” Mr Williams said. Including Alice, they would have six children.

“He was a doting father,” Mr Williams said. “He once held up a state dinner for a pillow fight.”

Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, L.I., was the summer White House, and he would row with his children on Long Island Sound, teach them to shoot, and take them into the woods where he would tell them spooky stories.

“He had a childlike quality,” Mr Williams said. “His wife must have felt he was one of the oldest and worst of her children.”

During his presidency, his daughter Alice was a Washington sensation, Mr Williams said. “She was called Princess Alice. She sometimes cheated at cards, drove too fast, and was one of the first women to smoke.”

When a group of women consulted with President Roosevelt about her actions, he said, “I could run the country, or I could control Alice, and I choose to run the country.”

Theodore Roosevelt entered politics early in life, and at age 23 was elected to the New York Legislature. At age 38 he became assistant secretary of the navy. When the Spanish American War began, Mr Williams said, “He was so excited” that he wanted to be a part of it. He raised a regiment, called Rough Riders, which stormed, not San Juan Hill, but Kettle Hill in Cuba.

In truth, Mr Williams said, “There was not a lot of storming, though Teddy claimed he strangled Spaniards with his bare hands.” What he did do was catch a case of Cuban fever, from which he recovered but which came back to haunt him.

He would later write a book about his experience in Cuba entitled The Rough Riders, which critics said should have been entitled, Alone in Cuba.

At age 40, Theodore Roosevelt became governor of New York. He loved politics. “Making money for power or prestige didn’t appeal to him,” Mr Williams said.

“He was very political. There were times when he should have spoken, he didn’t.”

As vice president under William McKinley, he found he did not enjoy the position like others he had held. “McKinley was a moderate Republican and studied everything,” Mr Williams said. “TR was a quick study. They were never on the same wavelength.”

Following President McKinley’s assassination, Theodore Roosevelt became president, and then was elected to a term on his own, serving until 1909. “He threw himself into it, and always kept up his strenuous life,” he said.

Theodore Roosevelt was widely read, and great at conversation, Mr Williams said. “He had a good score with diplomats, and the press generally liked him. He was news. He remembered their names, but he was not above manipulating them.”

Ultraconservatives did not like him. “Some felt he was too bossy.” Theodore Roosevelt could tough it out in ways other than sports. When he was shot on the way to give a speech in Milwaukee, Wis., he delivered it, then entered the hospital, Mr Williams said.

He liked variety. If a person went to one of his parties, he/she might see congressmen, lumberjacks, and cowboys. “His parties were always fun,” Mr Williams noted.

Theodore Roosevelt’s accomplishments were many. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing to an end the Russian/Japanese war. He helped make the Interstate Commerce Commission more effective. He introduced health, drugs, and meatpacking laws. “He believed in capitalism regulated by government. He passed good laws,” Mr Williams said.

He increased the country’s number of battleships, and sent the fleet around the world. He focused attention on conservation, establishing national monuments and national forests, and was sympathetic to labor.

He was not in favor of monopoly, and had the attorney general sue the railroad trust. He became known as a trustbuster.

He worked with and invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House. “He hired black workers, more than any president before. Woodrow Wilson fired them,” Mr Williams said.

Following his presidency, he felt his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, was not doing what he wanted him to do. “Taft was not doing it right,” Mr Williams said. “He [Roosevelt] tried to get the nomination of the Republican Party, but didn’t get it, and formed the Progressive Party, or Bull Moose Party, but Woodrow Wilson won the election.”

Theodore Roosevelt was very supportive of World War I, though his son Quenton was shot down by two German flyers behind enemy lines and killed. “He was heartbroken,” Mr Williams said.

Theodore Roosevelt was an intellectual man. He wrote learned articles and 15 books. He mastered German and French, and was interested in fossils, which he continued as a hobby as an adult. He was a world authority on North American animals.

“It is said he read 20,000 books, some in French and German,” Mr Williams said.

On November 11, 1918, Theodore Roosevelt went into the hospital and returned home before Christmas, where he enjoyed the holiday with his family. On the morning of January 8, 1919, he died of what was believed to be an embolism.