President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front. Deutsch: Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten von 1901 bis 1909, Friedensnobelpreisträger des Jahres 1906. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was born on this day in New York City, New York, USA in 1858. Today is the 155th Anniversary of his birth.
He was the second of four children born to Martha “Mittie” and Theodore “Thee” Roosevelt, Sr. The wealthy family lived in a fashionable brownstone in the
Gramercy neighborhood of New York.
Young Teddy or “Teedie” was a sickly boy. He had severe asthma and had to sleep propped up on pillows. He was…
homeschooled due to his illnesses and asthma. This gave him the opportunity to nurse his passion for animal life, but by his teens, with the encouragement of his father, whom he revered, Theodore developed a rigorous physical routine that included weightlifting and boxing.
[Biography.com]
He was always fascinated by animals. Once, when he was 7, he saw a dead seal at the market. He managed to get the seal’s head and it became the founding exhibit in the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History”, an institution the boy started with two of his cousins. He took to taxidermy and collected other specimens for the museum.
Teedie collected everything within his reach and range of vision, and begged friends and family to bring him any specimens they found. He even paid other children to collect specimens for him. Yet he generously shared his collection. In 1871, he donated several specimens to another fledgling museum — the American Museum of Natural History, which had been co-founded by his father. [
PBS.org]
He was a good student especially in geography, history, biology, French and German. But he did not do as well in Latin, Greek and math.
Roosevelt entered Harvard in 1876. He studied natural history. His father died when Teddy was a sophomore. While the tragedy broke his heart, it also spurred him on to work harder than ever before, both physically and academically.
After graduating magna cum laude in 1880, he enrolled at Columbia Law School and got married to Alice Hathaway Lee of Massachusetts.
[Biography.com]
He dropped out of Columbia the following year when he had the chance to run for the New York State Assembly. He won the election…
becoming the youngest to serve in that position. Not long after, Roosevelt was speeding through various public service positions, including captain of the National Guard and minority leader of the New York Assembly. [Ibid]
His meteoric rise to fame came to a halt on Valentine’s Day 1884. Both Roosevelt’s wife and his beloved mother died on the same day in his house. His wife died of undiagnosed Bright’s disease (kidney failure), his mother or Typhoid Fever. Roosevelt escaped the city and headed west. He worked for two years as a cowboy and rancher in the Dakota Territory before returning to New York.
NYPD Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt in 1895 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In 1886 he ran for unsuccessfully for mayor of New York. He married again, this time to Edith Kermit Carow (a life long friend.)
Roosevelt soon resumed his career trajectory, first as a civil service commissioner, then as a New York City police commissioner and U.S. Navy assistant secretary under President William McKinley…in the Spanish-American War… He organized a volunteer cavalry known as the Rough Riders, which he led in a bold charge up San Juan Hill in the Battle of San Juan Heights, in 1898. A war hero, and nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor, Roosevelt was elected governor of New York in 1898.. [Ibid]
He ran with President McKinley on the Republican ticket during the 1900 national elections. They won and McKinley began his second term in the White House. But then an anarchist shot McKinley on September 6, 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition. Although McKinley seemed to recover for a while he eventually died of his injuries and Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th, and youngest, President of the United States of America.
As President, Roosevelt held the ideal that the Government should be the great arbiter of the conflicting economic forces in the Nation, especially between capital and labor, guaranteeing justice to each and dispensing favors to none… Roosevelt emerged spectacularly as a “trust buster” by forcing the dissolution of a great railroad combination in the Northwest. Other antitrust suits under the Sherman Act followed….Roosevelt steered the United States more actively into world politics. He liked to quote a favorite proverb, “Speak softly and carry a big stick. . . . ” [WhiteHouse.gov]
Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Highlights of Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency include:
- Completed the Panama Canal
- Won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese War.
- Established (or added to) National Forest and parks for public use.
- Other conservation projects
He left the White House in 1909 when his friend and former Secretary of War William Howard Taft became President. Roosevelt went on Safari in Africa for two years. When he returned to the States he was unhappy with the job Taft was doing and he decided to run again for office. Since Taft had the Republican ticket, Roosevelt started his own party, the Bull Moose Party.
While delivering a speech on the campaign trail, Roosevelt was shot in the chest in an assassination attempt by John Nepomuk Schrank. Shockingly, he continued his speech for 90 minutes before seeing a doctor, later chalking up the incident to the hazards of the business. Roosevelt lost to Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election, in a rather close popular vote. [Biography.com]
Roosevelt retired from politics again. He traveled to South America. He wrote books (25). And when the US entered World War I he volunteered to head a “division for service in France” [Ibid] (Wilson declined.)
Roosevelt died in his sleep on January 6, 1919, at his Long Island estate, Sagamore Hill.
Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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