Teddy

The Sunday Nov. 12, 2023 Minneapolis Star Tribune carried a story about the upcoming Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora ND.  You can read the article here: Theodore Roosevelt ND Star Tribune Nov 12 2023.  The Library is scheduled to open in 2026.

No, this isn’t a joke.  I’ve known about its planning for some years now, and it is now coming to fruition.

Teddy Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, was no stranger to ND, residing in the Badlands area for nearly three years, beginning as a visitor in 1883, when he was about 25; then became a young rancher.  His wife and his mother tragically had died on the same day in New York not long before he came to Dakota, and the wilds of the Badlands were where he recovered his will to carry on.

I think he would  approve the location of his library.  His surviving family did….

My grandmother, Josephine Collette, was two years old when Roosevelt came west.  She was born in Dakota Territory in 1881.  North Dakota became a state in 1889.

Her cousin, Alfred Collette, and her husband-to-be Henry Bernard, were among the earliest volunteers for the Spanish-American War, arriving in Manila in the summer of 1898.  They had scarcely arrived when the Spaniards surrendered, and the following year was mostly against native insurgents, who were glad America had come, but wanted us to go home….  The insurrection continued for several years.  In the end, the U.S. had a new territory.

(There is a good summary of how Roosevelt came to be a dominant figure in the Spanish-American War in Wikipedia,  Note sections on Naval History and Emergence as a national figure.)

My other grandparents, Fred and Rosa Busch, came to North Dakota in 1905, the first year of Roosevelts presidency (he had earlier replaced President William McKinley, killed by assassination in September, 1901).

One of the things found in the basement of the Busch farm home was a poster of the U.S. Presidents including the then-most recent, Theodore Roosevelt.  The print was in bad shape, but here is a photo I took of it several years ago.  Teddy is standing, second from right.  Here is the photo in enlargeable pdf format: Presidents through TR

The U.S. presidents and the U.S. Capitol, 1905. All Presidents shown up to and including Theodore Roosevelt (standing, second from right).

Here’s the White House description of Teddy Roosevelt.  He became President after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, and was elected in his own right in 1904.  He was only 43 when he became President.

Teddy Roosevelt was truly a unique occupant of the White House, with many accomplishments.  He was not a wallflower.

It’s a long trip out to Medora, but I think it would be very interesting to visit this newest library to a President of the United States.  There apparently are about 15 Presidential libraries in nearly as many states, according to the National Archives.  The  Theodore Roosevelt Library is not yet listed.  A somewhat mysterious listing is the library for the 45th President.  It’s the last one listed.

I’ve visited the libraries for Truman, Eisenhower, and Clinton.

For years, North Dakota has recognized citizens with outstanding accomplishments with the Rough Rider Award, a tribute to Teddy Roosevelt.  Here’s the site.

POSTNOTE Nov. 22: 

60 years ago today, President Kennedy was assassinated.  Those old enough to remember will quite likely  remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the President had been shot, Friday, Nov. 22, 1963.  (I was in my first month of teaching, and was setting up a chemistry lab when the announcement came.  Three months earlier I was in an Army Infantry Company playing war in rural South Carolina on the day Martin Luther King Jr gave his “I have a dream” speech on the national mall in Washington, D.C.  Of course,  I learned of that later on….  I was watching the excellent History.com film of JFK’s life this week, and it really hadn’t occurred to me till the program was almost over, that I was on active duty in the Army for fully two-thirds of JFK’s time in office, and in that time probably watched TV only one time, and that when he addressed the nation during the Cuban Missile Crisis Oct 22, 1962.  I watched him along with a few other GI’s on the mess segments tiny tv in a barracks at Ft. Carson Colorado.  We were within a few miles of one of the targets of any nuclear strike – the NORAD facility in Cheyenne Mountain, which we could see maybe 15 miles away most every day.  We were in the front row of history, and hardly were aware of it.)

Sunday, Nov. 19, Rosalynn Carter died in Plains, Georgia, survived by her husband, President Jimmy Carter.  It is not unusual nature of life,  that the President, 98, will soon follow.

Early on Nov. 20, historian Heather Cox Richardson remembered a speech given by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Nov. 19, 1863.  It has come to be known as the Gettysburg Address.