TR Vs. Death

At age 55, Theodore Roosevelt embarked on an Amazonian jungle trek along the River of Doubt, where he very nearly lost his life. It was, in many ways, the icing on the cake of a life brimming with near-death experiences. He had close encounters with wild animals on hunting trips, chased down dangerous boat thieves, and quit his secretarial post in the Navy to fight in the Spanish-American War. So did Roosevelt die as he lived? Decide for yourself after this week’s History Vs.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. In nineteen fourteen, when Theodore Roosevelt trekked into
the Brazilian jungle to explore a previously uncharted tributary of
the Amazon River, it must have seemed like just another
adventure on a very long list of adventures, one that
would briefly get him out of the public eye after

(00:22):
his disappointing loss in the nine twelve election. The loss stung,
and his reputation had taken a hit, but none of
that would matter in the jungle. Of course, Roosevelt knew
this adventure wouldn't be easy. If it were, it wouldn't
be appealing, and he knew it would be dangerous, which
only made it more enticing for the fifty year old
former president. If it is necessary for me to leave

(00:44):
my remains in South America, he wrote to a friend,
I am quite ready to do so. And now, a
month and a half into his trek down the River
of Doubt, it looked like he might do just that.
From the outset, the journey had been besieged by calamity, Malaria,
and dysentery had cut through many of the men on
the expedition, not to mention the dwindling food supply and

(01:06):
the lingering threat of South American tribes who didn't take
kindly to arms strangers showing up uninvited. Roosevelt had lost
fifty pounds. A few days ago he bashed his leg
open on a rock and it became infected. Now, as
thunderstorms raged, he was in the throes of a severe
malaria fit. Convulsively shivering with one four degree fever. He

(01:28):
recited the same poem over and over and over in
sandy Dude did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree
where al the Sacred river ran through caverns measureless two men.
Though no one expected him to live the night, he did.

(01:51):
By morning, he had regained his senses and he had
reached a decision. He gathered the team, his son Kermit,
Co Captain Candido Rondon, and now turalist George Cherry among them,
and told them the expedition cannot stop. On the other hand,
I cannot proceed. You go on and leave me. But
tears journey wasn't over. Ultimately, the Amazon wouldn't claim Roosevelt.

(02:15):
In fact, after countless brushes with death. Over the five
previous decades, it was starting to look like nothing could
from mental flaws. And I heart radio. This is History Versus,
a podcast about how your favorite historical figures faced off
against their greatest foes. I'm your host, Aaron McCarthy, and
in this round, we're pitting Theodore Roosevelt against the greatest

(02:36):
opponent of all death. It's a foe that Roosevelt fought
his entire life in family tragedies, on the battlefield and
on the hunting ground, and during run ins with assassins.
But for tr death wasn't something to fear. It was
just the opposite. The worst of all fears, he wrote
in his autobiography, is the fear of living. So how

(02:57):
did he take on the grim reaper time and time again?
We're about to find out. To understand Roosevelt's life, you
have to understand how death colored his formative years. His
first real encounter with death came on February nine, when
his father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr. Passed away while tr was
still a student at Harvard. It was a loss he

(03:18):
wrote about, often, detailing his devastation in his journals. He
threw himself into his school work, to cope. For the
rest of the semester, he was grinding like a trojan,
according to historian Edmund Morris, scoring high marks on exams,
teaching Sunday school, and obsessively exercising. During this tornado of productivity,
he continued to grieve privately in his diaries. Theodore doesn't

(03:40):
know what he's thinking, what he's doing. He's kind of
in a in his own Um you know, it seems
my impression of what I've read is that he kind
of just turns off to the world. Um, maybe internally
he's struggling. I don't know. I mean, I'm I'm thinking
of the way that I would react if I lost
a very important person in my life. Um, you know,

(04:02):
the type of person that you later call the best
man I ever knew and the only man I was
ever afraid of. That's Alyssa Parker, guysman, lead ranger at
Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site in New York City.
So heavily impacted him, and I think, um, you know,
it just follows with him. When he's president and he's
facing a difficult decision, he usually asks himself, what would

(04:23):
my father do in this case? Um? So it's ever
kind of present um of the impact of losing his father.
Roosevelt would go on to experience many tragedies in his life,
but the torrent of grief, the outpouring of emotion he
wrote in his diary after his father's death, never really
happened again. Six years later, when Roosevelt was a young

(04:45):
assemblyman in New York, he lost his first wife, Alice,
and his mother Mitty, on the same day. He was
back to work in Albany just four days later, where
Marris writes his activities were so prodigious that one gropes
for an inhuman simile, like a factory ship in the
whaling season. He combined the principles of maximum production and

(05:05):
perpetual motion. Roosevelt strategy for beating his depression was to
outwork it. Whenever he encountered tragedy, he followed the same pattern.
Work to the point of exhaustion, exert yourself until you
can no longer feel repeat as necessary. As he once wrote,
black care rarely sits behind a rider whose space is

(05:26):
fast enough. In this quest to avoid and dull his grief,
tr didn't just face death, he seemingly invited it. In
wilderness warrior. Historian Douglas Brinkley discusses Dr. K. Redfield Jamison's
book Exuberance, which features t R as a prime example
of the emotion. Brinkley writes that his set of symptoms,
propulsive behavior, deep grief, chronic insomnia, and an all around

(05:50):
hyperactive disposition, demonstrate both the manic and the depressive phases
of bipolar disorder. While some manic depressive patients, which is
Jamieson's preferred term, withdrawal from life, Brinkley writes that those
afflicted with exuberance go in the opposite direction, behaving as
relentless human blow torches, unable to turn down their own flame.

(06:12):
Only by exhausting oneself in physical activity could an exuberant
maniac like Roosevelt turn himself off. This kind of energy
allowed Roosevelt to achieve incredible things, but as Jamison notes,
exuberance has its downsides. Working so hard and sleeping so
little was detrimental to his health. But if doctors had
tried to get him to take better care of himself

(06:33):
or slow down a little, he probably would have responded
as he did when a Harvard doctor told him that
his bad heart meant he needed to live a sedentary
life by disregarding their advice entirely. Tr also faced death
as a big game hunter. In pursuit of a target,
he could be relentless. Take for example, his first bison hunt.

(06:53):
Roosevelt insisted on pursuing his goal even when the weather
conditions became horrendous, even when his guy, Joe Ferris, wanted
to of up. As a friend recalled, he nearly killed
poor Joe. He would not stop for anything. Roosevelt pushed
himself hard and sometimes took risks to bag a quarry,
whether it was a bison, a lion, or a hippopotamus.

(07:14):
His closest called during a hunt came during a trip
out west tr Then a civil service commissioner, had just
come out on the losing end of a political clash
over a postmaster in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and decided a hunting
trip was just the thing he needed to clear his head.
On this particular trip, he was, he said, especially hot
for bear. He found one in Montana at twilight. The

(07:38):
grizzly was in the valley sixty yards away. Tiar fired around,
but the bear did not fall. Instead, the wounded animal
uttered a loud, moaning grunt. In Roosevelt's words, and took off.
He followed the wounded animal, which Roosevelt would later say
was making a peculiar savage kind of wine, And in
the confusion of the trees and thicket that who were

(08:00):
suddenly upon each other, he turned his head stiffly towards me.
Scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips, his eyes
burned like embers in the gloom, Roosevelt wrote. He fired
another round, again, hitting the bear, and again it wouldn't
go down Instantly. The great bear turned with a harsh
roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from

(08:22):
his mouth so that I saw the gleam of his
white fangs. And then he charged straight at me, crashing
and bounding through the laurel bushes so that it was
hard to aim. The animal charged at Roosevelt, and as
he would later recall, he fired again and then once more,
and leapt out of the way of the approaching animal.
Through the smoke, he could see its huge paws. It

(08:43):
took a swipe at him and finally dropped to the ground.
It would be the closest he'd come to death at
the hands of a big game animal, and the bear's
pelt quickly became one of his favorite trophies. The danger
Roosevelt threw himself into didn't just involve wild hunting trips
in the Dakotas he clashed with the Marquis de Morat,
a French aristocrat with eyes on establishing a cattle empire

(09:05):
in the area. He founded the town of Medora, which
was named after his wife. The marquis domineering personality made
him an obvious foil for someone with a presence as
strong as Roosevelt's, and the two soon found themselves at odds.
And somehow the Marquis decided that Theodore Roosevelt wanted to

(09:26):
kill him, which wasn't the case. That's Eileen Andy's the
chief of interpretation in public affairs at Theodore Roosevelt National
Park in Madora, North Dakota. So not only had strong personalities,
but they were both ristocrats that we're probably all both
um used to being Lt Mail. It's the big boss man.

(09:52):
And then there's the story about Um. When Theodore Roosevelt
was in Weibo. Weibo is a little town, let's see,
six miles on the other side of the Montana border,
and it's really small, and he was there in a
saloon and some guy challenged him to a fight, because

(10:15):
you know, men who were glasses were weak. The man
called him four eyes, which he would quickly come to regret. Roosevelt,
in his own words, stood up and struck quick and
hard with my right just to one side of the
point of his jaw. Roosevelt could him. Yeah, And I

(10:35):
think tr was the kind of person who never would
back down. He um in his life there were very
few things that he ever regretted, and he didn't believe
in backing down. Take for example, and encounter Roosevelt had
with a man named E. G. Paddock, who was working
closely with the Marquis de Moray on his cattle business.

(10:57):
Paddock had spread word around the area that elk And
Ranch was his property, not Roosevelt's, and that if tr
wished to have it, he'd have to pay for it
in dollars or in blood. Once Roosevelt got wind of
the threat, he immediately sought out Paddick at his home.
Here's Clay Jenkinson, founder of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at
Dickinson State University in North Dakota, gets on his horse

(11:19):
and goes thirty five miles into Medora, unknocks at the
guy's door and says, hey, I hear you want to
shoot me. When do you want to start? And the
guy he starts to hubbahblahbe and I didn't mean it.
I've been miss boat. And then maybe they worked it out.
But Roosevelt always confronted the problem. He never docked or
tried to elude it. He always went straight for it
and said here I am, it's been here. I think

(11:42):
that's one of his greatest qualities. Perhaps the most legendary
story of TRS days in the Dakota's occurred when his
boat was stolen from Elkhorn Ranch in March. From the start,
Roosevelt knew the crime was likely the work of a
man named Mike Finnegan and his gang, who Roosevelt would write,
had previously been implicated in cattle killing and horse stealing
in the area. Instead of learning the authorities or just

(12:06):
letting the three armed and potentially dangerous men go, he
had his ranch hands Bill Sewell and will Matt Dao
build a new boat so they could go after the thieves.
Tire grabbed a camera and a couple of books, including
Anna Karrennina, and the trio headed down the icy Little
Missouri River as temperatures dropped to zero degrees. Despite the

(12:26):
fact that the thieves had a head start of several days,
Roosevelt had an advantage. The thieves had stolen what Tier
said was the only craft there was on the river
and would never suspected chase was even possible. On the
third day of the pursuit, Roosevelt spotted the stolen boat
and ambushed one of the thieves, who surrendered immediately. Soon after,
the other two returned, and Roosevelt and his party aimed

(12:48):
their rifles at them and ordered their surrender, which they
did without a drop of blood being shed. It was
then up to Tier to hike the thieves back to
face justice in Dickinson. Today, by car, the trip from
Elkhorn Ranch to Dickinson is more than eighty miles and
would take around two hours. Roosevelt and company were north
of the Elkhorn and it wasn't just distance that made

(13:09):
the trip challenging. Here's Andy's. It was hiking through bad
lands and then over the prairie, So it was it
was not only distance, it was really rugged country, and
the boat thieves no doubt, we're not happy about the situation. Like,
obviously he needed the boat to get across the river

(13:29):
to check on his cattle. But if it's easy enough
for your farm hands to build you another boat, why
go after your first boat? I think, what what is it?
Is it just the principle of the thing? I think so. Yeah,
Theodore Roosevelt, I think had a very acute sense of
right and wrong, and he felt that he had been

(13:53):
wrong and the boat didn't belong to them, It belonged
to him, and he wanted it back. Roosevelt wanted things
to be on the right way, in the honorable way,
and that's part that's part of his character. I'm I'm
sure that people thought he was kind of a pain,

(14:16):
but that's part of his charm. I'm not sure that
Roosevelt I thought about going after both thieves as being dangerous.
It was just something he did because he felt he
should and he had to. Um he was impulsive. We

(14:39):
know that a sense of bravado also seemed to be
a play when it came to tr and the Spanish
American War. He had been loudly and publicly beating the
war drum. As the assistant Secretary of the Navy. He
believed that it was the country's duty to intervene in
the war for Cuban independence, which sometimes made him act
against the wishes of his superiors. Once the u became

(15:00):
part of the war in Roosevelt resigned from his post,
forming the first U. S Volunteer Cavalry, the Rough Riders,
and heading to Cuba to get in on the action himself.
We'll be right back. Tier's fearlessness in the face of
physical danger would become the stuff of legend in June,

(15:21):
when Roosevelt and the Rough Riders took part in the
Battle of Las Guasimas. There, in the sweltering jungle, a
newly discovered Spanish stronghold blocked a military advancement. It was
here that Roosevelt faced live fire for the first time.
Hailes of bullets peppered his position, and the Rough Riders
suffered their first casualties of the campaign. Roosevelt himself was
said to be so excited by the action that he

(15:42):
made no effort to take cover. Instead, he frantically moved
about as he awaited orders. Once a bullet missed him
by mirror inches, piercing a tree right next to him
and sprang his face full of bark. Days later came
the famous Charge of Kettle Hill during what's now known
as the Battle of San Juan Heights. The rough Riders
were tasked with helping to capture Kettle Hill as part

(16:03):
of a larger campaign by the US to take Santiago
to Cuba. On this day, time was not a luxury.
The Americans were firing artillery by six thirty in the morning.
Soon after, the Spanish responded with explosions that rocked the
rough rider camp, leaving four dead and Roosevelt himself with
a shrapnel wound on his wrist. Orders to charge the

(16:23):
hill were slow to come from General Sumner, and Roosevelt,
growing impatient to see action, was on the verge of
unilaterally sending his men up the hill on his own.
Just before he was given official word to make his move,
I sprang on my horse, and then my crowded hour began.
Roosevelt gleefully powered throw on horseback, with his men running

(16:43):
behind him, bullets flying at them from all sides. Tr
himself would take down a Spanish soldier using a pistol.
He doubled up neatly as a jack rabbit, Roosevelt would
proudly proclaim the Rough Riders suffered the most casualties of
any regiment in the Cavalry Division on that day. Roosevelt
himself dodged death on numerous occasions. Bullets always seemed to

(17:05):
be just missing him, sometimes whizzing by in the scenery,
sometimes hitting fellow rough Riders just feet away. During one
early morning bombardment by the Spanish, Roosevelt found cover under
a tree as a shell exploded overhead. Five men directly
behind him were killed or wounded. Roosevelt came away unscathed.
I really firmly believe now they can't kill him. Family

(17:28):
friend and fellow soldier Bob Ferguson wrote in a letter
to Tear's wife, Edith, but tr himself saw it all
through a boy's eyes. The charge itself was great fun,
he said, Oh, but we had a bully fight. The
Rough Riders helped secure a victory for the US that day,
and the image of Roosevelt charging up the hill on horseback,
sneering at death would become a part of American folklore

(17:50):
and helped turn him into one of the most popular
men in the country. Upon his return to the States
in August. This is what propels his career. He becomes famous,
nationally famous, becomes a household name after the rough Rider's.
You know when the Battle of sam Wan Heights and
you become so popular that the New York political machine

(18:11):
or Republican Party wants to run for governor, they running
for government, he's successful. That's Tyler Caliberta, education technician at
Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, who explains that Republican machine
boss Thomas Platt, who had clashed with Roosevelt before and
probably should have known that he would not fall in
line as governor, was fed up with Tiers reform policies,

(18:32):
so they kicked him upstairs, according to Caliberta, to be
McKinley's running mate. Not everyone was pleased with that development.
When Tier was chosen as McKinley's running mate, Mark Hanna,
McKinley's right hand man, said, don't any of you realize
that there is only one life between that manman and
the presidency. Roosevelt was hiking at the New York Vermont

(18:53):
border when McKinley was hit by an assassin's bullet. At first,
he went to Buffalo to be by the president's side,
but when it looked like McKinley would recover. Tier went
back to the mountains. He was on Mount Marcy, the
highest point in New York State, when word reached him
that McKinley had taken a turn for the worse and
was dying. Roosevelt took off, flying down the mountain. Here's

(19:14):
Clay Jenkinson. Roso made this heroic journey and reckless. Um
could have himself been killed, urging the stage rider faster, faster,
don't hold back. And they were going on these really
dangerous paths and in the darkness, and she wanted to
get to a train that was waiting for him. And
so he gets to the train and goes to Buffalo,

(19:35):
and then when he arrives, he already knows that the
president is dead. And now he's in this really strange
position because he's wanted to be president, He's intended to
be president, but he certainly didn't think it would come
this soon. You have to tread very very carefully in
the wake of an assassination. You can't be gleeful, but

(19:58):
you have to assume control. You have to make sure
that the people who were McKinley's aids and insiders will
accept you and not flee. And yet you have to
establish your own administrative mastery and control of the levers
of power pretty quickly, and he did it beautifully. Still,

(20:19):
Theodore Roosevelt was Theodore Roosevelt tr who came into office
thanks to an assassin's bullet. Was the first president to
have formal protection by the Secret Service, but he wouldn't
make it easy on them. According to historian Kathleen Dalton,
he resisted Secret Service protection at first, preferring to carry
his own gun. Tier did eventually accept their protection, but

(20:42):
as Dalton rights, only begrudgingly. And when Roosevelt wished to
observe the capabilities of one of the Navy's earliest submarines,
the USS Plunger, he didn't do so from the safety
of the Presidential yacht. Instead, he joined the crew of
the vessel as a dove underwater for hours. This despite
the fact that submarine technology was still in its infancy.

(21:03):
Never in my life have I had such a dive
hurting day, nor can I ever recall having so much
enjoyment in so few hours as today, he said. Danger
seemed to find Roosevelt even when he wasn't looking for it.
On September three, the President was heading to Pittsfield, Massachusetts,
and a horse drawn carriage with him were Winthrop Crane,

(21:24):
Governor of Massachusetts, future Secretary of the Treasury George Bruce
could tell you. And Secret Service agent William Craig. As
the carriage crossed some trolley tracks on the way into town,
it was hit by an electric trolley. The carriage flew
forty feet. Roosevelt was thrown, landing on his face and
bruising his leg. Crane and Cortel You were okay, but

(21:45):
Craig had been run over by the trolley. He was dead,
the first Secret Service agent to die on presidential duty.
Roosevelt had barely escaped. John Hey, Roosevelt, Secretary of State,
later said that had the trolley car struck the rear hub,
Crane and the President would have been tossed to the
left and under the wheels, just as poor Craig was.

(22:09):
How close a call was it, according to Morris, a
mere two inches in true tr form. He soldiered on
campaigning in the Midwest, at least until the trip was
cut short when the bruise on his shin developed into
an abscess that required emergency surgery. One of Caliberta's favorite
tr stories is an anecdote of Edith's casual reaction to

(22:30):
seeing her bloodied husband come inside one day at Sagamore
Hill after colliding with the blades of the windmill that
still stands on the property. Apparently, Edith tells him very calmly, thedore,
I wish you'd do your bleeding in the bathroom, which
for me gives me a sense that she was used
to this, that this was something she was She experienced
him hurting himself, and she knew that he would be

(22:53):
fine and everything would be okay, and she's worried about
and just don't bleed. Don't bleed here. Just because she
was accustomed to it doesn't mean she didn't worry. And
even after he was out of office, Edith still couldn't
shake the fear that McKinley's fate would also befall her husband,
and it almost did on October four during a campaign

(23:13):
stop in Milwaukee, when tire was running for president for
a potential third term, not as a Republican but as
the candidate for the Progressive Party. It's one of the
most famous pieces of the Roosevelt mythology. He was shot
by John Flaming shrank, deranged would be assassin who claimed
the ghost of McKinley was guiding him to gun down
Roosevelt right before he was set to deliver a speech,

(23:36):
With a bullet lodged in his chest and death closer
to his front door than ever. Tire handled the situation
in trademark Bull Moose fashion, powering through a roughly ninety
minute speech as blood continued to escape the wound. Only
after he was done with his work would Roosevelt go
to the hospital. Edith wasn't by her husband's side for
this trip. Instead, she was back home in New York

(23:58):
watching a production of Johann strap Us as The Mary
Countess at the Casino Theater in Manhattan. When she got
the news, A weeping Edith bolted from the theater and
was heard to demand take me to where I can
talk to him or hear from him at once. She
was taken to the Progressive National headquarters at the Manhattan
Hotel and spoke over the phone with Tears doctors, who

(24:18):
informed her that the wound had been X rayed and dressed,
and they were in the process of determining if the
bullet could be safely removed or not. After midnight, she
received a telegram from her husband that attempted to downplay
the situation. It read, I am now in the American hospital.
The bullet did not hit anything vital, and I think
they will find it somewhere around. It is no more

(24:41):
serious than the injury the boys received. My voice is
holding out well, and I will go on with the trip.
Don't worry, Love to all. The doctors did indeed find
the bullet around somewhere. It was lodged in Roosevelt's rib,
and the doctors decided to leave it where it lay.
We'll be right back. Following the assassination attempt and his

(25:06):
loss in the election, familiar Roosevelt pattern re emerged. He
decided to overcome the post election melancholia by shaking off
the modern world and going on his famed trip down
the Amazon's River of doubt. It shouldn't have come as
a shock to Edith that, even after surviving run ins
with grizzly bears, a carriage accident, in a bullet to
the chest, Tara was still willing to take enormous risks,

(25:27):
tempt fate, and set off on boyish adventures. Even at
the age of fifty five. Here's Andy's who could make
this up. He went for the adventure, but he also
went to be the first to do this. Um that
was a big thing. But that was a big thing
among the explorer class back then. I'm sure Edith looked

(25:50):
at him like, that's dangerous. But Edith knew him really well. Um,
But I don't think the thought of danger ever stopped
him from doing anything. He almost died on that trip,
and he never really recovered his health after that, and
Kermit almost died too, with the malaria, a bacterial infection

(26:12):
in the gash on his leg. Roosevelt wasn't just close
to death during his Amazon trip. He was also growing
concerned that his condition would spread and endanger the other
men in his group. He had brought along morphine on
the trip, as he always did on expeditions like these,
in case things got bad. As he later told a
friend who recounted the story, one never knows what is

(26:33):
going to happen. And I did not mean to be
caught by some accident where I should have to die
a lingering death. I always meant that, if at any
time death became inevitable, I would have it over with
it once without going through a long drawn out agony
from which death was the only relief. I've had a
very full life, and I'm not at all afraid to die.
On the Amazon trip, things got bad, and Roosevelt told

(26:55):
his friend that when I found myself so ill that
I was a drag on the party and a big
and to look as if we could not all get
out alive. I began to think it might be better
for me to take my morphine and end it. But
then it occurred to Roosevelt that Kermit wouldn't abandon him,
not even if he died. He would insist on bringing
his father's body back, which tr knew would be impossible.

(27:16):
So there was only one thing for me to do,
and that was to come out myself. He said. It
was a hard fight, but I made it. The River
of Doubt is now known as the Roosevelt River in
honor of the expedition that Tier was all too ready
to sacrifice himself for. But his pension for cheating death
was suffering from diminishing returns. His body was broken down,

(27:36):
he had lost much of his formidable size, and he
was looking more mortal than ever. Over the next few years,
tr faced failing health and even more tragedy when his
son Quentin died after his plane was shot down in
Germany during World War One. Tr faced his grief quietly.
There's no use writing about Quentin, he wrote to novelist

(27:57):
Edith Wharton, for I should break down if I tried.
The Roosevelt routine of plunging into adventure to combat the
loss of a loved one had run its course. Even
before Quentin's death, it was becoming clear that Tier's body
simply wouldn't allow him to be the bull Moose anymore.
By eighteen, he was suffering from rheumatism, lumbago and nemia

(28:17):
and vertigo, which made it difficult to walk or even
stand at times. Various infections would put him in and
out of the hospital, and illnesses he faced on the
Amazon would still affect him, something he called his old
Brazilian trouble. In November nineteen eighteen, Roosevelt was brought to
the hospital to treat the recurring abscesses in his legs.
He came home around Christmas time, though he was still

(28:39):
suffering from worsening pain due to his rheumatism. By this point,
Edith had his bed moved to the chamber adjacent to
their room, one with corner windows facing south and west,
the warmest room in the house. The coal fire was
kept lit all day and night, keeping Roosevelt comfortable as
he rested in his mahogany sleigh bed. Despite the litton

(29:00):
of ailments, he was still working. Morris writes that on
January three, tr dictated editorial to the Kansas City Star
on the proposed League of Nations, and on January five,
he dictated an article for the Metropolitan voicing his support
for a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote,
and he wrote a long letter to his son Ted
with a draft of his Metropolitan article enclosed. Around midnight,

(29:24):
Roosevelt's caretaker, James Amos, helped the colonel get into bed.
After watching the fire for a while, Roosevelt asked James,
will you please turn out the light before closing his
eyes to go to sleep. Just a few hours later,
early in the morning on January after decades of dodging

(29:45):
it physically, mentally, and emotionally, death finally came for Theodore Roosevelt.
Here's caliberta you guys. Quietly. It's kind of the the
opposite of I think how he thought he would die.
It's kind of ironic to die quietly in your family
home and your sleep, whereas Roosevelt, I think um was

(30:05):
somebody who I think would have seen himself as somebody
who could die in battle. There's somebody who would die
giving himself to a great cause. Roosevelt's battle with death
was probably best summed up by Vice President Thomas Marshall, who,
upon hearing that the colonel had passed away, said death
had to take him in his sleep, for if Roosevelt
had been awake, there would have been a fight. Roosevelt's

(30:29):
death was a shock to the nation and to the world.
There had been talks of him running again for president,
and to the public at large, he had always been
a figure that seemed invulnerable. Within hours of the news,
the Senate and the House of Representatives were adjourned. US
flags were ordered to half masted around the globe, and
military planes made ceremonial flights over Oyster Bay, dropping laurel

(30:52):
wreaths onto the lawn of the Roosevelt family home. Mourners
swarmed through Oyster Bay, leaving Edith and son Archie direct
traffic and console the very people who had come to
comfort them. The tributes to tr poured in. A Marisato,
former Japanese ambassador to Washington, reflected on Roosevelt's legacy and
his efforts to bring about peace during the Russo Japanese War,

(31:16):
saying tire was perhaps the only great American who understood us.
George Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister, wrote to Edith, saying
France loses in him an excellent friend. British Prime Minister
David Lloyd George remarked Mr. Roosevelt was a great and
inspiring figure far beyond his own country shores, and the
world is poorer for his loss. Later, a memorial service

(31:39):
was held at Westminster Abbey, where a choir sang Roosevelt's
favorite him how firm a foundation, followed by a rendition
of the Star spangled banner on the church. Organs. Theodore
Roosevelt's funeral was held on January. His body lay in
a coffin in the north room of Sagamore Hill, resting
on a prized lion skin adorned with flags for both

(32:02):
the United States and the Rough Riders. His daughter Ethel
said that he looked as if he were asleep. And weary,
but not stern. Roosevelt was laid to rest in Young's
Memorial Cemetery, just about a mile away from Sagamore Hill,
at the top of a hill looking out over the bay.
The weather and the hike to the site were pure Roosevelt.

(32:24):
The mourners, who included mentor and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
and friend turned rival William Howard Taft, had to make
a forty five degree trek up the hill while trudging
through a layer of wet snow that had fallen that morning.
It's a humid day in July when John went a mental.
Floss's video editors and I make the truck out to
Sagamore Hill and to Young's Memorial Cemetery. The hill is

(32:46):
no joke. We are sweating buckets by the time we
reached the steps to Roosevelt's grave twenty six steps up.
Did you just know that? No, I looked it up
ahead of time, but you know, President steps makes sense.

(33:09):
So this place is called Young's Memorial Cemetery, and that's
because this used to be the Young's farm. They were
a long time Long Island residents, and they started burying
their own family members here in sixty eight. Yeah, and
then later on they made it available to their neighbors,

(33:30):
and so tr and Edith bought plots here. According to
this this pamphlet, some years before the President's death, his
simple country grave reached by twenty six steps, signifying that
he was the twenty six President. Soon became the focus
for pilgrimages by groups and individuals like me. At the
top of the hill is trs grave site. It's a

(33:53):
simple tombstone adorned with a great seal, surrounded by a
wrought iron fence. There's a small concrete pathway around the grave,
which is covered with plants. There are two small American
flags and one blue flag that reads Medal of Honor recipient.
Roosevelt was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously in two
thousand one. He was the first and only president to

(34:14):
receive the distinction. The site is tranquil. The trees rustle
in the wind, the bay glitters in the sun, and
above the distant sound of screaming kids and the drone
of a lawnmower and the wishing of cars going by,
you can hear what Theodore Roosevelt thought was the sweetest

(34:34):
sound in the whole World He Loved Birds. History Versus
is hosted by me Aaron McCarthy. This episode was written
by j Serafino, with research by me and fact checking
by Austin Thompson. Field recording by John Meyer. Joe Wigan

(34:56):
voiced Theodore Roosevelt in this episode. The executive producers are
Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer
is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited by Dylan Fagan
and Loll Berlante. Special thanks to Elisa Parker Guisman, Eileen Andy's,
Tyler Caliberta, and Clay Jenkinson. To learn more about this
episode and Theodore Roosevelt, check out our website at mental

(35:19):
flass dot com, slash History Versus. That's mental flass dot
com slash h I S t R y vs. History
Versus is the production of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
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