Stumbled into this Teddy Roosevelt web site recently. Teddy is a hero and a role model to many because of his overcoming illness as a youth, his adventures in the West, his wide range of interests, his voluminous writings on all subjects from hunting and natural history to policy (he published more books than any other President), his robust approach to life which allowed him to gallop his horse straight down the sand dunes of Oyster Bay and straight up San Juan Hill, and to hike through the chest-deep ice-covered Rock Creek in January as President, often with diplomats in tow. Not to mention his achievements as President, from negotiating the truce in the Russo-Japanese War, projecting American power world-wide, championing conservation, and championing economic justice for workers. The two Edmund Morris volumes tell it all, down to the details of Teddy's wacky tennis game and his remarkable skills as a rifleman, despite poor eyesight. This bird-watching family man with the high squeaky voice, a fine pedigree but chronic money problems, and a giant faith in America, was larger than life.
It's well-known that folks from the NY Metropolitan area rarely or never visit their own tourist attractions, but a visit to Roosevelt's relatively modest home, Sagamore Hill, in Oyster Bay on Long Island (not far from NYC) is a good outing. Little has changed there since his death, except, sadly, for the selling off of much of his farm, which originally extended down to the shores of Long Island Sound. Read the Sagamore Hill sites here and here before you go, because tickets sell out.
Photo of Teddy as NYC Police Commissioner around 1895.
