Two Teddies in Medora, ND

In September 1883, Theodore Roosevelt came to the Badlands of North Dakota, shot a bison bull, and invested $14,000 in cattle and cowboys, the money inherited from his father’s death nearly five years before.  He returned to New York City, celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday in October and his November re-election to a third one year term in the New York General Assembly.  On February 14, 1884, Theodore Roosevelt watched his mother die from typhoid fever and his wife die of Bright’s disease.

By the summer of 1884, TR was back in the region of Medora in the Dakota Territory, a cattle rancher operating the Chimney Butte/Maltese Cross south of the young village.  The Elkhorn Ranch downstream would soon follow, and TR’s investments eventually ballooned to some $80,000.  That was significant money in 1883-1887.

To know Theodore Roosevelt, you do need to know of his experience in the Badlands.  His response to loss and tragedy was to seek hard work, adventure, strenuous living.  He did that here along the scenic Little Missouri River, hunting the game and birds for the table.  Of course, TR healed, married Edith Carow, and, together, they reared six children. 

 

It is so very fitting that Medora is the gateway to the Southern Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  Today, the park teems with bison, elk, wild horses, prairie dogs, and big horn sheep. The Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation, started by the late North Dakota businessman Harold Schafer and his family and friends, provides in Medora a family centered environment for exploring and celebrating the history and culture of the region.  The Medora Musical, singing and dancing cowboys and cowgirls and more, is just one of many wonderful activities here.

This is my second summer performing in Medora.  I bring TR to life in a daily matinee at the historic Old Town Hall Theatre.  This summer has been quite special for me, as family and friends have visited.  This story is about one of those friends. 

For a year or more, Larry Marple and I have been Facebook friends, Larry having found one of my TR videos on Youtube.  Larry is a veteran elementary school teacher in Springfield, Ohio.  He’s also a fellow TR reprisor. It gets better.  His wife, Julia, portrays Edith Roosevelt, Teddy’s wife.  They married at a Civil War re-enactment in period clothes.  Great, bully stuff.

When I first started doing TR with earnestness and planned our fifty state TR Tour for 2008, I realized that there were other fellows out there across the country who brought  TR to life, each with his own talents, each with his own interpretation.  Some very good ones have passed away.  James Whitmore, no longer reprising his award-winning role in Bully, died in 2009.

I asked my father, who has been a professional comedian since 1971, what he thought about all these other TR’s out there.  He said, “Son, work on your own material and your own craft.  Don’t worry about what the other guy’s gigs are or what his interpretation is like.  Be the best TR Joe you can be and have fun.”  He’s a hippie, but he says a lot of smart things.

I consider all my fellow TR reprisors to be my colleagues, not my competitors.  America needs lots of TRs, visiting schools and libraries, performing in town parks and historic places.  There are hundreds of Abraham Lincolns, and rightly so.  TR himself revered Lincoln.  Should we not have as many Rough Riders as we have Rail Splitters? 

I met Larry Marple for the first time on Wednesday morning at the Dickinson, North Dakota Airport – pretty sure it’s named after Theodore Roosevelt.  Soon we were at the Painted Canyon Visitor Center, an overlook of the most stupendous view of the Badlands to the east, west and north on the north side of Interstate 94, just two miles east of Medora.  Larry was in awe of the scenery, and though I have seen it over a hundred times, I was in awe again, too.  These are not the desolate grey Badlands of South Dakota.  These Badlands are full of geological and biological color.  Especially in what has been a wet and cool year, the grasses, sage, scrub oak, and cotton wood are green and verdant.  It is a take-your-breath-away view, and just a portion of what can be seen in the park, around Medora, and at the Bully Pulpit golf course.

In four fun packed days, Larry toured the park at 5AM with outdoor photographer Bill Kingsbury, hiked on the very grounds of TR’s remote Elk Horn Ranch site, hiked a butte, and most especially, performed in character and in costume as Theodore Roosevelt.  It was a great pleasure to have Larry here, and yes, it was a little surreal, too.  For Larry is a very good TR, full of interesting and accurate information.  He has the right look, too.  It was a doppleganger moment.

My father always lived and demonstrated the kind of collegiality one might hope existed in more areas of competitive enterprise.  Anytime a comedian was in my father’s audience, my father would invite the friend and colleague up for a guest set, a chance to say hello to the room.  I was determined to make a guest set happen for my friend, Larry. 

Larry and I had great fun when, for the first time, to our knowledge, in the long history of the universe, two Teddy Roosevelts appeared and performed on stage at the same time.  As an homage to the many people who make Medora work, we surprised nearly every one of the 150 or so audience members who attended a post Medora  Musical comedy show at the Old Town Hall Theatre.  The show starred comedian Kermet Opio and host/magician Bill Sorenson.  Let’s just say at the beginning of the show, a magic trick went bad and poof, there were TWO Teddy Roosevelts on stage.  Larry and I had fun, and everyone was blown away.  Today, I performed my regular matinee, and found a way to have Larry come on stage as TR and tell the audience all about the war in Cuba and the run for the Governorship of New York.  Larry was a big hit, I finished the show, and the audience saw something, again, that nobody has ever seen before. 

Well, Larry Marple is headed back to the classroom in Springfield, I think renewed in both his vigor for the school months ahead and for the many opportunities that he and Julia have to bring TR and Edith to life all across the country and here in Medora.

We are colleagues, and now true and real friends.

If you know someone who brings TR to life or someone who would like to learn more about doing so, have them get a hold of me, for we would like them to come to Medora and catch a bit of the Bully Spirit!

American Legion Boys State & Girls State

Every summer, high school juniors from around the state of North Dakota, gather for a week of civics known as North Dakota Boys State and North Dakota Flickertail Girls State.  Indeed, students gather in every state, half the students assigned to one political party and half to a second party, usually Nationalists and Federalists.  Students set up and elect city, county and state governments via conventions and elections.  Two United States Senators are chosen from each Boys State and each Girls State to attend Boys Nation and Girls Nation in Washington, D.C.  It is terrific fun, and America owes a great debt to the American Legion and the American Legion Auxiliary, which have been running these Americanism and Youth programs since the 1930’s.  Former North Dakota Boys Staters include Coach Phil Jackson and North Dakota Governor Ed Schafer, now Chairman of the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation.  Many a leader had his or her start as a Boys Stater or Girls Stater.

This summer, the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation was delighted to send Theodore Roosevelt to Boys State in Wahpeton and Girls State in Grand Forks to entertain and inspire the nearly 300 delegates, counselors and volunteers involved in the two programs.  In his own youth, our Theodore Roosevelt reprisor, Joe Wiegand, was elected Governor of Illinois Premiere Boys State and President of the American Legion Boys Nation program.  “The American Legion gave me scholarships for college,” says Wiegand, “and I have always wanted to give back and help the Boys State and Girls State programs grow.  Besides, there may have been a real future Governor, Senator or President among those young men and women.  It was truly an honor.”  Wiegand says citizens can contact their local American Legion Post for ways to support the programs.

Medora’s Theodore Roosevelt with the officers of North Dakota Boys State, held at North Dakota State College of Science at Wahpeton. Left to Right – Neil Litton, Director (Fargo); Christian Anheluk, Disaster Emergency Manager (Belfield); Jordan Beattie, the Senate Pro Tem (Pembina); Deane Bjornson, State Auditor (Cavalier); Andrew Brummond, Superintendent of Public Instruction (Park River); Benjamin Trenne, Attorney General (Grand Forks); Ray Salata, Governor (Grand Forks); Col. Theodore Roosevelt; Erik Hanson, Lieutenant Governor (Grand Forks); Brandt Vernon, Secretary of State (Hazen); Trenton McCloud, State Treasurer (Rolla); Ryan Nelson, Public Service Commissioner (Casselton); Trevor Boehm, Agriculture Commissioner (McClusky).  Mr Salata and Mr. Anheluk were elected to represent North Dakota as it two United States Senators at the American Legion Boys Nation program held July 19-26 in Washington, D.C.

After a visit from Medora’s Theodore Roosevelt, the Flickertail Girls Staters held their elections on the campus of the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.  The results: Governor Hayley Lund – Crosby; Lt. Governor Morgan Mathison – Walhalla; Secretary of State Bethany Brumbaugh – Cavalier; Auditor Hannah Colemer – Forman; Treasurer Hannah Krauter - West Fargo; Attorney General Katelyn Osland – Fargo; Commissioner of Insurance Kendal Hendrickson – Cando; Commissioner of Agriculture Abby Braaten – Wyndmere; Tax Commissioner Kara Smith – Buffalo; Public Service Commissioner Anne Hefta – Hazen; Public Service Commissioner Anna Rand - Park River; Public Service Commissioner Kady Rath – McClusky; Supreme Court Chief Justice Sarah Strube – Dickingson; Supreme Court Justice Kaytlin Werth – McClusky; Supreme Court Justice Julia Hartz – Cavalier; Supreme Court Justice Raechelle Salzer – Ashley; Supreme Court Justice Jessica Mastel – Wahpeton; Superintendent of Instruction Tyrza Hoines – Bismarck.  North Dakota’s United States Senators headed to Girls Nation are Hayley Lund of Crosby and Hershita Gaba of Fargo.  Girls Nation will also be held in Washington, D.C. from July 20-27.

While Joe Wiegand continues to tour the state and the nation performing as Theodore Roosevelt and as a Goodwill Ambassador for the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation, you can still find him in Medora, every Monday through Saturday, in a one man show, “A TR Salute to Medora,” at 3:30 P.M. Mountain in the air-conditioned Old Town Hall Theatre in downtown Medora through September 6.  On Saturdays in July, from 1:00 to 2:30 P.M., Wiegand will also be performing and signing copies of Theodore Roosevelt’s 1913 Autobiography at Medora’s Western Edge Book Store, 425 Fourth Street in Medora. On Saturday's in August, from 9:00 to 10:30AM, Wiegand will greet visitors at the South Unit and Painted Canyon National Park Visitor Centers.

Twelve Days with Teddy - It's Hard to Hit a Moving Target

To give a little context to the quick travelogue below, I am posted for the summer in the Badlands of North Dakota, loving the opportunity to perform a daily TR matinee from 4-5PM Monday thru Friday.  I’ll be returning to Medora in summer 2013.  Between now and then, I will tour the country in a 2011 Ford Flex we are dubbing the Medora Mobile.  The beautiful ride will be festooned with graphics and logos telling the Medora story. 

Since I drove my 2004 Honda Accord to North Dakota, and since that car was just turning 300,000 miles and beginning to give up its transmission, I decided on quick notice to drive my car to DeKalb County, Illinois, where my mechanic would gladly buy it at a very low dollar.  I could drop by and surprise the alumni of the Roosevelt Military Academy gathering in Rock Island on my way.  That’s the sort of fun I go for, and this seemed to be the solution for the dilemma of what to do with two cars in the Badlands, needing only one to drive away.  Here goes:

The Friday afternoon matinee performance in Medora, North Dakota, was like so many others – fun for me because the audiences are great.  When the show was over at 5 PM Mountain, I began to drive east on I-94.  I drove, and I drove.  Through the night with a brief nap somewhere, I took I-35 south from Minneapolis-St.Paul and via Cedar Rapids and a visit to the Herbert Hoover Museum, eventually to Rock Island, Illinois.  Saturday evening performance for the All Class Reunion of the Roosevelt Military Academy in Aledo, Illinois – great stories here.  Drive to Fairdale, Illinois, and leave my old Honda Accord with my mechanic at 2AM on Sunday.  Take a beautiful 3 hour, ten mile hike to the Clock Tower in Rockford, Illinois.   Catch the 6AM bus to Madison, Wisconsin.  My dad picks me up and takes me to the train in Tomah, after a nice visit with brother, Josh and sister-in-law, Amy.  Take the 6PM Amtrak train back west to Williston, ND, arriving Williston at 10 AM Mountain, Monday.  One taxi and two hitch hike rides later, I made it the 150 miles to Medora, with a half hour to spare before my 4PM show. 

After the show, I hitch hiked the 16 miles to Belfield.  Tuesday morning, I hitchhiked first to Dickinson, then to the Bismarck Airport, a total of 120 miles.  My second ride was from a guy who was going to be on the same flight!  Tuesday 11AM fly to Minneapolis-St. Paul, Midway-Chicago and Manchester, New Hampshire, changing planes for each flight and arriving Tuesday night at 10:30PM.  Rental car.  Drive to Portland, Maine.  At 9AM on Wednesday, after a few hour sleep in the car somewhere, shave and change into TR’s tramping about costume in a McDonalds restroom.  Greet guests and interact on Mackworth Island in Falmouth, ME.  Attend events at Evergreen Cemetery and Baxter Woods.  5:30PM reception at the Maine Historical Society, TR performance at 7PM.  Drive to Baxter State Park in the Northwoods region of Maine.  Sleep in the car somewhere.  Arrive Baxter State Park afternoon of Thursday, camp at Moose Wood on Kidney Pond, swim in Kidney Pond, and share a performance at 7PM in the camp lodge house.   Friday morning, climb Sentinel Mountain on the southeast side of Kidney Pond and swim the pond after.  Friday at 6PM begin driving south on I-95. 

Saturday morning, after a nap in the car somewhere, arrive at the brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s house in West Hartford, CT.  Swam the pool and played basketball and some sort of “drown your uncle” ball with the nephews.  Great family fun Saturday night.  Sunday morning, drive to Newbury, New Hampshire, change into costume and perform at 4PM reception through 6PM dinner.  Saw Sewanee friend Fred Sheperd and his mom, Mary, and the grandparents of one of Jenny’s dual sport players. 

After the Sunday evening performance, I drive to Manchester, New Hampshire.  Great middle of the night breakfast at the Airport Diner and a brief food coma nap in the car after.  Monday, 6AM flight from Manchester, to Chicago-Midway, to Minneapolis-St.Paul, to Bismarck, each flight a different plane.  Arrived Bismarck at 2PM Mountain, and Medora friend Van Larson gives me a fast ride to Medora, arriving 1 minute before my 4PM matinee.  Monday night, I attempt to hitch hike to Belfield, but it’s a comedy of errors, as I head back too early to take a nap in my dressing room. 

First thing, 6AM Tuesday morning, I hitch a ride to Belfield.  I clean up and have breakfast, water the flowers, and begin the 16 mile bike ride into Medora.  Arrive Medora in an hour and a half, play basketball with Baskhar from India, swim, perform matinee for a great audience.  After dinner, I bike 16 miles back to Belfield, arriving just at dusk, headlight and tail light blazing!  Home sweet home just in time to watch Ann Romney and have a PBR with Chris Christie. 

Twelve days, seven plus performances in four states, thirty-six hundred miles by plane, two thousand miles by auto, eight hundred miles by train, three hundred miles hitch-hiking, one hundred and eighty miles of rides from family and friends, and thirty-two miles by bike.  Nearly seven thousand miles, probably done in a manner nobody else has ever done. Crazy fun.

Time to get on the bike and head into work!  Medora Mobile ready next week.

Check out www.medora.com

Happy 100th Birthday, Harold Schafer

Today, February 1, in Medora and throughout the state of North Dakota, folks will gather and celebrate the life and legacy of Harold Schafer.

A graduate of Bismarck High School, Schafer left North Dakota State University to start a career in sales, helping to support his widowed mother and younger sister.

As a young man, Schafer began his own line of Gold Seal floor wax and furniture polish, adding Glass Wax and, eventually, Mr. Bubble, to the line of products. Certainly an American success story of hard work and determination, Schafer took the lead in saving, preserving and restoring first the Rough Rider Hotel and eventually most of the old cowboy town of Medora.

You can see a wonderful, brief profile of Harold Schafer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6RJKd2_37E&feature=related

Every summer, hundreds of thousands of folks from around the country and around the world visit Medora and the Theodore Roosevelt National Park which is contiguous to the town. I consider it a tremendous honor to bring my interpretative performance as Theodore Roosevelt to life in Medora this summer in conjunction with the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation (TRMF), begun by Mr. Schafer, his family and friends so many years ago.

Today, as folks gather in North Dakota, celebrating the life and legacy of Harold Schafer, we can say that his example and the vitality of what he built is alive and well and in good hands. Harold’s wife, Sheila Schafer, is a vibrant dynamo and Medora’s chief cheerleader. The sparkle in her eyes and the joyfulness in her voice surely convey much of the love that Mr. Schafer had for this place and this project. Son Ed Schafer, a former North Dakota Governor and United States Secretary of Agriculture, is just one of many family and community members who continue to ensure the future of these good works. The TRMF benefits from the veteran leadership of Randy Hatzenbuehler. World class programs and exposure come to Medora via the humanities scholar and historical interpretor Clay Jenkinson and his colleagues, especially Sharon Kilzer, at the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University. Superintendent Valerie Naylor and all of the rangers, staff and volunteers at Theodore Roosevelt National Park ensure that a visit to the park is a breathtaking experience of nature, history and wildlife.

So, with so many good people putting their shoulders to the wheel, with the beauty of the Badlands and the unmatched hospitality of the people of Western North Dakota abounding, I think Harold Schafer is looking upon his loved ones and his beloved Medora on this his 100^th birthday with a broad smile and a twinkle in his eye. Happy 100th birthday, Harold Schafer. Bully for you and Medora.

Saluting Theodore Roosevelt in Medora, North Dakota

As 2011 ends, I look back on more than four years of travelling the country, studying TR and bringing him to life for audiences. It has been an experience filled with blessings. I’m thankful for a loving and supportive family that has joined me on much of this adventure.

As 2012, begins, I’m thankful that so many of my friends, colleagues and customers have embraced what I’m doing. In 2012, we will celebrate the centennial of TR’s 1912 effort, first to win the Republican nomination for president and then to win the presidency as the nominee of the Progressive Party.

I’m thankful that the centennial year will find me performing throughout the country, from Maine to Oregon, and a hundred places in between.

The Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation has hired me to bring TR to life in a daily matinee, Mondays through Fridays, from June 11 through September 8 in beautiful Medora, North Dakota. To get a feel for this one of a kind community go here: http://medora.com/ TR’s cattle ranch and much of his adventurous life were here in the 1880’s. Today, Medora hosts the southern entrance to Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the North Dakota Badlands are all around.

Weekends and evenings will be my own, allowing me to book entertainments elsewhere in the country. I do already have some June and August bookings in Illinois, Maine and New Hampshire. I’ll take my car out west and fly in and out of Bismarck when necessary. I’ll spend a good deal of the summer swimming in the Little Missouri River, hiking the buttes, riding a horse and golfing at the Bully Pulpit Golf Course.

If you have ever thought to visit the West, I hope to entice you. By automobile, Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills of South Dakota are four hours south and Yellowstone is seven hours west.

Come join us in Medora, North Dakota!

The Strenuous Life

“I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.”

Theodore Roosevelt – before the Hamilton Club of Chicago, April 10, 1899

This is one of several iterations of Theodore Roosevelt’s viewpoint on the Strenuous Life. Elsewhere, TR wrote that he embraced the Vigorous Life, suggested to him by a correspondent, as an improvement as a summary of the concept. Our trip around the country has been both Strenuous and Vigorous. Today, we begin month six and happily it’s a day that will find us home as a family for the first time since we left on February 16.

A highlight of our tour was this past weekend’s Strenuous Life Adventure hosted in Medora, North Dakota by the Theodore Roosevelt Association (http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/). Known as the TRA, the association was founded in 1919 by family, friends and admirers of Theodore Roosevelt with the mission to preserve the memory and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, to encourage an appreciation for the life, thoughts, words, principles and actions of this great American. I’m delighted to be a member of the TRA, and I strongly encourage anyone who might read these words to join. As I explain to audiences, there is much that TR said that bears repeating, much for which TR fought that deserves championing today.

A highlight of the TRA activities is the annual meeting, usually held on a weekend proximate to TR’s October 27 birthday. This year, the meeting will be held in Oyster Bay, Long Island, October 24-26, and I hope you’ll consider joining Jenny, Sam and me as we celebrate TR’s 150th birthday.

This past weekend, the TRA’s Strenuous Life Weekend in North Dakota featured horse riding, gun shooting, lasso practice, hiking and branding. The weekend and this spring’s TRA Seattle event celebrating the centennial of the Great White Fleet herald a rejuvenation of the national organization that is occurring under the presidency of former Smithsonian officer, Jim Bruns and the chairmanship of Barbara Berryman Brandt. Both of these TRA events were spearheaded by TRA member Michele Bryant, she the wife of Capt. David Bryant, U.S. Navy Retired, the former commanding officer of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, the Navy’s “Big Stick” aircraft carrier. Lt. Rebecca Rickey, U.S. Navy Retired, co-chaired the fun in Medora.

TRA membership is growing, local chapters are being formed and good works are being undertaken in the spirit of TR. It’s a pleasure for me to work with TRA Trustee Jim Pehta to establish a Chicago Bull Moose Chapter of the TRA. Jim is helping to lead a national campaign where thousands of Teddy Bears are being donated by TRA to dozens of children’s hospitals around the country. Nationally and in its local chapters, the TRA sponsors police awards, acknowledging TR’s history as President of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners and especially honoring our men and women in blue who carry the front line in the battle for America. The wonderful police tradition in Chicago deserves an annual TR award, too.

Jenny, Sam and I had a fantastic time in Medora, entertaining a luncheon at the Rough Rider Motel and recreating the barroom fight with the Mingusville Bully in the Iron Horse Saloon. Great fun. We have spent much of the last five months racing about the country in a mad dash to capture all the TR sites we possibly can. With all three of us a bit under the weather, it was good to rest a day or two, to ride horses, shoot guns and enjoy the camaraderie of our TRA friends.

At Medora we met Mrs. Harold Schafer whose late husband is responsible for the vision of the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation. Sheila Schafer and her staff were tremendously kind and gracious, sharing that Medora hospitality that has made the town a destination for families from throughout the world for decades.

As I write this, we are leaving Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where we just visited the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Milwaukee. The hotel is at the southwest corner of Kilbourne and 3rd Streets and it stands where the Hotel Gilpatrick stood in 1912. In the Hyatt’s lobby a plaque marks the spot where John Schrank shot TR in the chest with a .38 caliber pistol from close range on October 14, 1912. The plaque was sponsored by the Wisconsin Veterans of the Spanish War and is surrounded by photos and newspaper facsimilies recounting the dreadful event. TR famously refused medical attention and demanded to go to the nearby auditorium where some 2000 men and women were waiting to hear him speak.

“It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!” TR famously told the shocked audience. TR spoke for nearly eighty minutes. Later that night doctors x-rayed the president and decided to leave the bullet in his chest. The bullet had pierced his sixty page folded speech and his steel eye glass case.

“I don’t care a rap for being shot!” He told the crowd that the Progressive campaign was not about himself, but rather about the Progressive cause, especially the need to ease the burden of the working man and especially to ease the burden of women and children.

Can any of us imagine such a man today? I share with audiences that TR, being a hunter, spit into his hand, and seeing no blood in his spittle had concluded that his lung had not been punctured and that he had the duty, like the duty of an officer for his regiment, to see the thing through that night.

As we celebrate our homecoming, as we look back on our adventures of the first five months, and as we look forward to the adventures to come, I am doubly inspired by the man who preached and lived the Strenuous Life. He fought for righteousness with everything he had and more. He inspired a generation of Americans to act not only in their own self interest and in the interest of their families, but to care for their neighbor and for the welfare of those who bore the heavy burdens of a hard life.

As a week or more has passed since last I wrote, I want to pause and acknowledge the anniversaries of the deaths of two of TR’s four boys. On July 12, 1944, General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. – “Ted” – died of a heart attack while serving in combat in France. On June 6, 1944, General Roosevelt, TR’s oldest boy, was the only general officer to go ashore on D-Day, leading his troops at Omaha Beach, returning to the beach to lead wave after wave of men to the front, directing men with his cane. Twenty-six years before, on July 14, 1918, Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest boy and an Army Aviator, was shot down and killed over the Marne in France. Today, the brothers lie side by side in the American cemetery in Normandy, a testimony to a nation and a family that believed in fighting and sacrificing for the sake of righteousness.

God bless and keep all the men and women who serve in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt and his children. Our nation and the people of the world owe them a debt which we can only hope to repay in some small way by living a Strenuous Life, dedicated to carry on that fight.

Happy Birthday Jenny & Mittie

Today was a beautiful day in Medora, North Dakota. We’re camped at the Medora Campground, where I spent much of the day on my back beneath the RV, finishing repairs to a set of copper liquid propane pipes which had been torn through by a blown out tire. Too much of this trip has been spent awaiting repairs at various service departments, so I decided that this repair was all mine. Self-sufficiency and self-reliance are ingrained traits of the Westerner. It felt good to get greasy and grimy and to do the work of cutting, sizing, fitting and soldering beneath our home on wheels.

Jenny took the late afternoon of this her 44th birthday to play a round of golf at Medora’s Bully Pulpit Golf Course. What a treat and a surprise to learn that greens fees are gratus on ones birthday. Jenny spent what she would have spent on greens fees in the Bully Pulpit gift shop, and I must admit she picked out a handsome shirt for me and a great sweater for herself. Sam got to drive the golf cart.

When I cleaned up from the repair work, Faith and I went swimming in the Little Missouri River. The girls returned to the campground and we all went out for dinner. Beef – it’s what’s for dinner in Medora.

July 8th is also the birthday of Theodore Roosevelt’s mother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, known to her family as Mittie. Born in 1835 at Miss Oakes Boarding House in Hartford, Connecticut, her birthplace was rather incongruous with the thoroughly Southern character of the Bulloch clan. Mittie’s mother, Martha Stewart Bulloch was in Connecticut visiting her step-son, James Dunwoody Bulloch, a student at a nearby military academy.

In her eighteenth year, Mittie married TR’s father, Theodore Roosevelt, in the family home in Roswell. Life in New York was made more pleasant for Mittie when her mother and older sister Anna came to live with the Roosevelt family in the New York home at 28 East 20th Street. The Bullochs were among the founding families of Roswell, Georgia, and as the Great Civil War approached, the Bullochs, every one of them, were full square behind the Confederacy. “Uncle Jimmy” would go on to build much of the Confederate fleet in Liverpool, England.

TR was greatly influenced by his Southern kin. Historians and family alike have attributed to TR’s Southern lineage his energy, his sense of adventure and daring. “He was more a Bulloch than a Roosevelt,” can be read directly and between the lines of many a contemporary account.

So, on the 8th of July, here’s to Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt and Jenny Cook Wiegand. Happy birthday.