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.

Hoofing it in New York City

I had the most wonderful adventure in New York City this past week. I was invited to Brooklyn, one of New York's five boroughs, by Elliot, Ivan, and Debra Schwartz, partners in StudioEIS (pronounced "ice"), which specializes in bronze sculptures.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City has commissioned a new statue of Theodore Roosevelt. EIS Studio is producing the work, and I was hired to model for the project. The statue will be of TR the outdoorsman, seated on a bench. With an outfit modeled on TR’s at Yosemite in 1903, we tried variously having a book, field glasses, and a felt cowboy hat as props in my hands and on the bench. Using many photos of the real TR, the artist and museum will use the hundreds of photos and poses that we shot for determining some of the architecture of the statue.

If I have it right, the statue and bench will be located on the first floor of the museum’s Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall, the huge public lobby just inside the museum’s West Central Park entrance. The museum staff believes many families and children will want their picture taken with TR on the bench. I look forward to sitting on the bench with TR someday. The museum plans new exhibits of some of the artifacts from TR’s life, including some of his early taxidermy.

The trip to New York gave me a chance to do some exploring and to emulate TR’s strenuous living in the doing of it. I arrived at LaGuardia in Queens late on Saturday afternoon and took the M60 bus to Broadway and 106th on the Upper West Side. Using Gerry Frank’s Where to Find it, Buy it, Eat it in New York, given to me by the fascinatingly eclectic author, I set out for an adventure. I must have stopped to read a couple dozen plaques and monuments, as I made way southeast down Broadway, through Times Square and to the front porch of TR’s Birthplace at 28 East 20^th Street, just a block west of Gramercy Park. The birthplace has been a point of pilgrimage and a place for my TR to perform. Administered by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site, the place is one of my favorites and normally displays an amazing collection of TR material. The birthplace museum is undergoing renovation now.

After a couple hours relaxing on the front steps, reading and enjoying listening to the late Saturday night conversations walking by, I picked up and kept on my walk. I visited Zuccotti Park, site of the famed Occupy Wall Street protests. The park was empty at 2:00 AM on Sunday, a lone bronze statue of a seated businessman at lunch with his open briefcase the last and most permanent occupier. I began an early morning walk around Trinity Wall Street, a visit to the grave of Alexander Hamilton there and a stroll past George Washington at Federal Hall, another NPS historic site, where Washington took the first presidential inaugural oath and where Congress adopted the Bill of Rights.

Gerry Frank writes that one of the quintessential New York experiences is to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, especially at dawn. My 5:00 AM walk across the bridge was a little too early for sunrise, but my spirits rose in the early hours of the day. The views are spectacular. David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback and Pathway Between the Seas are very important for me as TR sources. McCullough’s Brooklyn Bridge has been equally important for me in regards to New York history. I stopped to read the name of Robert B. Roosevelt, Teddy’s uncle, listed with the other commissioners who saw the work of John, Johanna and Washington Roebling through to its completion. There seems to be a wonderful local tradition of lovers or loved ones visiting the walkway and then attaching small padlocks, engraved with dates and love messages, memories and anniversaries. The locks are everywhere, testimony to the fact that couples probably regularly occupy the handsome and empty benches I passed along the way.

Once over the bridge, I walked up to Brooklyn Heights, hoping to find some of the history of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (think America’s first great mega-preacher and Beecher’s Bibles, the Sharp's rifle used by anti-slavery forces in Kansas). Instead, I found the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Courthouse and some fine statuary of Columbus and Robert F. Kennedy. I kept on my way, eventually arriving at 8:00 AM at the 5^th Avenue and 25^th Street Gothic gates of the Green-Wood Cemetery. Once in the cemetery, I wandered up the Battle Path, and there a bronze Minerva gazes across the harbor at Lady Liberty, the former a purposeful reminder of the war won rights of the Declaration of Independence and the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn, a loss for the Revolutionaries. My quest was the Roosevelt family gravesite, mentioned by McCullough and perhaps by TR biographer Edmund Morris. It was McCullough, I think, who pointed out the irony that TR’s mother-in-law, Martha Stewart Elliott Bulloch, a Georgian and devoted Southernor, was buried among the iconic Yankees and countless abolitionists here, she going to her grave with the sadness of Confederate defeat freshly on her heart.

TR is not buried here, nor is Edith or any of the children. Teddy and Edith are in Oyster Bay among the trees of Young’s Cemetery. Here at Green-Wood lay the remains of TR’s mother and father, Theodore Roosevelt and Martha “Mittie” Bulloch Roosevelt. Teddy’s first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, is here. Surely you know that TR's mother and wife died on the same day, February 14, 1884, when TR was just 25 years old. The east facing headstones of these three, TR, Sr., Mittie and Alice, taking more weather and sun, are nearly devoid of legible markings, but the death date of the ladies can be made out, as can portions of their respective birth dates. Very little, if anything at all, can be made out on TR’s father’s headstone, and this for a man for whom it was written the entire city of New York was in mourning at his too early departure at the age of 46. TR’s paternal grandparents are here, as is Uncle Robert and his wife and several cousins. There are twenty-two headstones in all. I found the family circle like a needle in a haystack among the 561,000 plus who rest in peace at Green-Wood. The Roosevelts are at the southeast corner of Grape and Locust amongst streets and pathways with arboreal names. I hope to help the family restore some of the headstones. Surely, history should know what was chosen to be written here in the way of verse or memorial. I hope to write with something in the way of good news on this idea sometime down the trail.

I share these two observations, indicative of the kinds of treasured insights which I think await if the others are restored. The first and smallest of the tablets is simply labeled INFANT SON of LAURA D’OREMIEULX and J. WEST ROOSEVELT born Nov. 2, 1895, for an un-named son, loved and mourned. This West Roosevelt is mentioned often as a frequent companion of his cousin, our Theodore. J. West is buried nearby in the circle, b. July 2, 1858 – d. April 10, 1896. Son of Mary West and S. Weir Roosevelt – father’s brother – J. West Roosevelt was born the year TR was born and died at 38. I’m reminded that throughout his lifetime, TR was saying goodbye to loved ones who died way too early, not only by our modern long-lived standards, but even by the standards of the turn of the century when disease and illness fought man on so many fronts.

On the opposite side of the circle was GLADYS ROOSEVELT wife of Fairman Rogers Dick, born March 10, 1889 (and) KILLED IN THE HUNTING FIELD NOVEMBER 2, 1926 – A GALLANT LIFE AND A GALLANT DEATH. This one made me wonder at the stock of the Roosevelt women and renews my commitment to get and read the book of the same name (The Roosevelt Women) by Betty Boyd Caroli.

My four miles of wandering through the cemetery made for 20 miles of hiking, backpack on my shoulders and valise in hand since the previous night. My bus ride to my Brooklyn hotel and the subsequent hot bath were a welcome indulgence after a night and morning spent breathing in the stuff of life.

How I hope that 2012 has me hiking in your neck of the woods.

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 TR Tour - Looking Ahead to 2012

Not yet halfway done, it has already been a tremendous summer. My nephew’s wedding in Northern California finally bid me to follow up on opportunities nearby. After great June gigs in Sacramento and Stockton, I return to the West in August for a three performance run from Reno, back to Stockton and on to Muir Woods National Monument. Before then, I’ll drive from the St. Lawrence River of upstate New York, to the lake country of Western New Jersey, through the country of Ohio, Michigan and Indiana and on to salute the Kiwanians of Illinois and Iowa as they gather along the mighty Mississippi River. I’ll be happy for some long days meandering amongst the cornfields and streams of the Midwest.

Travel is such a part of what I do, that I get a bit stir crazy when not travelling. My father, who has travelled and performed for more than forty years, says, “They pay us to drive.” I like driving, and seeing this country along the way. Since the first TR road trip in the fall of 2007, through the 50 state TR Tour in 2008 and up through now, a great deal of the adventure has been along America’s roadways. With the continued success of the TR venture, more and more, the calendar and logistics require me to fly and hopscotch this great land. If time allowed, I would rather continue to travel by car and more by train. Surely, it will continue to be a mix.

Sometimes, when I’m on the road and performing, the pace can get to be quite “Rooseveltian.” It’s nothing out of the ordinary to perform a dozen times across a half dozen communities in the span of three or four days. This fall, the Oregon Historical Society plans a five day TR barnstorm of the state. It’s easier to stay in character when the show schedule reads like a campaign train itinerary.

So, while the schedule for 2011 continues to unfold, the 2012 schedule is already building and the first dates for 2013 are being circled. I do hope that I will be able to embrace all of the requests and opportunities that might be presented, but the business requires me to book ‘em as they come and go where the customers call.

Still, there are places where my TR should be, where the best possible Theodore Roosevelt interpretation should come to life for modern audiences, and I am determined to make those performances happen in 2012 and 2013.

The year 2012 is the centennial of TR’s campaign for the presidency in 1912. He ran first as a Republican, announcing that he was “stripped to the waste and healthy as a bull moose,” adding that “my hat is in the ring.” Of course, TR bolted from the GOP when he and his supporters determined that the nomination of Taft was tainted by dishonest and corrupt methods. The Progressive Party took on its nickname from his early statement, and the Bull Moose campaign enlivened the country. During the campaign, TR survived an assassination attempt and carried the assassin’s bullet in his chest the rest of his days. The press will undoubtedly use TR as a foil for the 2012 presidential elections. His was the most successful third party candidacy in our history and President Obama and his Republican opponent will surely contest who is more fit to wear the TR mantle. Bully. I say bring it on.

We have some big plans for 2012. Firstly, it will be our 25^th wedding anniversary in the summer of 2012. Accordingly, it’s high time that TR Joe and Jenny went to Europe to celebrate TR’s many European connections. More on that later.

With a team of good people, I’ll be assisting to host the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Theodore Roosevelt Association in Chicago, Illinois, on October 25-28, 2012. We’ll headquarter at the Union League Club and celebrate all things TR and Chicago, including both the 1912 Republican and Progressive party Conventions held there. Visit www.chicagobullmoose.org for all the latest there.

Before the European adventure of the summer, between that and the late autumn celebration of TR, and on into the winter days that stand between election and inaugural, I hope to be in places that hum in resonance with the legacy of TR: New York City, Albany and the Adirondacks in New York; Portsmouth, Hampton Roads and Jacksonville and their naval bases; Yellowstone, Yosemite and North Dakota’s Badlands; the hunting grounds in Colorado and Texas where TR’s legend lives. These and so many more places beckon.

Now more than ever, I know that the American people benefit from hearing the words of and relearning the life story of TR. I know that the many months ahead will give me the opportunity to do so in all the right places, the places that need his message of strenuous living, good citizenship and perseverance. On this last day at the River, with Jenny and Sam cheering me on, I’m committed to redoubling my efforts. America deserves a spot on TR, and I’m just the man to deliver. Bully!

Sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural

As a young boy growing up in Elmhurst, Illinois in the late 1960's and early 1970's I was quite taken with all things Abe Lincoln. Not only was I born in the Land of Lincoln, I was born on the 100th anniversary of his death. Knowing that slavery was evil and that Lincoln and hundreds of thousands of Union dead were sacrificed for the end of slavery, I grew up revering Lincoln.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote of Lincoln:

"Abraham Lincoln was a genius, who wrote only as one of the world's rare geniuses do write. Washington, though in some ways an even greater man than Lincoln, did not have Lincoln's wonderful gift of expression, that gift which makes certain speeches of the rail-splitter from Illinois read like the inspired utterances of great Hebrew seers and prophets. (Parenthetically, I would say that aside from being prophets, what magnificent poets Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah were!) In all history I do not believe there is to be found an orator whose speeches will last as enduringly as certain speeches of Lincoln.

He possessed that marvelous gift of expression which enabled him quite unconsciously to choose the very words best fit to commemorate each deed. His Gettysburg speech and his Second Inaugural are two of the half dozen greatest speeches ever made - I am tempted to call them the greatest ever made. They are great in their wisdom and dignity, and earnestness and loftiness of thought and expression. There is nothing in Demosthenes or Cicero which comes up to Lincoln's Gettysburg speech. There is one of his letters which has always appealed to me particularly. It is the one running as follows:

Executive Mansion

Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

To Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Mass.

Dear Madam:

I have been shown in the files in the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the alter of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

No president who has ever sat in the White House has borne the burden that Lincoln bore, or been under the ceaseless strain which he endured. It did not let up day or night. Ever he had to consider problems of the widest importance, ever to run the risks of the greatest magnitude. It is a touching thing that the great leader, while thus driven and absorbed, could yet so often turn aside for the moment to do some deed of personal kindness. Nobody but one of the world's geniuses could have met as Lincoln met the awful crisis of the Civil War."

With thanks to Daniel Ruddy - author of Theodore Roosevelt's History of the United States - Smithsonian Books.

The Weeks Act - 100 Years and Counting

The Weeks Act

March 1, 2011 marks the centennial of the Weeks Act, signed by President William Howard Taft on March 1, 1911. Debated by Congress for over a decade and named for its sponsor, Congressman John Wingate Weeks of Massachusetts, a renewed era of federal forest development began with its passage.

The vast majority of federal forests are in the West, created within federal lands purchased from France, Russia and Mexico or won in the Mexican-American War. In Eastern states, there was little in the way of federal land. Florida, purchased from Spain, was an exception, hence TR’s Ocala National Forest and his many federal bird sanctuaries.

The Weeks Act allowed the federal government to purchase eastern forest land to regulate the headwaters of interstate rivers. The Pisgah National Forest of Western North Carolina, founded in 1916, was purchased primarily from the vast holdings of the Vanderbilt family, the first national forest born of the Weeks Act.

While post dating his presidency, the Weeks Act is an important part of the Roosevelt legacy. As president and after, TR championed the effort. His National Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources in 1908 and his post presidential advocacy were critical to forging the coalition successful in its passage. The Big Burn, the destructive fire that raged in the West in August 1910, provided a final reminder that wise use of water and timber resources might help avert such terrible disasters.

Now, go hike a forest trail!

The Vigorous Life

I had a great hike with my dog, Faith, this morning. At the University of the South, a Perimeter Trail offers some outstanding bluff views above valleys to the north and west. At Green's View, an up and down hike leads through Skake Rag Hollow and a foot bridge to the northeast leads to the Piney Point path which skirts Saint Andrew's-Sewanee School. It was a morning hike where in some places only the deer had traveled since the recent snows. The following excerpt from TR's Autobiography often revisits me when I'm in the midst of a vigorous challenge. I thought you might like it:

"I once made a speech to which I gave the title 'The Strenuous Life.' Afterwards I published a volume of essays with this for a title. There were two translations of it which always especially pleased me. One was by a Japanese officer who knew English well, and who had carried the essay all through the Manchurian campaign, and later translated it for the benefit of his countrymen. The other was by an Italian lady, whose brother, an officer in the Italian army who had died on duty in a foreign land, had also greatly liked the article and carried it round with him. In translating the title the lady rendered it in Italian as Vigor di Vita. I thought this translation a great improvement on the original, and have always wished that I had myself used 'The Vigor of Life' as a heading to indicate what I was trying to preach, instead of the heading I actually did use."