 Okay, now let me see a very large number of people. One of the things we like to do at these symposiums is of course feature our own humanities faculty. And so you'll get a chance to do that now and I'll introduce everybody very quickly. You can find out more about each of the participants in your brochure, but the point of this session is to do some very rudimentary work and then follow it with a more analytical period of discussion. We want to make sure we get all the children on the table. You've heard about Alice. Almost nobody ever gets to hear about Ethel. There's sort of a hierarchy of notoriety in the Roosevelt family, but we thought it would be useful if we all sort of got on the same page about the Roosevelt. So we're going to go down from Alice to Ted and Ted to Kermit and Kermit to Ethel and Ethel to Archie and Archie to Quentin. But here to help is Amy Verone. Amy Verone is at Sycamore Hill. She's one of our partners in our digitization project. She's the chief of interpretation there and does the curatorial work. She knows the collection as well as absolutely anybody. She's one of the nation's leading resources on Roosevelt and Roosevelt related questions, particularly for Sycamore. So Amy, we're so glad you're here to represent Sycamore. We've all met the animated Stacey Cordery. Gary Cummusk will be representing Kermit today. He's an associate professor of geography here at DSU. Stephen Dorothee will be representing Archie. He's an assistant professor of political science. Frank Varney will be representing Ted Jr. He's an assistant professor of history. David Meyer is the chair of the social sciences department and a professor of history. He'll be representing Quentin and Betty Boyd. Carolee, who you'll have a chance to hear again this afternoon, has agreed to help with the daughters. She'll be representing Ethel. So she's written the great book, The Roosevelt Women. You'll have a chance to hear her lecture right after our lunch. So welcome to all of you for this session. What we're going to try to do is take a few minutes for each of the children and get some basic material on the table. Stacey, I'm gonna start with you. You may want to be quick since you've already had a chance at Alice, but just lay the table for Alice. Alice married Nick Longwith, as I just told you, and then became a kind of a political advisor of sorts. Certainly not a close one and not an important one, but she and her father had politics in common. And so until he died in 1919, they had a much closer relationship. And the joke was that Alice was more frequently at the White House after she married and didn't live there than she was when she actually lived there. And then Alice will, as I said, in 1912, when Tiara makes his third party bid, she will be torn sort of heart and body, as she put it, in that troubling time and will eventually decide she's a progressive and support her father's cause and work for it as much as they would let her because they kind of shut her down and wouldn't let her use her celebrity. But then Tiara dies and she is a, she's called the commander of the, I mean the colonel, the battalion of death. And this is a group of Americans who fought to make sure that the United States stayed out of the League of Nations, which was kind of the precursor to the United Nations and they were successful, they were victorious. We did not ever join League of Nations. Alice will then be adamantly opposed to American entry into World War II because she thought World War I was a terrible tragedy. She said everything that has happened before and after is just, there are just bookends to the great tragedy we call World War I. So she wanted to stay out of World War II. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, she got on board and then of course, you know, supported the war effort. She will write a syndicated column. Alice wrote a newspaper column that was a kind of a counterpoint to her cousin Eleanor's My Day. So the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a column about her social and political events and Alice wrote a column that ran simultaneously that was critical of Eleanor and Franklin and their political and social events. She wrote her autobiography. She said she needed to write this to get money because she needed money for her daughter, Paulina. Paulina will die after she, Paulina will get married to a man who's also an alcoholic and not very good for her. Paulina will then die, might be a suicide, might not be a suicide. And Alice then took her granddaughter, Joanna Stern, to raise and I will say that Alice was a much better grandmother than she ever was a mother. So, but the main thing that Alice did all these years was to be at the kind of at the center of Washington's social and political life. And her home was the gathering place for politicians and artists and scientists and foreign ambassadors and all sorts of people who came to kind of get the scoop to learn what's happening, to see and be seen with Alice and she really was a political celebrity to the day she died. Let me just, I know it's very basic but T.R. had two wives. Alice is the only child by his first wife, Alice. All the other five children are by his second wife, Edith. And just one last question for you, Stacy. Was the paternity issue a public scandal during her lifetime? The paternity of her child was not a public scandal because the other group of people who came to her poker parties and her drawing rooms and so forth was newspaper reporters. And so she was very close to them. And of course it was a different era and this just wouldn't have been spilled. Although the newspaper reporters knew about it, there were many jokes. The big joke was that Alice was the name of her daughter Debra as in D-E-B-O-R-A-H Deborah of Bora as in Boris the Kid. Get it? The other big joke was what is Nick Longworth? No, let's see. What is a brand new parquet floor like wooden floor and the Longworth baby? What is the new parquet floor in Longworth baby? What do they have in common? Nothing, not a Nick in either one of them. Yeah, but it wasn't really public because Alice was who she was and she could keep this secret. I just reported on this. Why do we ask? Frank Barney, you represent Ted Jr., the third of the Teds, the Theodore Roosevelt senior, T.E., our Theodore Roosevelt and Ted Jr., the eldest son of Theodore Roosevelt. I'd like to begin by saying Stacy, I really like the slide of Nick Longworth and the fact that a man with no hair could be America's most eligible bachelor proves what most middle-aged men believe, which was that hair is vastly overrated. Part of my topic as well is growing up Roosevelt and the idea that young people always are trying to find some ground on which to stand, some identity they want to establish for themselves. And the children of famous parents always have a very hard time with this. And think how difficult it would be to be the child of Theodore Roosevelt. This is, my students are familiar with this analogy, but to me, being with Theodore Roosevelt must be like hanging out with Robin Williams. You know, this endless stream of energy, this nonstop being on stage, this constantly being the center of attention. And then having to deal with the fact that no matter what you want to do, Father's already done it, and he's done it brilliantly. You want to be a politician? Well, Father's been President of the United States. You want to be a military officer? He's won the Congressional Medal of Honor. You want to be a diplomat? He's won the Nobel Peace Prize. You want to be a historian? Father's written several books. You want to be a rancher? He's done that. You want to be a hunter? His exploits are world famous. Whatever you want to do, you're trying to live up to this impossible standard. And then think how much worse it is to be Theodore Roosevelt Jr. To not only have this example of this famous, indomitable parent with this endless stream of energy, but to also have to live up to the name. Now Theodore really did a pretty good job. One historian has described him, I think, whether unsheritably, as being not a handsome man. And the same historian said that he had his father's ambition, but he lacked his father's intellect. Again, not very charitable. But he actually did it pretty well. He'd go to Harvard, though he did have a breakdown while he was there. But he got excellent grades. When he finished at Harvard, he married. He and his wife, named Eleanor, not the Eleanor Roosevelt you're familiar with. She and her husband were very much overshadowed their own winning by the presence of TR and 500 of his former roughwriters. By the way, I'm going to refer to the son as Ted, just to distinguish himself from TR, I'll refer to father's TR. He worked, he knew how to do hard work. He worked for two years in a carpet factory, earning 750 a week. He also worked on Wall Street around a lot of men who hated his father. He went into the military. I'm going to read something to you. I want to make sure I get the quote right. He said that, even before World War I broke out, father had discussed with us military training and the necessity for every man being able to take his part. Ted, every man should defend his country. It should be a matter of law. Taxes are levied by law. They are not optional. It is not permitted for a man to say that it's against his religious beliefs to pay taxes or that he feels it is an abrogation of his own personal freedom. The blood tax is more important than the dollar tax. It should not therefore be a voluntary contribution, but should be levied and all alike. Ted went into the Army in World War I. He served as a major. He ended the war as Lieutenant Colonel, the same rank his father had held. He was shot. He was gassed. He ended the war walking with two canes, but still in the Army he won the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star. He used the military as his father had done as a springboard. He went into politics. He was elected and reelected to the New York State Legislature, but he kind of torpedoed his own political career when he campaigned, didn't run against, but he campaigned for his opponent, FDR's opponent. When Cousin Franklin ran for office in New York, Ted worked against him. Alice said that it was because FDR was not the right kind of Roosevelt. I think they viewed him as sort of a maverick, sort of a playboy, rather a feat. The fact that he liked to go sailing whereas father liked to get out there in a row and sweat. So this unfortunately did not work at all in Ted's favor. When he later ran for Governor of New York, FDR's wife Eleanor actively worked against him and they tried, she and the Franklin Roosevelt strike very hard to tie Ted to the T-Pot don't skins of the Harding Administration. Ted had been ambassador, Governor General of the Philippines and Puerto Rico during the administration. So his political career was pretty much up. When FDR was elected to the White House, someone asked Ted what his relationship was to the president. He said, fifth cousin about to be removed. And he was, he was removed as Governor General of the Philippines. There was no place for him in the New Deal. He worked as a vice president double day and on the Association of the Board of Boy Scouts of America. He also had found the American Legion. He could have sat out World War II, what he chose not to. His son, he and Eleanor had a son theater, another theater Roosevelt who was an AD flyer in the Pacific and was decorated. But Ted went back into the military with the First Division. He served, ironically, my father-in-law actually fell in the First Division as well. He, Ted served in North Africa and in Italy. And by the time the D-Day invasion rolled around, his health was not good at all and he was not going to be permitted to go ashore with his men. He made a couple of requests, verbal requests that he was turned out. He found it all a written request and he was permitted to go ashore. He was walking with a cane by that time. And he won the Congressional Medal of Honor. I'd like to read the citation to you. For gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty on June 6, 1944 in France. After two verbal requests to accomplish the leading assault elements on the Normandy invasion had been denied. Brigadier General, yes, he was a Brigadier General. He surpassed his father in that. Brigadier General Roosevelt's written request for this mission was approved and landed with the first wave of the forces assaulting the enemy-held beaches. He repeatedly led groups from the beach over the seawall and established them inland. His valor, courage, and presence in the very front of the attack and his complete unconcern at being under heavy fire inspired the troops to hide some enthusiasm and sell sacrifice. Although the enemy had the beach under constant direct fire, Brigadier General Roosevelt moved from one locality to another rallying man around him, directed and personally led them against the enemy. Under his seasoned, precise, calm, and unfaltering leadership, assault troops reduced beach strong points and rapidly moved inland with minimum casualties. He thus contributed substantially to the successful establishment of the beachhead in France. And he did this, folks, while walking with a cane. If you've ever seen the movie, The Longest Day, the actor Henry Fonda portrays him in that movie. However, Ted didn't know he'd won the Medal of Honor because six days after the invasion, he died peacefully in his sleep of a heart attack. He was 57. His wife once said that to her famous father-in-law, Father, I don't know if you realize this, but Ted always is afraid he's not going to live up to you. And TR said, not live up to me. I hope I have higher because of him. Thank you. Thank you very much. Gary Kovatsky is an Associate Professor of Geography here. He's participated in previous symposia. Gary, you've chosen Kermit. Give us a little sketch of Kermit, really, though. Well, it certainly is an interesting family indeed. And many of the children follow in their father's footsteps or respond in a reactionary way to their father. I think that he was, he set a guiding principle for many and certainly Kermit, in many respects, follows in his father's footsteps, not in every venue, but in some venues, he actually excels his father. Finishing Harvard in two and a half years, graduating with honors, as his father did, but even faster, he showed a propensity for languages that exceeded that of his father. He was more successful in business than the elder Roosevelt. So in some respects, he stood his own ground and had his achievements that excelled those of his dad. My interest in Kermit was his interest in natural history, that he entered willingly and engaged at Sagamore Hill and rowing with his father in explorations of the woods and woodsmanship, gravitating towards hunting. And as a matter of fact, it's arguable that Kermit first comes into the public eye in the years after, well, to a great extent, and the years after the Roosevelt administrations as president. Accompanies his father in 1909 on their famous hunting expedition to Africa. While there, learns Swahili and is able to speak with the porters and people who are working with the expedition. He was an avid reader, as was his father. They transported literally dozens of books and read and reread them several times on the journey. And one book that they read was the Oxford book of English verse from the 1912 edition. And the commentary on one of Kermit's writings indicates that the elder Roosevelt felt lamented the lack of American poetry. There was some wall women sitting there and that sort of thing. I remember having looked through that myself and thinking much the same thing before I read this. And Roosevelt, the elder Roosevelt committed much of this poetry to memory and they also looked at the Oxford book of French verse and could read and recite in French. So as a matter of fact, in a subsequent journey after the attempt at trying to regain the White House and journeying on the river, what was the river of doubt that became the real Roosevelt that named in Roosevelt's honor with a tributary named in honor of Kermit, they also brought a large number of books and read in Greek and French and as well as literary works in English. And most of the communication between Colonel Rodin, who was the Brazilian representative on the journey and the elder Theodore was in French because they both spoke rudimentary French and were able to communicate in that way. Kermit, however, had a simulated Portuguese tongue and was able to communicate with those present. This amazing capacity that he had for language is evidenced when he also participates as the Tad in World War I. Proceeding the American involvement joins the British army and ascends to the rank of captain and in what was then known as Mesopotamia, which we now know as Iraq. And within two months, he had mastered Arabic in written form and in verbal form and became a major translator for the army. He became involved in the American contingents, of course, once the United States entered the war, also obtaining the rank of captain and played a prominent role in that venue. He was involved in intelligence, as was his family continued in that tradition, his son later, involving planning for the war in Iraq in the 1980s. And after the war, he becomes a prominent businessman involved in developing the Roosevelt Steamship Company in the U.S. lines, which were ocean liners who transport people across the Atlantic. There's a dark side to his story too. He had a constant struggle with depression and alcoholism throughout his life. It enlarged his liver. He joined as he had in World War I, he joined the British army in World War II, preceding America's involvement in the war. In part through the intercession of their family friend Winston Churchill, he became involved in the U.S. effort, but his help forced him out in 1941. He came back to the United States, disappeared at times for long periods. FDR actually sent the CIA looking for him for bringing him back and reuniting him with his family. And he was eventually posted to an intelligence post in Alaska and during that time in 1943, he committed suicide. This was covered up and I talked to his granddaughter yesterday and she didn't even know about this. The family didn't know that the actual true circumstances of his death for close to 20 years. So this struggle with alcoholism was part of the Roosevelt legacy as well and perhaps when we think about people in many depressive states and people who struggle with this, some of their productivity may be tied to that manic phase and we certainly see that in Kermit's high level of productivity throughout his life. But he himself as his father became a noteworthy writer and not to the same, he didn't achieve quite the same fame but was involved in producing several books and I think I'll leave it at that. Gary, let me just ask one follow up question. TR dies in January 1919, so Kermit was 29 or 30 years old at that time, was TR aware that his son had a problem without the phone? Actually, yes. When he was at the Groton school, he had an incident with alcohol that they found out through contacts with the family and they were very worried about Kermit. Kermit, Edith claimed that, and has said in several places that Kermit was her favorite son and this is, there certainly seemed to be some degree of favoritism and some pecking order and hierarchy. He masked this pretty well and he was, I guess one of the points that I should have made about Kermit also was that in the journey on the river of doubt, which was published, the account was published in through the Brazilian wilderness in 1913 and of course, Candice Millard more recently, her book has retold this tale. If it hadn't been for Kermit, Roosevelt probably would have died on that journey. He even withheld his own clinic and his own medicine for his malarial condition to keep his father in better shape, so he was able to tough it out. He struggled in the true Roosevelt tradition and told his father he would bring him back dead or alive to keep his spirits up and indeed they were successful. They arrived emaciated when they returned to New York. The elder Roosevelt had lost over 50 pounds. Ted, not Ted, but Kermit is largely responsible for the survival and the continued legacy, post-presidential legacy of Theodore Roosevelt. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now we go to Ethel, the second of the Roosevelt daughter. Betty Boyd Corolla, you'll be talking right after lunch. You've been sort of short notice invited to represent Ethel. Tell us a little bit about the second at least well-known child of the Roosevelt. Yeah, I was curious, which picture you put up? I haven't, I'm going to be very brief because I'll talk more about her this afternoon and I want to concentrate now on the White House years because I would nominate Ethel for the prize. I mean, she was a perfect White House child. If you look at it, she was born in 1891, so by the time her father became president she was 10 years old. She had that sister Alice that we heard so much about. She had these two really imposing older brothers. She was pretty close to Kermit, but she was the most solid, the most steadfast, the most unruly by publicity of any White House child, I think, and I've written about a lot of them because I also wrote a book about First Ladies. I got an email this morning from somebody doing an article on White House children, I guess the current batch has generated a lot of publicity. Asking for my ideas on what made a good White House child and I think my answer is going to be to read about Ethel Roosevelt because it seemed the publicity did not taint her at all. She went to cathedral school. You heard that her older sister Alice refused to go to school at all. Ethel enrolled, performed beautifully and so forth. Her mother relied on her in, well when I talked to her daughters because of course she was dead by the time I did my book, but I talked to both of the older daughters. And they kept saying how much Ethel's mother relied on her, really pushing her beyond her years. For example, I had a letter written when she was about 14 I guess. Her mother sent her from the White House to Sagmore Hill to open up the place for the summer that meant controlling the budget, taking care of a large staff and so forth. And there's this kind of pitiful letter from Ethel back to her mother in Washington saying, the butcher's bill this week was $34. Do you think that's too much? And her daughter said, you see there how she was really pushed beyond her years to be a very mature person. She had a, well, this afternoon I'll talk about what turned out to be a very sad life really that her son died, but she's a remarkable person. And I just think that of all the children I put Ethel up for the prize. I'll take what's up to him. Before you pass off the microphone, can you just reflect a little on the relationship between the two sisters because that must have been extraordinary. Well, there were one letters and I know I enjoyed Stacey so much this morning because I thought she and I both were at a meeting in Washington with the people who knew Alice well and they talked about how she put on this public, for example, Christy Miller, who took us around that evening, said that once she was at Alice's house and they were going out and Alice took a long time with her and said, the image, you know, and then she walked out. But with the family, she was never like that. There was none of this show off and the letters between the two sisters, as we heard this morning, especially in the later years, are just so loving and so kind. The family could always depend on Alice. First of all, she had quite a lot of money. You know that story about TR said to Edith, we have to be nice to Alice because we may have to borrow money from her. And sometimes they did. And she always came through. I mean, there are so many letters between the two sisters, needing one needing help or one offering support. It was a very warm relationship. It was also a very loving relationship with Kermit. They're the closest, well, they're two years difference in age. And Kermit is maybe they were more like a Canadian personality, but Ethel is, she deserves a book of her own. Somebody should write a biography of her. Thank you. Steven Daugherty, you've chosen what has emerged is the black sheep of the family. Catherine Dalton said he was the black sheep and Stacey confirmed that in a sense this morning. Tell us a little bit about Archibald. Yes, Archie has Archibald, has already been mentioned several times, none of the most positive light. He is perhaps the most controversial of the Roosevelt children. And I promise I will give Archie his due, but I kind of wanted to do something, just spend a minute about the issue of presidential family members. I'm the political scientist here, so in some ways I'm kind of like these topics. I could give like at one hour long, I think a lecture on presidential family members right now. As a matter of fact, I think I will. I'll be a quiz later. I hope you take no, I'm just joking of course. But I think presidential family members is a very interesting topic, a very useful topic, and it's one I think ties in very well with Roosevelt. As Kathleen Dalton said yesterday, that Roosevelt transformed the American presidency. And he did, that's why he's such a significant president, why I'm so happy we do this seminar as a political scientist because he really did kind of create a new presidency. And I think thus his family members were kind of the first presidential family members we really think a lot about. Because the presidency has grown tremendously and it's significant and important. And Roosevelt is right on the cusp of that. Roosevelt is right at the point where the presidency is emerging as this very, very significant leadership office. We don't think too much of presidents before. Roosevelt, other than Lincoln and Washington, and you can think of people like James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, James K. Polk. You really think that much about these, or you don't think they were that significant. And Roosevelt kind of ushers in this period of a very, very significant presidency. He also was the first president to market himself and gain a lot of attention from the media and kind of develop this tremendous persona and it kind of fits his personality quite well. So he kind of redefines what presidential family members are about. In just a broad sense, I think presidential family members, and there's some literature available about this, kind of come in two stripes or two types. Either decorations or extensions. And we think of decorations are those that are just sort of ceremonial figures whose presence kind of humanizes the president. They can be like attractive positions to people to appear with the president. They kind of have this decorative aspect. And I think we've seen examples of kind of family members who have been very sort of decorative. We can think of, of course, of the Kennedy family, those iconic photographs. So the children playing underneath the old office desk. This is happening at a time in the baby boom generation when there's large families everywhere. Here we have a president, a younger president with these children. And this is like a wonderful decoration for Kennedy that kind of humanizes them. And I think the Roosevelt children have that sort of quality as well. We could even think of the current president who has two young children. I think this calls attention to the fact that Barack Obama is younger than a lot of the presidents we've had. And here's to come out of a different generation. So they have this sort of humanizing decorative quality that some people like. I think a presidential family member can also be an extension. Or someone who acts hand in hand with the president to make important decisions. Who acts as kind of the personal assistant, as kind of a leader of someone who has that quality. And I think you could think of perhaps Hillary Clinton as someone who kind of shared almost a nearly co-equal level of influence or maybe not, but close to it with the president. That, of course, creates some controversies. Some people are happy with this. Others say we don't elect these family presidential members. So why should they have this influence? So I think they can either have those two qualities. And Roosevelt is so significant at this point to kind of look at presidential family members and look at Roosevelt's family. Now Archibald. So as I said before, Archie Controversial is the one who does sometimes receive some very critical. Excuse me. I'm sorry. You're all right. Anyways. But so Archibald, a little background on him. And I will defer to the fine scholars, the Roosevelt scholars here, if they wish to weigh in on some of these significant events. He's the fourth child of Theodore and Edith. We get a picture of a young man who was raised very much in the Roosevelt model, the strenuous life. And he even appears to have a bit more of kind of a rebellious quality or kind of very aggressive quality, or he seems to kind of copy that aspect of his father. I can think of like three little snippets of information, little accounts of Archie's childhood. One of him throwing snowballs at reporters or throwing snowballs at someone. Another story is that he carved his name in a church view of his name and his favorite teacher's name. I have my students do that all the time, by the way. I'm tagged all over town. I'm just joking, of course. But it does give you this indication of this sort of rebellious child. And there's a more serious incident. All of the Roosevelt children went to, and I'm pronouncing this right, Grootman Academy. And he was expelled. Apparently, according to the Patricia Outtool biography, he sent some sort of message to a friend calling it. He was out west with the Roosevelt's, doing his kind of that strenuous Western life. And he sent some sort of a letter back, saying to a friend, how's everything at the old Christ factory, he called it. And he got expelled for that. At least that's the account. And he ends up finishing up at Exeter Academy, like the other Roosevelt children. When he's in college in Harvard, he apparently kind of began to sense this sort of aggressive quality. This is 1915 or 16, World War I is happening. We're not involved at this time. We only enter in 1917. The Dean of Harvard, the President of Harvard, the leader, is very much, wants to keep us out of the war. And I guess Archie begins to find old uniforms and broomsticks and starts to have the students march around in kind of a preparation for the war. And this, of course, causes some flak with the President. So you get this indication of President Harvard, this indication of this rather kind of aggressive person. And he serves with distinction in both World War I and World War II. He goes to World War I, serves courageously, is injured, a grenade, I guess damages his leg. In World War II, he lists back. He doesn't have to. He's in his late 40s at the time. And he's re-injured. He goes right into New Guinea, one of the most physically demanding theaters, and is injured again. I think he, I think it was mentioned, he was like the only American who got 100% disability in both wars. So obviously someone who served his country and rather, you know, took that risk. So at this point, you might be wondering, why is he so controversial? Why, why is he kind of getting this? Why does he get some of this criticism? What has to do a lot with his politics. After the war, and perhaps before the war, Archie appears to embrace some very far right causes, some very, very conservative politics. We kind of get a little bit of foreshadow of this. In 1932, while working at the Standard Oil Company, where he works, he's an executive there, that's of course the T-Pot Dome scandal that's been mentioned, he wasn't implicated, although he did, I believe, testify, but he was not implicated in any sort of misdoing. He joins a group with Herbert Hoover in 1932, that suggests that the balance, the budget can be balanced with, by cutting back the benefits to veterans. That's of course, if you know about the bonus march and things like that. This is indicative of kind of a very conservative business-oriented approach that's in some ways very sort of goes against some of the people who supported his father, at least some political beliefs of his father, at least we think of Roosevelt as the progressive, or Theodore Roosevelt. After the war, he joins several right-wing organizations. He joins the John Birch Society. As you know, this is a strongly anti-communist organization. He joins this group and he is very public about criticism of socialism. He supports kind of the McCarthyist approach. He criticizes a lot of people who are reputed to be socialists, and he's very open about it and sort of very caustic about it. He even will make comments very, very critical of the civil rights movement as he associates it with socialism, communism, and disloyalty to America. An African-American gentleman named Ralph Bunchie, if I'm pronouncing it right, actually receives a Theodore Roosevelt Medal. It's a medal named for his father for public service, and Archie is not like that, and is very vocal, and even makes some comments that I think obviously can be interpreted as racist and other comments, I guess he said. He makes a comment about African-Americans not having some of the intelligence to deal with technology and some other weaknesses he found in that group. So obviously, these are controversial opinions, and especially today we look back at these in sort of a very negative sort of way, and that's perhaps why Archie gets some of the controversy. So we have kind of a dilemma, I think, with Archie. How does the son of a, someone we assume to be a progressive, someone who had a lot of ideas, some of them we really much considered to be ahead of his time, he was a progressive, he did advocate a lot of the programs we have today. You might remember the lecture last night where they mentioned social security and employment, things like that, are kind of the Theodore Roosevelt legacy. How does one of his offspring become so far to the right, and so perhaps different than his father? I can only kind of speculate about perhaps what motivated Archie to have these particular feelings, one of which could be that lumped ranks presentation about how it's tough to be Roosevelt, how your father has done everything already, what can you do? Perhaps embracing these policies, these kind of embracing these very ideologically defined positions, perhaps gave Archie a chance to assume that that told leadership in his own view, or to perhaps at least have notoriety, have some sort of prominence, have some sort of chance to be part of the national discourse in ways that perhaps we don't admire today. So that perhaps could be one speculation. It could also be said that maybe that Archie kind of associated himself with some of the Roosevelt legacy that perhaps we don't quite so admire today, but we're still there. Maybe kind of the nationalistic quality of Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt was a nationalist, and perhaps Archie's very strong opposition to socialism, or as he saw it, was perhaps part of that. He thought of socialism as a internationalist sort of ideology, one that didn't have you identify with but being American first, and his father definitely was kind of this sort of kind of patriotic nationalistic individual. We also perhaps can look back at the 1950s from the point of the people who lived there. The Cold War was at its height. There was a concern about a communist takeover of the world. Perhaps today we look at these as kind of extreme, but for the time perhaps they were perhaps sort of more understandable on that level. So that could be one speculation. We can also realize that Archie was very active in the business community, he was very successful in it, associated with a lot of executives with standard oil and other places. And perhaps this was part of his just grand embrace of capitalism, business, and his ideologies that talked about government regulation, government control of the economy. He just did not agree with and found kind of a threat to his belief in business and capitalism. Once again, this is different than his father, of course, who was the trust buster and the progressive and things like that. Or perhaps a third possibility was simply that Archie was just had a particular personality that lended itself to extremes. We've heard several kind of comments about maybe he wasn't the brightest guy, or maybe he had a certain type of personality. Some of the accounts I've seen in autobiography suggest that he was kind of an arrogant military officer who treated his troops as kind of little kids, like he was an older brother, they weren't very smart. He was apparently very generous with them, but sort of kind of, I guess kind of a contempt somewhat or wasn't very positive about that. He was identified as a bit of a prude and a snitch at Harvard, where he, I guess, was kind of not the most popular person seen as someone who kind of reveled in power and kind of the ability to control people. So perhaps not knowing the gentleman and perhaps not being an expert on some of the facts of his life, perhaps maybe he just had a certain sort of personality that lent to this type of behavior. But we do remember Archie more than the other siblings for kind of this controversial sort of kind of ideologically extreme type of politics. He dies in 1979, lives quite a long life, gets married, has kind of a normal life, but apparently during this entire lot time is still kind of voicing his very, very strong and perhaps ideologically defined criticism of American politics and things like that. So I hope perhaps you understand Archie a little more. He doesn't seem to be getting a lot of respect. Seems like he's kind of the sign of the degree of the group or Spencer Pratt or I don't know whoever's unpopular right now, but perhaps he had some aspects that are quite worthy of noting. So thank you very much. Steve. That takes us to Quentin, the youngest, the sixth of the Roosevelt children, David Byrd. Give us a little sense of Quentikens as TR called it. Well, our last comment that Stephen made about not getting any respect made me think just briefly that Quentin perhaps had something in common with Rodney Dangerfield because he was on the other end of the extreme. As you've had a chance to hear the comments about the children, there is a fair amount of overlap. There is the Groton school, there is going to Harvard, there is the environment at home, which is relatively complicated as you can tell. Yet I have to say that when I've tried to peruse without getting stuck on particulars, Quentin's history, if you think of the letters that Kermit edited and published in 1921, there were actually many more letters. There are about 2,000 that are associated with Quentin. As an individual, though, he almost seems to be one of those exceptions that I think kind of sheds a particular natural what if question about his father, but also a what if about himself. What I mean by that is Quentin, of course, I'll work backwards just another step, will die before his 21st birthday, flying a French aircraft, a Newport, against a collection of Falker D7s, I believe they were. And when his life comes to that rather tragic and swift end, it seems as though the information about him would unfold a little bit further. So now, let me take you back and go the other direction. The comment about, or comments, rather, about the presidential children and the attraction they represent for the media. Quentin provided every conceivable form of entertainment for the press that I can think of. The idea of vandalizing presidential portraits in the White House, carving out a baseball diamond on the presidential White House lawn without, of course, permission. Throwing snowballs at individuals would have been the least of his offenses. But none of which ever comes across as malicious. The idea that his father would refer to him and his friends would have been the least of his offenses. His father would refer to him and his friends, one of which was the son of Taft, as the White House gang. And then you get these other little tidbits that begin to creep into the description of Quentin when he was still young, as the individual that would have pillow fights with his dad before his dad shortly thereafter has to go out for some official presentation. Not so much the pillow fight alone, but the fact is that apparently he enjoyed it as much as Quentin could possibly enjoy. And I seemed to, and I don't want to suggest that I'm anywhere near the expert of our panelists, yet as I extract something from the writings and the style and the playfulness and another feature with respect to Archie, Archie was sick. Quentin took pony inside the White House now with permission, by the way, and up to the room where Archie was apparently bedridden just to cheer him up. You have a rather peculiar kind of kid who seems to be playful, fun-loving. I would even venture to say doing the kinds of things that T.R. probably loved and would have done himself if he could only have sit to himself. I'm only six and gotten into that mode of thought. Now I say all of this because I'm leading up to another slightly different twist on the idea of trying to deal with living in the Roosevelt environment. If I think in terms of a guy who, let's say, now comes from that more happy-go-lucky sense of personal freedom environment, now he's going on to college. The war is clearly on the horizon. The discussions are a part of headlines practically on a daily basis. Yet at that point I would stop and say, wait a second now, we're talking about somebody who just is in the middle of that year when he would eventually turn 21. I'm thinking of that time when nobody dies. I'm going to work backwards again. He goes into 1917. But the idea though, you've got a very, very young kid here. And I think that in this case, if he's operating on the ideals of his father, I would argue he's probably operating on the ideals of his cohort at Harvard, of his friends, of his colleagues. And his father may have played a role, but this is a very independent, but a very comfortable individual with who he is. And perhaps I'm giving him too much credit, but I get the impression, he reminded me, as I read about him, a great deal of our students here at TSU that we have who are in that young cohort who are going to, or we're going to Iraq and who knows where they're going to go in the future. And what I think in terms of their attitudes and their backgrounds, and I grew up with this in military sense, being near Stead Air Force Base, I think that there is a part to say that they are caught up in the times, that it's not just being the son of or the daughter of, but it's also being in an environment where those items are discussed, not imposed upon you, you're not forced to take up this mantle. And in this case, he doesn't have enough time in life to develop alcoholism, or any of the other maladies that appear to have afflicted the others. Or at least that's what the limited exposure I've had to the evidence that I could find would suggest. Now, with respect to this individual, you do have a collection of little mythologies that I'll sort of alert you to. And it's hard to distinguish which one is true and which one is not, although some of them sound more plausible than others. When he was on the front lines, we recall that he's flying a French plane, and he's flying a relatively slow plane. He's also uncutting the technology of the time, but I'm emphasizing the plane just for a moment because when you're talking about the fliers of the First World War, you're talking about a very unique mentality of individuals who are not simply on the cutting edge, but individuals who are willing to take risks that you and I would probably think beyond foolish, and many people would have held that opinion at the time. Yet that fits perfectly with a youthful attitude towards getting out there, a sense of almost medieval honor going with the experience. Now, the mythology components begin with how many planes he fought against. One said that the Red Baron shot him down. That's probably not true. It's more likely, according to the trends, that he was shot down by a sergeant, people don't want to think that an NCO shot down an officer, probably, or presidential son. But I would suggest that one has to recognize that the German Air Force functioned a little differently from the French or the American Air Forces as they emerged in the Army Air Force at the time. There's also the question of what happened when he died, another piece of the mythology. This one's probably closer to true, that when he crashed, and according to the record, was shot in the head twice, that a German photographer took his picture and transformed it into a postcard, and that was considered to be a very distasteful act. Yet the other side of that same story is that when it was realized who he was, that over 1,000 German soldiers showed up for an official funeral for Quentin. It suggests, of course, an entirely different attitude. Now, I think the reality is probably both, because I did get confirmation that such a postcard did exist, but I haven't been able to actually find an indication of just what it was in the case that maybe there was another one out there than the one that was alleged to have been a picture of him lying next to his aircraft in debt. So with that, I would simply suggest that with Quentin we have also a more idealistic vision of a child that seems to have lived a life that I would call much closer to normal, and with a certain attitude of helpfulness towards others, the classic sort of good syndromes that we'd like to find in any individual that we would run across, but he never got a chance to really explore much of his long-term options given his untimely death. Thank you. Thanks very much. Amy, I want to turn to you. Amy Varone, you have the most enviable position of all. You get to work at the house and have unlimited access to the house. There are two personalities at least that sort of belong on this stage, too. TR, who we often regarded as the seventh Roosevelt child, and the house. The house seems to be more of a personality and a presence in Roosevelt's life than in the lives of most other people. First of all, let's just go to the quick clerical question. Do you know, are there copies of this postcard that existed? Okay. We have copies in our collection. And the picture clearly shows the crashed airplane and the body laid out inside it, and not to be unpleasant, but you can very clearly see he was killed in the air. He was shot off the head and the plane crashed. So, Quentin's death, as I talked about mythology, one of the things that I have always found astonishing is that people collected parts of the airplane and sent them to his mother. And for us, we're just like, why would you do that? But on the other hand, his mother and his family regarded that as sort of a physical sign of his sacrifice. And she displayed that in her lifetime. It was out in the North Room. And when we redid our exhibit, or put it in a museum exhibit, we focus most of the house talking about presidency. And so to have the axle to the airplane in the North Room is something that happened after TR staff. But instead of putting stories, we put it in the exhibit because it was important to the family. And it's an important part of the story. We have a very unique opportunity at Sagamore Hill. We don't tend to think of the children as grown, not to say that we live in the past or that we're communicating with the dead or something. But when we talk about the children or the family, we talk about them, unfortunately, as though we do know them, so they've just stepped out. And if anyone's had the opportunity to visit Sagamore Hill, one of our greatest assets is that the Roosevelt family was so generous when the house was transferred after Mrs. Roosevelt stepped to the Roosevelt Association. We got 90% of the original furnishings. And so if you come to the house and you walk through the halls and you look in the rooms, you're seeing the rooms as the Roosevelt saw them. They're overly tidy. I'm sorry, it's a curatorial thing. I like to go into some of the rooms and move things around. It drives my staff crazy. We have a nursery set up. And their blocks are always very tidally stacked. So I'll go in and I'll kick the blocks across the floor. And it's like they're mice. You go back two minutes later and they're all neatly stacked again. But it's interesting to listen to you guys because you have such a perspective of the family sort of outside Sagamore Hill. And it's not a family group. It's not eight people interacting exclusively. There are five other Roosevelt households on the oyster bake area. And my favorite line, I think it might have been Alice who said that the children flowed between the houses like water. And they were part of 16 cousins who lived and were raised on Kovnet and Justice Betty pointed out that they were sort of paired as children that they also all had little pals to play with. You know, 16 kids are a lot of way to make little groups that interacted. And their fathers very much made a point of trying to give their children the childhood that they had grown up with. Kathleen talked yesterday about how TR tried to recreate his childhood but it wasn't just TR, it's his cousin Evelyn, his cousin John who are organizing relay races. They sort of organized summer sporting tournaments where they would have tennis tournaments where they would have relay races in the barns. They went on these marathon rowing adventures where 25 people would pile into a lot of row boats and then go out on Long Island Sound for adventures. There's a great story about Alice happily celebrating that she, when she was 16, coming in and announcing that she had beat her cousin Oliver at tennis. Her siblings promptly made fun of her because Oliver was only nine. So it's like, woo! Yeah, great, you should have beat him at tennis. So the way the family interacted was very much something that we tried to understand and to follow. I think, you know, with Quentin, he had the advantage of only being four and a half when his father became president. And didn't really have any awareness of what was going on around him. You know, that Alice and Ted actually did a happy little dance together when McKinley was assassinated. Archie apparently burst into tears because he was worried that someone would shoot his father. Quentin was definitely the most, I think Quentin and Ethel were the two easygoing ones. Ethel, you know, the TR used to write what he called picture letters. He would illustrate that, these little cartoons. And Ethel liked to dominate the two younger boys. That there was this one wonderful one where there's one cartoon figure of a boy laying on the ground and there's another cartoon figure of a boy getting his hair pulled by a cartoon figure or a girl. And the title is Ethel Lays Down the Law. So she had a very unique part in the family, I think, because she sort of mediated between the older children and the younger children. She was the connecting point. I think, you know, to understand the Roosevelt family, it is, it's not just TR. It's wider family. We're talking about how his family enabled his president his life. But it's also that they enabled him to be a presidential figure as well. That his cousin, Emily, who had more money, who lived next door, owned more property, had more financial success than TR, traveled to Buffalo after McKinley's assassination and told TRs, don't worry about the house. Don't worry about the family. He basically took over running the Roosevelt, you know, TR's life, his financial life, he prepared his bills, he made sure family was taken care of. He got the boys enrolled in school and all that stuff. Because family very much felt that they needed to free him up to do the best job he could as president. And it's interesting because it's very similar to behavior that their fathers had exhibited with TR senior. And Roosevelt and sons, you know, the manufacturing, not manufacturing, the mercantile business that made the family fortunate in the 1850s, all four brothers were working there. But Theodore Roosevelt, senior after a certain amount of time, did very little business work. You know, he still traveled occasionally, but he was mainly involved in charities and philanthropies. And a society woman once asked one of her, his brothers, you know, what are you doing to match your brother's charitable contributions? And his rather tart response was what Theodore is, our charitable contribution. Because they were carrying the load in the family business while he was out doing the work. I don't know if I want to just be rambling, but... Just before we, I have a question for Stacey about gender. But before we go there, give us a sense of the house. Who slept where? Who are in the same rooms? Who have their own rooms? How did the house dynamics work? The house dynamics are great. It's fascinating. You know, Sacmore Hill is a shingle-style pan out. I'm sorry, we don't have a picture of it here. It's three stories high. The third floor is really in TR's lifetime reserve for mainly for servants quarters. TR does have what was indicated as to be a billiard room, but he actually used it as an office. Ted Jr. would later dub it the gun room, because that's where TR kept his hunting equipment. The first floor has a small hall that lids into TR's library and a drawing room used by Mrs. Roosevelt. It's got a large veranda, Piazza, as Roosevelt's referred to it. TR, I think his autobiography said that I wanted to live outside. You know, I had to live inside, but I wanted to be outside, too. And for the family, they had a set of French doors that went out there. And in the summers, they would basically just live out on the porch as though it were a second living room. There are ten bedrooms on the second floor, and I love it when TR and Edith moved into the house in 1867. TR had a library downstairs. He had an office on the third floor. He had a morning sitting room on the second floor off his bedroom. He had his own dressing room, and as the family grows, as the life grows, life within the house grows, he gets tossed out of the morning room because they needed a nursery for the children. He loses his dressing room because it becomes Ethel's bedroom at one point. The upstairs gun room becomes the children's main play area. And he made a comment to someone at one point that he's lucky he wasn't sleeping in a barn because he was just being crowded out. There were ten bedrooms, but Ethel, I'm sorry, Edith sort of religiously guarded two of them. She kept them as guest rooms and just said, there's no way if I give these rooms up to family, we'll never have space again. Two of the rooms were used as sort of a baby control area. There were actually three of the rooms. There was a nursery and then the gate room, which had been TR's morning room. And they literally put a gate over the room and Ethel would remember that they were kept there until they could be trusted not to fall down the stairs. So it was sort of like a baby play room. And then there was another room for sleeping and then the nurses slept in there and the government was with the small children. It's great with the boys. Alice is lucky. Alice got a room and Alice stayed in her room. Ethel, because she was the only other girl, got her own room too. The boys always had to share and there was sort of constant maneuvering for space between the boys. Once it was clear their mother wouldn't let them have the guest rooms. There was a large closet that Quinton claimed as his own and convinced his mother to put like a little single bed in there so he could have his own room. When the governance finally left, Quinton was old enough to go to school and didn't need a governance or a nurse anymore. Ted campaigned and got his own room up on the third floor. So it was Ted, it was a cook, three maids and a scullery maid. I'm sure the women were delighted to have a 14-year-old boy move upstairs with them. But he at least was happy because he had his own space finally. And when he married and moved out, Archie immediately moved into his room. When Alice married and moved out of the house, Kermit immediately moved into her room. There's this constant sort of land grab going on. And there's a great story in Eleanor Roosevelt, head junior's wife's memoir. She spent her first summer at Sagamore Hill in 1912. And she said, she was amazed. She was an early child. She lived in this quiet Boston household. And she said to come to Sagamore Hill with the Roosevelt's who were always so glad to see each other. They were always talking so loud. They stayed up late. They ran up and down the stairs, which didn't have any carpets. They talked loudly as they went to their bedrooms. And then they got up early the next morning and started the whole thing again. She said that first when she lost 25 pounds and she learned to sleep under any circumstances. Stacy, I want to ask you a question. First of all, six children in 13 years. So fairly rapid growth of family. Edith had a couple of miscarriages during that period too. Four boys, two girls. I think Steve said earlier there are some commonalities. Harvard Groton, of course, that's true only of the boys. In looking at Alice and talking about her similarities of dynamics and energy and intellect to her father. I know this is a wanted sort of question, but how might the life of the Roosevelt's been different if they had lived in an era when women had more opportunities to express themselves than they did in the early 20th century? How might things have been different for Alice? For the family, the dynamics of the family, but also Alice's own frustrations? Well, of course, I think the obvious answer to your question would be if there was an equal playing ground for schooling and opportunities between the boys and the girls that maybe Alice's innate natural talents would have come to the fore. Maybe Epo would not have submerged her own dissatisfactions in travel because she traveled a lot, seemed to be happy when she was traveling. So maybe they could have taken on more substantial work and been happier as individuals. In Alice's case, though, she said that she never ran for public office because she was shy. And so maybe that shyness was not the truth. I've always thought of it because people don't believe this when I say this. And I really didn't believe the first time I heard it. So I really pressed her granddaughter and said, well, come on, Alice Longer is shy. She said Granny shyness was the kind of shyness where if she walked into a room full of people like this and when she walked in she was Alice Longer, then she'd be fine among millions. She walked into a small group of people like this and she was one of several, but not Alice. That was hard for her. Alice was not the sort of could slap backs and kiss babies. But maybe if there had been opportunities for schooling, opportunities for her to use her political acumen in other ways, she and Epo would have had happier lives. That isn't what I've questioned, though. And maybe Betty's got a different answer. Pull your mic. It seems to me also it's a matter of class because as I'll say this afternoon, the two sisters of Theodore were against the vote for women, but they had no qualms at all about having Senator Lodge for dinner and telling him what he should do and writing their brother and giving him advice. So I think it's always strange to me, but it's definitely a class idea. They didn't need the vote because they were having dinner with the president and the cabinet members. The way Alice tells it often in her life is it was sort of five against one, but she felt like an outsider, marginal, never fully integrated into the family, called baby Lee, called sister and so on. Let's talk a little bit about family dynamics in any family of six children. There are floating alliances. There are natural affinities. One question you might say is what kind of Roosevelt do you choose to be in large families? Do people choose to take on certain aspects of the family dynamics or reject them? Betty, can you start by just talking a little bit about how this all worked on a day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year basis of this large, rambunctious family? I think it changed a lot over the years. I mean, because we all know when you're ten years old, a four-year difference in age is a lot. And when you're 44 years old, it's not very much at all. So in the White House, as we all said before, you got these alliances, and the boys were off at school a lot, and then Alice was doing her thing. Later, it really does become the alliances change. Apple and Archie were prime. I mean, the letters, she thought he was a racist bigot, and she didn't want anything to do with him. There are many, many letters in the later years about that. In the earlier years, he was the little brother that she was bossing around. So the dynamics really do change over time. Anyone else want to talk about this at all? I think the family, certainly as children, obviously, kids squab, but they also bond together whenever opposition comes up. I think there was a lot of the usual give-and-take. I do think that she was more part of the group maybe than she would talk to publicly. I've always found with a lot of Alice's public brains that she frankly didn't care if she told you exactly what was on her mind. That she wasn't going to reveal her deepest thoughts or what was deepest in her heart, and obviously had more experience reading her letters and such. But I find one of the things that's interesting for us is Alice had to go for six weeks or eight weeks every summer and say it lost it with the lease of her maternal grandparents. There's resentment there that she's sort of missing out on things. She's missing out on what everybody's doing. It's like more Hill or she's missing out on seeing the cousins. So I think that was frustrating for her. It's interesting because as adults, they're so close. They seem to be so close. Especially she and Ted actually lived close to each other in Washington. And there's a great story, and again, in Eleanor's book, about someone... The whole thing with the teapot dome scandal is actually that Archie Roosevelt is one of the people who sort of said there's something wrong going on here and helped to sort of uncover and cause the investigation. There had been some questions because Ted was secretary of the Navy at the time about whether he'd been in on this attempt to cheat the government by overcharging them for stored gasoline supplies. And some congressman got up and pointed out that Ted had owned standard oil stock. But Ted had always let Eleanor manage their money, mainly because he was serving in public office. And he decided that this guy had insulted his wife and he was furious. And he was literally getting dressed to go out and go over to this guy's house and punch him in the face. Eleanor called Alice and said, you know, he's going to go get in such trouble. He's going to punch this guy in the face. You know, it's going to be terrible. And so Alice was like, well, here, get him on the phone for me. So Ted comes on the phone and said, don't try to talk me out of this. And Alice said, I wouldn't think of it. He's a jerk. He deserves to get punched in the nose. And I don't think the fact that he wears glasses should keep you from hitting him. And, you know, I don't think the fact that he's not really a very big guy, that just because he's scrawny, you shouldn't keep from hitting him either. And she knew how to manipulate Ted to the point that, you know, well, maybe it's not a good idea to go beat up some weakling because he couldn't say nice things about my wife. But, you know, she was able to keep him from something he'd been very focused on doing. When Nick died, I think they were in Memphis or they were somewhere in Tennessee, there's a story that Ted and Kermit charted an airplane because they realized it would take them too long to get to where Alice was, you know, by train so that they, but they rushed down to be with her in this time. And, you know, Alice always came home in emergencies. She's always there. She's always dependable. And Edith was thrown off her horse in 1911 and hit her head on the McCatham Road, on Astral Road. She was actually, like, semi-conscious for three or four days. It took her that long to recover. And Alice, like, makes a beeline from Cincinnati to come home when there's trouble. So... Any excuse to get out of Cincinnati? Maybe that was it. Yeah, sorry. But she also comes home after Quentin dies and rallies right back to Long Island to help her parents grieve over Quentin. And, you know, in 1909 and 10 when TR is in Africa, Alice comes and stays for five or six weeks with Edith. You know, it was just Edith and Ethel and Alice in the house because the boys were either in school or in Africa, basically. So you're always seeing this skim-a-take. And I think it's interesting to sit and listen to people who study them so much because you tend to have a more academic point of view. And I guess we don't have quite that removal from them. You know, they are sort of the little ghosts that sag more hell. If they aren't there, we just have a place ready for them in case they want to come back. And so it's interesting because we tend to dismiss the squabbles a little more. Thank you. Just a second, Gary. We're going to have some time for questions. We're precisely unknown, but go ahead, Gary. I was thinking while we have these scholars in our midst, I wanted to ask what constituted the education of the Roosevelt women? How did that exemplify their class and time? And when did that change? When did Roosevelt women and families start pursuing more formal credentials? I think the short answer probably is that no Roosevelt women went to college until the 1930s. That's when it changed. For example, Ethel's two daughters, Edith and Sarah Alden, both went to college. But I think, I mean, I'm saying that. I don't think there's any example of that because it was private. It was at home. TR and his brother, of course, had tutors come in. The sisters could take advantage of that for a little bit, but then they got their own tutors. And they got a much heavier dose of literature and language. And the boys, of course, got science and math. And then they got Harvard after that. So no, it really changes in the 1930s. Let's see if there are questions from the audience for any or all of our participants on any aspect of Roosevelt family life, particularly the children. Yes, here? Just a birth order, just as a factor. As a younger sister going to a brother who is a great star. Speaking in Archie's behalf, sometimes at a time we get to Archie, he's that tool, the brothers who sound like, as well as Alice was saying, anybody look at just plain birth order. Yeah, speculating about birth order and its effect on the family. I think Ethel beating him up. Probably had an effect. But yeah, Archie's the youngest, but he's one of the youngest, but he's not the baby. And so I think that probably was a hard position to be in. Some authors refer to like his attitude toward the men in his command in World War I, that he treats them like little brothers or even makes that comment. And thus perhaps his personality shaped by the fact that so many people were kind of controlling him. I was the last of seven kids myself, I don't know what this is like. Probably might have shaped his personality and kind of shaped the way he dealt with people under his control. The fact that he was so trying to speculate that, that's probably a good point, yes. But because of the particular situation of first wife, second wife, Alice and the other five, are there two oldest children? Are Ted and Alice both the oldest child in some sense? I think so. I think Ted felt a real responsibility as the oldest son and the namesake. And I think a lot of Ted's actions, that he sort of makes up his own mind at some point, that he is going to be his own man. And this idea that he got a job in the summers in college, that he worked at a carpet factory. And he started on the floor learning how to run a loom, and over several years worked his way up to management. And Ted Harvard, the reason he didn't go to Africa with his father is because he had a job working in this carpet factory, and he was sort of determined to make it on his own. One of the things that's interesting, before he went into politics, he decided that he needed to earn money, enough money to be independent, and that he had a goal of earning $500,000 before he went into politics. And after the carpet factory, he got into stock brokerage and money management, and actually moved to California. So it's like not only does he sort of follow his own path and create this independence, but he actually goes all the way to California to do it, where again it's sort of like, I'm my own person, I'm the only Theodore Roosevelt in the state of California. And he did make that fortune, and that's why after the war he went into politics. Betty, I want to ask you, you're Ethel's advocate today, and you said that she's the presidential child exemplar. You know, TR famously got all four of his sons into World War I to the front, very adamant that they will be warriors, but Ethel was the first one to go to Europe. Right, as I was going to say this afternoon, the very first one in the family to get into World War I was Ethel and her doctor husband, who left their infant child, I think he was about three months old, with her parents and they went off to Paris. So she was a pretty gutsy person. They were red cloth, they were working with the red cloth. Yes, they worked in the hospital and she worked as a nurse or an aide in the hospital. And there's some very good letters back to the family describing that. Thank you, Frank. Yeah, there's a very nice little anecdote, very brief about Ted's wife Eleanor in World War I. She went to work with the YMCA as a supportive organization for the soldiers and Woodrow Wilson's son did the same thing. This is while the Roosevelt boys are in Europe fighting. And when TR was told that Woodrow Wilson's son had joined the YMCA to help the troops, he said, how nice, we sent our daughter-in-law. Actually, he said we sent our daughter. Your daughter? Yeah, family. But again, this idea, this sense of responsibility that all the Roosevelt women share and all the Roosevelt children share. Ted, just a little time here. Go ahead, speak up. Have any of these family dynamics been carried on for subsequent generations? That's a great question. You know, we have friendships here with TR, the Fourth, with Simon, with Tweed. And when you meet Roosevelt's, you always, I don't know if you feel a bit, it's inevitable. You think, what part of TR did they get? What are they in this whole large, interesting family dynamic? Joanna's stern is Alice's granddaughter. And Alice was Theodore's daughter. And Alice did not have Theodore's photographic memory. But she could, Alice loved poetry with her brother. She published the Desperate Anthology. So the poetry runs throughout this family. But I have stood in Joanna's house and listened to Joanna and Alice recite at rapid fire speed, the Battle of Lepanto. And it's gargantuan long. And they did it so quickly and perfectly in the memory and absolutely in tune. And it was an astounding thing. It was like being catapulted backwards in time. You know, this is the pre-Twitter, pre-ipod, pre-television, pre-radio generation. And they read books. They memorized poetry. They memorized long passages from, you know, literature. And there's stories about Ted in Africa and in France. You know, calming his troops by reciting, you know, the midnight riot of Paul Revere or something. That they could, and Archie, their accounts of Archie doing the same thing. It's obviously a family trait. And I have held Alice's copy of the Oxford book, yeah, of literature. And it is held together by string. Yeah. TR himself could recite long passages from the Nibelungen lead, which I don't think has much done anymore. Yeah, Alice could do that. Yes, go ahead. Did any about TR's family support at TR? I thought there was somebody that did. Did any of the... And how did the family react? Did anyone from the family support at TR? How did the family react? Corrine, anti-Corrine. It would be the sister, yeah, supported at TR and said she voted for him. But she died before he was inaugurated. She went to a party for Eleanor and got pneumonia and died before the inauguration. Lightning struck her. I think Corrine was friends with TR. They went sailing together. Archie, not so much. But, you know, one of Eleanor and Franklin's sons voted Republican and Alice had got great measure out of that. Yeah. Kathleen had said that it was important for TR to get out of his class and mingle with average Americans. Did they do that for their children? They did do that. One of the interesting things with Ted Kermit is that TR felt later in life that he sort of missed out by not going to public school and not developing those friendships. And both Ted and Kermit, their first two years of schooling, went to Cove Neck School, which is a local school for fishermen and farmer sons, not far from Sagmore Hill. They had several fights with some of the boys, but that was all part of the learning experience apparently. And, you know, certainly TR took his children west. They went on trips to the west and hunting trips and sightseeing trips. So he did try to get them out in the world more. Did the family get involved in the legacy of TR as a conservationist? The most money Alice donated in her last several decades was to conservationist efforts. Yeah, I think all the family supports conservation efforts. I know that Theodore Roosevelt IV is very involved in conservation and in one key to actually introduce the platform. I think in 2000, George Bush ran an environmental platform. They were public convention. They are active still. They tend to be active more privately than within government. What do we know about the family, the children and grandchildren, and Mount Rushmore? Rushmore was carved after TR's death. Real connection there. There must have been some family members there at the dedications, presumably, but no one has a thought on that. No. Yeah, they certainly were the national parksters. They were part of the, you know, Ethel and was the leading voice of the conservation and preservation of Saddenmore Hill. Alice supported her and Archie was involved too. But Ethel really led the campaign, both to get it preserved by Theodore Roosevelt Association and then when they decided to turn it over to the National Park Service, she was very supportive of that and worked on that effort. Ethel, one of the things we've uncovered in the files at Theodore Roosevelt National Park thanks to our work with Valerie Naylor is a series of letters that Ethel wrote to the Chief of Interpretation of the National Park during the 1950s when it was a National Memorial Park. And she came out in, I believe, 1952 to spend some time here and to meet some of the last of the TR contemporaries and to see the park and to give it her support. And the letters are very charming letters. She writes and says, well, is there anywhere to stay out there in North Dakota? Is there a dude ranch I could stay at? Well, can vehicles go in this park? And there's this long and interesting patient correspondence back and forth that she did come out. And there are photographs of her in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in 1952. The country was sort of gearing up for the centennial of Roosevelt's birth and that was one reason that brought her out. She remained active very much so in Roosevelt's West and was the one family member who made physical journeys out here. Well, but Alice's vacation is out there. When she made sure to bring her daughter, Paulina came base and they stayed in two different branches out west. That was really important. How many living descendants are there? How many are involved in public life? I have no idea. There are tons of them. There are a lot of them. I don't have an account on the Roosevelt's. Many of them are involved in public life. Not necessarily elected positions. I know that one of the Mark Roosevelt is the head of the Pittsburgh School District. A lot of them are involved. One of Archie's granddaughters is a judge in the New York City Family Court. They're involved in politics, but they don't... Well, Susan Weld. Yeah, Susan Weld, obviously. She was the wife of the governor of Massachusetts. But she's an amazing woman in her own right. And what's the Roosevelt in Chicago got the MacArthur award? Anna MacMillan. Scientist. Anna Roosevelt, right. MacArthur award for her research on Amazon tribes. Probably more advanced than they realize. That's a good sign. It's lunchtime. It's time to take a break and stretch. First of all, Amy, Stacey, Gary, Stephen, Frank, David.