 Good morning, anybody here from are there any high school students here? Is it all how many that's what I thought okay? What high school you guys with I? Love coming to North Dakota. It's become for me almost an adopted state Part of it is I had asthma as a kid and I think for some reason the Great Plains the Landscape here always appeals to me the sense of openness. I get a little bit claustrophobic Places, so the just driving here sort of Triggers a kind of freedom mechanism. I know you guys in high school here Many ways you always I grew up in Perry'sburg, Ohio I was wanted to get out of Perry'sburg I know a lot of people sometimes want to get out of their hometown and get out there in the world But there you live in a very special place. This is a very special University dick on I was telling the president of the school that Two of the great American authors have commented on just where we're at right now One was Jack Kerouac in his on-the-road journals Does anybody read on the road by Jack Kerouac? Well, if you you should read it It's a great American novel, but he's talked about the people of Dickinson I Edited a book of Kerouac journals called windblown world and he said there are no finer people than in Dickinson, North Dakota And he talked about seeing the bus stuck in the snow Now all the people pulled together to get the bus out and it's a beautiful homage and at the end of it He said that he wants to be buried in Medora, North Dakota He's instead Kerouac buried in low, Massachusetts where he grew up and also the great Erskine Caldwell author of tobacco road Had it wrote about being here at Dickinson actually coming to Dickinson State University And he's the tobacco road was the best-selling novel of the 1930s sort of one of the 20th century classics so these two major authors have all commented on life in Dickinson Before I talk I want to ask a friend of mine to stand up. She's somebody. I love a great deal I've adopted her as a surrogate mother She's person who's been an impresario along with her late husband Harold Schaefer of Medora and Creating this sort of essence there in Medora of of the the Western frontier of the Badlands at Theodore Roosevelt So no finer national park and I go to all of them Then what happens at Theodore Roosevelt National Park between both units and the power of the Badlands and the fact that tourists could come and see buffalo see prairie dogs see antelope and the person I think Possible for keeping the spirit of Western Dakota Northwestern North Dakota alive as Shiloh Schaefer and would you stand just for one minute silent? Thank you. I don't want to get into It's an endless proposition to To start naming people then you end up leaving people out but my colleagues that are here Many of them have just written Candice and Patricia fabulous books on Theodore Roosevelt that are just getting rave reviews everywhere And I know some of you can't keep up on the literature of this Some of you've never read a book on Theodore Roosevelt, but we're walking in in high cotton as they say we have really outstanding Scholars here and tweed Roosevelt just to connect to the family and to hear his adventures And he knows so much about the personal TR and never ceases to Impress me and he's just one of those good guys that once you know him in your life He stays in your life and Clay, thank you. I know how much work you do and what you're bringing to here clays a Rhodes Scholar Somebody who could be anywhere. He chose to come back to North Dakota and he's sort of become the In many ways the conscience of the little Missouri River And somebody who works to keep people like Jefferson and TRs image alive around the country and I'm grateful for that look I wanted to talk today about Conservation at Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt as naturalist we heard a lot about blood sport We heard a lot about hunting. I know there are hunters here It's a big part of Theodore Roosevelt's conservation and it intertwines hunting and conservation with groups like the Boone and Crockett Club and his life but the Beginning of TR saga and it makes some of you guys wonder if you're keeping diaries or journals Just imagine Theodore Roosevelt was eight years old and he already started keeping an account of his life in But mainly his naturalist life at eight years old He went down to a war front in New York and got a head of a seal a skull He saw the full seal dead seal laying there at a fish market. He'd come back as a little kid was mesmerized By seeing an animal like that that somebody had just brought out of the water He'd go back every day. He kind of wanted the seal eventually. He negotiated to get the skull And that became the beginning of Theodore Roosevelt's own natural history museum that the young TR started collecting animals and birds nest eggs Skeletons of any kind of animal possible and he would do detail study and recording on this starting at eight years old The late John Gable used to always tell me TR's first writing was about birds at eight And then he wrote about birds on his deathbed This was a man who didn't just like nature. He dedicated To conservation and he was our great naturalist president now the journey We have to ask is why is it kid at eight years old collecting all these things all children like animals All you have to do is look at Disney or or any cartoon network and you can see how kids are attracted to anything dealing with animals But Roosevelt had two unique role models in his life early on which gave him an advantage a head Naturalist first was his father Who created the Museum of Natural History in New York? If you guys go to New York, you see the great our country's great natural history museum Roosevelt's father created in there in their parlor in Manhattan were the first meetings to create this so you talk about an enduring gift to the United States from the Roosevelt family This this natural history museum. It's par excellence. There's nothing Remotely like it, but his father was in some ways a very prudish Puritanical Philanthropist he was not somebody known to have a wild streak. He was a dedicated and devoted family man He was a man about integrity and about honesty Somebody asked me about American presidents, which I wrote about the one thing. I'll tell you you learn about TRs He always told the truth You don't find Roosevelt lying and that's the number one lesson of him as president always call it And you don't go wrong in in history. He's a role model in that regard He made mistakes in many ways. We confound on theater Roosevelt aspects of his imperialism By today's standards, there's a racism in some aspects of what TR was about But but nobody can ever challenge his bedrock honesty and in the courage of his convictions Now the other side beyond his father. There's a lesser-known figure and that's his father's brother his uncle uncle Rob Roosevelt Robert Roosevelt was a grand eccentric of mid 19th century America at the time of the Civil War and shortly after Uncle Rob was considered the Audubon of America He wrote books about fish In in New England. He wrote about Canada. He was an expert on on fish and birds Now remember if you cut to America in the 1870s tear the the Roosevelt's love of natural history is neither operating in a bubble We know that Thomas Jefferson was a great naturalist There was a there was a course Audubon and I hope you all know when you see those Audubon bird illustrations Audubon would actually kill the game. He'd shoot the bird do taxidermy get it stuffed and then draw it from the stuffed figure And but there's this tradition of Audubon and uncle Rob as part of it Robert Roosevelt theater Roosevelt's uncle Created the first fish hatchery in the United States He ran for Congress served at one term with one idea in mind and that was to repopulate the Hudson River of with shad The fish that had been been killed off from overfishing. So today you see people with save the whale With uncle Rob. It was saved the shad in New York