The Doctor and the Rough Rider (26 page)

Eventually there were more serious portrayals: Brian Keith, Tom Berenger, even Robin
Williams…and word has it that, possibly by the time you read this, you'll be able
to add Leonardo DiCaprio to the list.

Roosevelt believed in the active life, not just for himself but for his four sons—Kermit,
Archie, Quentin, and Theodore Junior—and two daughters, Alice and Edith. He built
Sagamore Hill, his rambling house on equally rambling acreage, and he often took the
children—and any visiting dignitaries—on what he called “scrambles,” cross-country
hikes that were more obstacle course than anything else.

His motto: “Above or below, but never around.” If you couldn't walk through it, you
climbed over it or crawled under it, but you never ever circled it. This included
not only hills, boulders, and thorn bushes, but rivers, and frequently he, the children,
and the occasional visitor who didn't know what he was getting into, would come home
soaking wet from swimming a river or stream with their clothes on, or covered with
mud, or with their clothes torn to shreds from thorns.

Those wet, muddy, and torn clothes were their badges of honor. It meant that they
hadn't walked around any obstacle.

“If I am to be any use in politics,” Roosevelt wrote to a friend, “it is because I
am supposed to be a man who does not preach what he fears to practice. For the year
I have preached war with Spain…”

So it was inevitable that he should leave his job as undersecretary of the navy and
enlist in the military. He instantly became Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt, and began
putting together a very special elite unit, one that perhaps only he could have assembled.

The Rough Riders consisted, among others, of cowboys, Indians, tennis stars, college
athletes, the marshal of Dodge City, the master of the Chevy Chase hounds, and the
man who was reputed to be the best quarterback ever to play for Harvard.

They were quite a crew, Colonel Roosevelt's Rough Riders. They captured the imagination
of the public as had no other military unit in United States history. They also captured
San Juan Hill in the face of some serious machine gun fire, and Roosevelt, who led
the charge, returned home an even bigger hero than when he'd left.

While on a bear hunt in Mississippi, Colonel Roosevelt, as he liked to be called after
San Juan Hill and Cuba, was told that a bear had been spotted a few miles away. When
Roosevelt and his entourage—which always included the press—arrived, he found a small,
undernourished, terrified bear tied to a tree. He refused to shoot it, and turned
away in disgust, ordering a member of the party to put the poor creature out of its
misery. His unwillingness to kill a helpless animal was captured by
Washington Post
cartoonist Clifford Berryman. It made him more popular than ever, and before long
toy companies were turning out replicas of cute little bears that the great Theodore
Roosevelt would certainly never kill, rather than ferocious game animals.

Just in case you ever wondered about the origin of the Teddy Bear.

Some thirty years ago, writer/director John Milius gave the public one of the truly
great adventure films,
The Wind and the Lion
, in which the Raisuli (Sean Connery), known as “the Last of the Barbary Pirates,”
kidnapped an American woman, Eden Perdicaris (Candice Bergen) and her two children,
and held them for ransom at his stronghold in Morocco. At which point President Theodore
Roosevelt (Brian Keith, in probably the best representation of Roosevelt ever put
on film) declared that America wanted “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!” and sent
the fleet to Morocco.

Wonderful film, beautifully photographed, well-written, well-acted, with a gorgeous
musical score.

Would you like to know what
really
happened?

First of all, it wasn't
Eden
Perdicaris; it was
Ion
Perdicaris, a sixty-four-year-old man. And he wasn't kidnapped with two small children,
but with a grown stepson. And far from wanting to be rescued, he and the Raisuli became
great friends.

Roosevelt felt the president of the United States had to protect Americans abroad,
so he sent a telegram to the sultan of Morocco, the country in which the kidnapping
took place, to the effect that America wanted Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead. He
also dispatched seven warships to Morocco.

So why wasn't there a war with Morocco?

Two reasons.

First, during the summer of 1904, shortly after the kidnapping and Roosevelt's telegram,
the government learned something that was kept secret until after all the principles
in the little drama—Roosevelt, Perdicaris, and the Raisuli—had been dead for years…and
that was that Ion Perdicaris was
not
an American citizen. He had been born one, but he later renounced his citizenship
and moved to Greece, years before the kidnapping.

The other reason? Perdicaris's dear friend, the Raisuli, set him free. Secretary of
State John Hay knew full well that Perdicaris had been freed before the Republican
convention convened, but he whipped the assembled delegates up with the “America wants
Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!” slogan anyway, and Roosevelt was elected in a landslide.

Roosevelt was as vigorous and active as president as he'd been in every previous position.
Consider:

Even though the country was relatively empty, he could see land being gobbled up in
great quantities by settlers and others, and he created the National Park System.

He arranged for the overthrow of the hostile Panamanian government and created the
Panama Canal, which a century later is
still
vital to international shipping.

He took on J. P. Morgan and his cohorts, and became the greatest “trust buster” in
our history, then created the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor to
make sure weaker presidents in the future didn't give up the ground he'd taken.

We were a regional power when he took office. Then he sent the navy's “Great White
Fleet” around the world on a “goodwill tour.” By the time it returned home, we were,
for the first time, a world power.

Because he never backed down from a fight, a lot of people thought of him as a warmonger—but
he became the first American president ever to win the Nobel Peace Price while still
in office, when he mediated a dispute between Japan and Russia before it became a
full-fledged shooting war.

He created and signed the Pure Drug and Food Act.

He became the first president to leave the United States while in office when he visited
Panama to inspect the canal.

Roosevelt remained physically active throughout his life. He may or may not have been
the only president to be blind in one eye, but he was the only who to ever go blind
in one eye from injuries received in a boxing match
while serving as president
.

He also took years of
jujitsu
lessons while in office, and became quite proficient at it.

And, in keeping with daughter Alice's appraisal of him, he was the first president
to fly in an airplane, and the first to be filmed.

Roosevelt's last day in office was February 22, 1909.

He'd already been a cowboy, a rancher, a soldier, a marshal, a police commissioner,
a governor, and a president. So did he finally slow down?