Teddy Roosevelt, Rough Rider, president and Bull Moose Party founder dead 100 years
His career brought him to Reading twice.
Berks County and America were caught off guard at the death of former President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt on Jan. 6, 1919 - 100 years ago today.
"The news of Colonel Roosevelt's death was a shock to Reading, where he was admired and beloved," the Reading Times reported. "He twice visited this city and was given the greatest receptions in its history."
About 10,000 people crowded Penn Square to hear Roosevelt, then the Bull Moose Party candidate for president, on April 11, 1912. He would visit Reading a second time in October 1914 in support of Gifford Pinchot's campaign for the U.S. Senate.
The 26th president died in his sleep about 4:15 a.m. at Sagamore Hill, his estate on Oyster Bay, Long Island.
The cause was a blood clot lodged in a lung, the result of inflammatory rheumatism, The Associated Press reported.
Thomas C. Seidel, Berks County Republican Party chairman, issued a statement expressing the high regard in which Roosevelt was held by many in Berks and the nation.
Roosevelt had carried Berks in his successful bid for president in 1904, a rare, perhaps unprecedented, feat for a Republican at the time.
"If a man is to be judged by his achievements, history will accord Theodore Roosevelt a position equal to that of the great presidents of this country," Seidel said. "He was a scholar, a diplomat and a statesman of the first order."
News reports referred to "Colonel" Roosevelt, rather than the customary title of former president, at the time of his death at age 60.
The title stemmed from his leadership of the Rough Riders in the Battle of San Juan Hill, a pivotal point in his political career, during the Spanish-American War in 1898.
He would be elected governor of New York in 1899 and become William McKinley's vice president in the election of 1900.
Roosevelt became president after McKinley's assassination at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 6, 1901. He would be elected president in 1904, serving until 1909.
Only four days before McKinley's assassination, then-Vice President Roosevelt made reference to a proverb "Speak softly, carry a big stick and you will go far" in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair. It would come to characterize his foreign policy, which was based on diplomacy backed by a strong military.
Roosevelt did not seek re-election in 1908, throwing his support behind William Howard Taft, who was elected. Disillusioned with Taft's policies, Roosevelt ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket in the election of 1912.
Promising a Square Deal, Roosevelt proposed reforms that included placing restrictions on campaign financing, reducing tariffs, establishing a social insurance program, implementing an eight-hour workday and supporting women's suffrage.
An avid outdoorsman, Roosevelt's frequent reference to feeling "strong as a bull moose" earned the party the label Bull Moose.
Medical and emotional distress
The day before he died, Roosevelt summoned a local barber to Sagamore Hill.
"I'm feeling bully, John, but I sent for you because I don't feel like shaving myself," the old Square Dealer said, according to an AP report at the time of his death.
It would become apparent that Roosevelt had ongoing health problems for about a year. He'd had surgery for an ear ailment and was hospitalized with rheumatism. He had a near fatal pulmonary embolism shortly before Christmas 1918.
A doctor who visited him two days before his death said he suffered some pain from rheumatism but was in good spirits.
The Rough Rider was under physical, as well as emotional, distress.
Nearly six months earlier, Lt. Quentin Roosevelt, 20, his youngest son, died in a dogfight with a German warplane July 14, 1918, Bastille Day in France. In March 1918, another son, Capt. Archibald "Archie" Roosevelt, was wounded by shrapnel leading a platoon against a German position in France.
"The death of Colonel Roosevelt is believed by physicians who attended him to have been hastened by grief over Quentin's death, coupled with anxiety over the serious wounds suffered by Capt. Archie Roosevelt while fighting in France," according to an AP story in the Reading Times. "He hid his suffering from the world in the hope that it might set an example for other fathers and mothers who had given their sons to the nation."
Death of the lion
In a cable to his siblings, Archie Roosevelt announced: "The old lion is dead."
Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson's vice president, remarked, "Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight."
According to his wishes, Roosevelt was buried without the normal pomp or ceremony accorded a former president.
After a private viewing at Sagamore Hill, a simple service was held at Christ Episcopal Church in Oyster Bay. Taft and U.S. Sen. Warren Harding of Ohio, who would win the presidential election in 1920, were among the mourners.
Spectators and a squad of New York mounted policemen - Roosevelt had been New York police commissioner in the mid-1890s - lined the snow-covered route from the church to Youngs Memorial Cemetery, where Roosevelt was buried on a hillside overlooking Oyster Bay.
By George, it's Teddy
A private train carrying Roosevelt arrived at Seventh and Penn at 12:14 p.m. April 11, 1912.
Standing on the rear platform, hat in hand, the Bull Moose party candidate uttered one of his favorite expressions, "By George, this is great."
His reception was a triumphant affair, the kind typically reserved for folk heroes.
Escorted by mounted officers on prancing horses and greeted with shouts of "Hurrah for Roosevelt," he passed through columns of waving flags and cheering admirers on his way to the Mansion House on Penn Square. So intense was the cheering, it drowned out the playing of "Hail to the Chief" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" by the Cadet Band.
"This is the fight of the plain people against the crooked politicians," Roosevelt pronounced over a sea of people from the hotel's portico.
"The crowd was like a living panorama," the Times reported. "Here and there were splashes of color caused by the bright trimmings of the hats of ladies that created a pretty contrast to the somber dark clothing and hats of the men."
In the 1912 election, Bull Moose candidate Roosevelt won 27.4 percent of the popular vote compared to Republican Taft's 23.2 percent. Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the election with 41.8 percent of the vote.
Contact Ron Devlin: 610-371-5030 or email@example.com.