Dead Presidents

Chris White is touring the gravesites, birthplaces and homes of the U.S. presidents. Here are his notes from those visits, which he probably means to be funny. Eh.

26. Theodore Roosevelt

Birthplace/Boyhood Home, New York City, New York

Boyhood Home (March 28, 2007)

In October 1912, campaigning for the presidency in Milwaukee, Teddy Roosevelt got shot by an anarchist. The bullet was slowed down by his overcoat, a copy of the speech he was about to give, and a glasses case in his pocket, but it lodged in his chest.

If I were shot by an anarchist ... I'd immediately take the rest of the day off. I don't care if there's a conference call at 3. I'm going home, and honestly, I might take tomorrow off as a "me" day.

Teddy Roosevelt ... stopped the crowd from lynching his shooter, declined medical attention (the bullet was in him for the rest of his life) and decided to go ahead and speak for the next hour. Over the rest of that day, he set the world record for push-ups, boxed all comers (including a kangaroo) in a driving rain storm and then wrote a 500-page history of the day's events. He was THE MAN.

You can see the shirt, glasses case and speech (all with bullet holes) on display at the Roosevelt birthplace in lower Manhattan (20th St., which in the 1860s was the suburbs). The building isn't original, but it's a pretty close recreation, right down to the small Starbucks in the basement. A few of the rooms have been converted to gallery space but the tour takes you through the parlor, the dining room and a few of the bedrooms. TR lived there until the age of 14, at which point the neighborhood was starting to go to crap (dirty Irish immigrants and whatnot) and the family moved to 57th St. (which in the 1870s was a lot like "Land of the Lost").

But the formative years of our most dynamic and fun-loving president were spent right there on 20th St. (and on world tours, and at their summer home, and swimming in the Roosevelt money bin). We generally think of TR as a pretty robust dude, but he was born a mewling asthmatic -- he had to earn his toughness. His dad put in a home gym just off his bedroom, and with only 5 minutes a day, three days a week on a Soloflex, he could rip phone books in half one-handed. Why did the Roosevelts have a phone book and a Soloflex machine before the invention of the phone or Soloflex? THAT'S HOW RICH THEY WERE.

According to the park ranger, Roosevelt's life was mostly an effort to impress his loaded philanthropist dad, who died when TR was 19. Even as president of the United States, he never felt he quite lived up to that example. So, dad: if you're wondering why I'm not motivated to become the leader of the free world, it's your fault a) for not being obscenely rich and b) not dying when I was a teenager. Way to deprive the country.

  • Forced into the job by McKinley's assassination before winning election twice, Roosevelt still stands as America's youngest president (42).
  • In 1884 TR was crippled by depression when his mother and wife died on the same day. He dealt with it by moving to North Dakota and becoming a cattle rancher, although he later admitted that it would have been a better career move to just drink a lot.
  • The first American to win a Nobel Prize, for negotiating the 1905 peace between Japan and Russia. And neither country ever fought a war ever again. The end.
  • Went to Africa in 1909 with the hopes of negotiating a human-lion peace treaty, to no avail.
  • The term "teddy bears" comes from Roosevelt, derived from the team of four grizzlies that pulled his presidential chariot.
  • A noted historian, Roosevelt's most enduring work was published in 1914: "The List of Names I Took After Kicking the Asses of People With Said Names, Vol. 1."
  • Served as police commissioner of New York City (1895) and would often patrol the streets himself, which explains the mysterious spike in fisticuff-related police brutality in 1895.
  • Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt assumed full control for an afternoon when the secretary went to a doctor's appointment. He immediately put the fleet on full alert worldwide, in anticipation of the Spanish-American war. BALLS. Later he quit his navy job to form the volunteer "Rough Riders" cavalry regiment, which saw action in Cuba during the war. In case you hadn't noticed, Dionel M. Aviles, there's a war on. Time to mount up.
  • Loved hunting and vastly expanded the national park service and wildlife preserves in the hopes of shooting a lot of animals in his retirement.
  • Negotiated the creation of the Panama Canal, mostly because Cape Horn was too cold to swim around in the winter months.
  • Having run unsuccessfully in 1912 (he split the Republican vote with Taft and thereby allowed Woodrow Wilson to become president), he retreated to Brazil with his son and mapped a 625-mile uncharted river. So take your slide show and shove it, Gore.

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