Ginny and I took a ride out to Oyster Bay New York this morning to visit Sagamore Hill, the home of Theodore Roosevelt, his wife Edith and the six Roosevelt children. A beautiful estate, 
although hardly ostentatious by the standards of his day, let alone ours. I enjoyed seeing his house, although there were waaaaaay too many hunting trophys to suit my taste. Okay, 
Teddy, you like to hunt. I get it. I got after the first 20 stuffed heads. Although I guess if I shot a water buffalo and an elephant and so on, I’d probably show off a bit, too. Still, if I had done all the other stuff that he did, I’d show of that stuff, too. Something from the Panama Canal, models of the Great White Fleet, some more junk from the Rough Rider days, something from The Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. No doubt about it, he was one of our most astonishing presidents. And by all appearances, a pretty fun guy, too–as long as you weren’t some gigantic African
mammal with an attractive horn on your head. There was also a very nice museum in a home that was built by his son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who was a general during World War II, and who died in combat after the Normandy invasion. (He was memorably played by Henry Fonda in The Longest Day. What was his great line? “We’ll start the war from right here.”) In many ways–his vigor, his exuberance, his appetite for political combat, his scholarship, his devotion to family–TR was the American Churchill. And here’s a question–what difference would it have made if he had been elected president in 1912, instead of Woodrow Wilson? Could he have averted the Great War? Above left, Ginny on the front porch of the house.
