Day #10 – Theodore Roosevelt’s Home
12/06/2010
Today we went to Sagamore Hill, which is the home of Theodore Roosevelt, one of our more colorful presidents in America’s history. The Property that the home was on was breath-taking. I could have just sat there and looked at the landscape all day. Once again we were not allowed to take pictures in the home. When entering Roosevelt’s home you just feel like you are walking into a home of someone great. The wood walls the animal heads, rugs, tusks and openness showed that person who lived there was very intelligent as well as very active. Most of the game that was around the house was shot my TR himself. 85-95% of items in the house were original, which for some of the homes and places we have been to that is a real treat.
Sitting around the dining room table was a huge deal for the Roosevelt family. To know that there were big named people in politics and other fields it would be hard not to learn from the people who sat at the table. The children were the ones that would have to lead the conversations at dinner. By meeting so many people and having these conversations the children felt that this was the best education that they could have.
Roosevelt made sure that he had his own area of the home, which he called his “Gun Room.” Only people who were invited in would be allowed to enter, this even included the children. The Boys would be allowed to knock and ask if they could enter, and then they would only be allowed to grab a gun. With Roosevelt wanting the boys to learn so much why wouldn’t he make it more of a study room? But I guess with his library of over 6,000-12,000 books the kids would have access to all kinds of books that were not in his library.
One point that Roosevelt made sure that he did, and I know that many people really cared about was the fact that he would make family time in his hectic schedule. The more and more that I hear about this man, the more I like and want to learn about him.
When going to the grave site I did not realize that he had received the Congressional Medal of Honor. But it wasn’t until 2002 that Clinton presented the medal to the family. Looking at the MOH website Theodore and Theodore Jr. both received the medal, and Theodore Jr. if I remember right is buried in France with thousands of other Americans who fought during the Normandy Invasion.
I think the one lesson that I could teach my students about Theodore as a man is that he never let anyone tell him he couldn’t do it, and he pushed himself to the limit. He became an athlete with asthma, a big game hunter, President, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, Medal of Honor Recipient, and was a great scholar and writer, what didn’t this guy do? That would be the idea of goals and the ways to pursue them.
