Day 10

So our supposed 9:45am departure was exchanged today for the unholy hour of 8:15.  After loading our bags and butts onto the tour bus for the first time in a week, we were off to Sagamore Hill and the historic home of our coolest president, Theodore Roosevelt.  I believe this is the only house I’ve ever seen which contained a “woman cave” (as the rest of the house was all man) and even it contained two carnivorous animal skin rugs!  A stroll through the Roosevelts’ summer home is like going on an African safari, and the old world motif found throughout made me wish I had the money and the time of an Oyster Bay Roosevelt.  The tour guide from the National Parks Service kept us entertained with stories, first of young Theodore’s childhood in Manhattan, and later of the family man himself.  I had no idea that his father was the nurturer in the family, while his mother was the disciplinarian.  This quality was later paralleled by TR himself with regard to the woman he chose to be his wife and the mother of his children.  I had always heard about the man’s passion for reading, up to several book per day, but here we learned that this carried over into his parenting as well, as he forced his children to do the same, and to be prepared to discuss their topic over each evening’s meal.  Not only do our students have a lot to learn from this extraordinary man and his dedication to personal education, but I think we, as teachers, can take quite a bit from it as well.

Just down from the house I found the Theodore Roosevelt Museum, and the insurmountable task that this institution has before it.  How is it possible to encapsulate the life of such a complex and intriguing man in such a short exploration?  In short, it is not, but this museum does a fair and adequate job of at least highlighting some of the most important aspects of our beloved Teddy.  Filled with wonderful artifacts, poignant vignettes about his life at various stages, and beautiful works of art pertaining to the man and his accomplishments, I found the piece about his days as a rancher to be some of the most insightful.  Everyone has heard of his presidency, his victory at San Juan Hill, and the Panama Canal, but his formative years in the Dakota Territory provided a marvelous foretelling of not only his adventurous life to come, but of his character and moral fiber as well.  Of all the exhibits on display, I think his Rough Riders military uniform, custom made by Brooks Brothers, does the best job of symbolizing the dichotomy that was Teddy Roosevelt.

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