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'Fourth most popular' president helps Beaver City celebrate 4th
BEAVER CITY -- Teddy Roosevelt took great pride in being an American. He cherished the liberties he and his fellow Americans fought for, and accepted the obligation of all Americans to be dutiful and responsible for others.
Charlie Davis of the Theatre of the American West in Republican City recreated what he called America's "fourth most popular" president -- Teddy Roosevelt -- during Fourth of July celebrations Sunday in Beaver City.
Davis said that Roosevelt did actually visit Nebraska, and most likely Beaver City, during a campaign swing across America, by railroad, in 1912. Davis said that Roosevelt, before becoming president, hunted buffalo near Beaver City.
"My father was a philanthropist, and founder of the New York Boys Club, " Roosevelt told those gathered in the grandstand on the fairgrounds in Beaver City. "He taught me I was responsible for others."
Roosevelt said he fought to help the small man against the big man. He was neither strong right, nor strong left. He kowtowed to no one, and never followed blindly.
As a child, Roosevelt's poor health turned him into an insatiable reader, with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
"My father told me I had a fine mind, that I had to build my own body," Roosevelt said. With the help of a boxing coach, Roosevelt's health improved.
He studied law at Harvard, but he didn't want to practice law, "because so much of it was done in small rooms," and he refused to be confined any more to small rooms.
To everyone's surprise, Roosevelt said, he entered politics. "It's a rough business, Theodore," a Manhattan politician warned him, but Roosevelt ran for and won a seat in the New York state assembly. "I wouldn't kowtow to the railroad trust, or to big business," Roosevelt said.
Following that chapter in his life, Roosevelt said, he went west, to the Badlands of North Dakota.
"There I finally found freedom -- wide open skies, wild game," he said. "I worked hard on a ranch, and learned a sense of the wild west. I never lost that."
Following the deaths of his wife and his mother on the same day -- two days after his wife gave birth to their first child, a daughter named Alice -- Roosevelt said, "I ran away again."
"I worked as a sheriff, chasing a horse thief for 300 miles," he said, "with a copy of 'War and Peace' in my back pocket."
He returned to the east, where, he said, "They made me vice president of the United States, to get me out of New York. It was a disgrace, really, to be vice president."
President McKinley was shot and killed in Buffalo, New York, Roosevelt said, and the nation's and the Republican Party's reaction was, he said, "Oh, no! That damned cowboy's president!"
"I was the first president to come between management and labor," Roosevelt said, threatening to use troops to break a strike in the country's coal mines.
"I had a reputation as a war monger," Roosevelt said, "But there was not one shot fired in my years as president."
"It was far better to talk softly and carry a big stick," he said, as his Navy developed "The Great White Fleet," as a deterrent to war, to prove that America would be a force to be reckoned with.
"During my second term as president, the nation enjoyed great prosperity," he said. "It was peace time, a happy time, in the United States."
Even as president, Roosevelt said, he advocated a couple hours of vigorous exercise every day, and his men became known as "The Tennis Cabinet," playing tennis, taking hikes, riding horses.
"We took the French Ambassador, in his formal attire and silk top hat, with us for a walk," Roosevelt said.
"But you can't make fun of a feller for his clothes," he chuckled, "so we just took him with us."
"We always picked a target five miles away," Roosevelt said. Whatever was between them and the target, "we had to go over, under or through it," he said
"The president swam jay-bird naked across the Potomac River," Roosevelt said.
"We looked at the French Ambassador, and he had all his clothes off, except his lavender kid gloves."
"He told us he had to keep them on," Roosevelt said, "because, 'It might prove to be embarrassing if we meet ze ladies.' "
Roosevelt chuckled, admitting, "I was eccentric in the eyes of those who lived in Washington."
In 1908, Roosevelt's vice president, William Howard Taft, became president.
"He was a great giant of a man," Roosevelt said. " ... 300 pounds. But Mr. Taft kowtowed to everybody. Mr. Taft had no backbone."
"He was not the kind of president the Republican Party wanted," Roosevelt said.
In 1912, after four years of "Mr. Taft's non-leadership," the Republican Party approached Roosevelt about running again for President. "I would have to accept as a public duty," Roosevelt said, and he ran for the party's nomination.
"I was an optimist and an idealist," he said. "I wanted to change the country for the better."
Roosevelt crossed the country by rail, campaigning and winning 13 primaries in 13 states. "I won every primary fair and square," he said.
The "Republican Mach-ine," however, stole Roosevelt's delegates from him, he said, and voted for Taft. In retaliation, Roosevelt said, he founded the "Bull Moose Party, not extreme left, not extreme right."
Roosevelt defeated Taft handily, but, he said, "Unfortunately, the votes of the Republican Party were split, and Wilson won the election."
Roosevelt decided then to do some exploring, and traveled and mapped Brazil. "Rio Theodoro" is named after him, he said. He reinjured an old leg injury, and developed malaria and fevers,. He returned to the U.S., he said, "53 years old and infirm again."
"I returned to the U.S. and witnessed the political scene, the gathering war," he said. "I sincerely believe the world would be a different place if we (the United States) had entered the war sooner."
Roosevelt said he volunteered with his old Rough Rider friends to take a regiment to France, but Wilson turned him down.
Back in New York, Roosevelt watched all four of his sons join the military and fight in the war. "My youngest son was killed in action," Roosevelt said. "And it broke my heart. He was gone."
In January 1919, Roosevelt died at Sagamore Hill in New York, but not without leaving a legacy of duty.
"Remember," Roosevelt said in Beaver City on July 4, "being an American is a joy and a duty."
"Take great pride in being an American," Roosevelt said. "The liberties you have have been paid for at a great price by Americans before you."
"The duties of each American," Roosevelt said, " are to be loyal, to vote in each and every election, and to question the authority of those running your country. Do not follow blindly."