A sickly, nearsighted, odd child who required near-constant supervision in order to keep out of trouble.
A young man who was labeled as oppositional defiant, which I still don’t believe is a real syndrome. A young man who bothered friends and relatives with his odd notions.
A self-educated fellow who read a book a day.
A person with a tendency toward self-sabotage that was truly breathtaking.
It’s easy to see why I might look to Teddy’s life for guidance and inspiration. Not that I’m going to form my own political party or hand a presidential election over to a racist egghead who does not understand foreign policy. Regardless, there are plenty of things about Teddy to admire and emulate.
He summed it up in his famous “Man in the Arena” speech in 1910:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Teddy did love his run-on sentences.
There are so many great Teddy stories. One of my favorites is the time he became the first sitting president to leave the United States when he visited the Panama Canal construction site in 1906. It’s the same trip in which he became the first sitting president to sit in a steam-powered earth mover while wearing a white suit.
For more great Teddy stories, because there are in fact so many, take a listen to this special episode of History’s Trainwrecks.
Comments