Kermit Roosevelt

I was at a school function the other day where the 2nd graders performed a bunch of Aesop’s Fabels and it was great.

It was a double-header with 3rd graders who then read prepared reports on famous people. It was cross-disciplinary thing as the kids brought props from design class, costumes from performing arts, and did the speech both in Spanish and English.

It was cute. A lot of astronauts and artists and stuff.

One kid did Theodore Roosevelt.

I’m not a smart man, and I just had no idea this happened.

1912. He’s giving a speech in my old stomping grounds, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dude friggin shoots him in the chest. The bullet goes through a thick, folded-up bit of paper in his pocket, but then still into his body. Then he’s like “I’m good” and continues his speech for an hour. He recoups a couple of weeks but they leave the bullet in his body and didn’t seem to care.

Kind of a badass. No wonder he leaned into the “Bull Moose” thing.

Then the kid is like, and he had five kids, yadda, yadda, Kermit, yadda, yadda.

I was like LOL, he named one of his kids Kermit. Turns out all of his kids led fascinating lives too! Kermit was an unhealthy kid, but ultimately went to Harvard and then did a bunch of literal jungle exploration with his dad (?!) and later Asia with his brother.

… he postponed his marriage to join his father on a dangerous journey to the River of Doubt in Brazil. Both he and his father nearly died during this trip through the jungle.

He fought in both World Wars, deciding to go to England and join the British Army to fight for them. Apparently, you can just do that? War breaks out, and you can just pick one of the countries and go there and fight for that side? WTF? He doesn’t make it all the way through WWII because of the health stuff, so they stick him up in Alaska, and he kills himself. Wild stuff.

Oh and speaking of his brother Theodore III…

Along with his brother, Kermit, Roosevelt spent most of 1929 on a zoological expedition and was the first Westerner known to have shot a panda.