My Favorite President

I have to say I have always sort of missed the old-fashioned celebration of Washington's and Lincoln's birthday. I remember a tradition would be that we'd eat cherry pie on Washington's birthday in honor of chopping down the cherry tree. But now it's one day fits all so I'm choosing Theodore Roosevelt as my favorite president.

I always thought of him as "my" president since I grew up just minutes away from Sagamore Hill, his summer White House. I loved that house, full of animal heads from his African hunting trips (then politically correct)but moreso because it was a house full of children. You could almost feel the children's energy in that house. He was a very devoted father, and even when president, set aside a precise time each day, no matter what was happening, to talk to his children.

I like him as well because of his self-development -- he was asthmatic and a 90-pound weakling and built himself up, by rowing in Long Island Sound and having brisk walks into Oyster Bay, the nearest town. The area really hadn't changed that much so it was easy to imagine him on the side of the road as we drove by.

Of course, now he is getting more respect for being the first environmental president. In addition to creating the first national park, he established the National Park Service, as well as the National Forest Service.

He thought women who marry should retain their own last names. He is surprisingly feminist for his era. Look at this passage from his autobiography (written in 1913):

"Much can be done by law towards putting women on a footing of complete and entire equal rights with man - including the right to vote, the right to hold and use property, and the right to enter any profession she desires on the same terms as the man."..."Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly."


The Environmental Defense Fund lists him as one of its heroes and includes this passage:

"A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself," Roosevelt proclaimed. "Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people." He backed up these words by protecting 150 national forests. In all, Roosevelt protected some 230 million acres of national land.

And, then, there's his humble grave in Oyster Bay. It's in a colonial-era cemetery first used in 1658. It's at the top of a hill, and there is a little wooden sign within the fenced-in grave area that reads, "Keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars."