Title: Notes
Text:
Kermit Roosevelt
10/10/1889 - 6/4/1943 Born: October 10, 1889 at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay
Died: June 4, 1943 at Fort Richardson, Alaska on active duty.
Married:
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Belle Willard, 1912 in a wedding in Madrid, Spain (Belle's father was American
Ambassador to Spain)
Children: KERMIT ROOSEVELT , JR., b. February 16, 1916, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
12;
JOSEPH WILLARD ROOSEVELT, b. January 16, 1918, Madrid, Spain. 13;
BELLE WYATT ROOSEVELT, b. November 10, 1919, New York City; d. May 1,
1985;
DIRCK ROOSEVELT, b. January 11, 1925, New York City; d. January 6, 1952, New
York City.
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KERMIT ROOSEVELT Born 10 October 1889 and educated at Groton and Harvard,
Kermit — like all the boys — shared his father's love of the outdoors and physical activity.
He accompanied TR on his post-presidential safari in Africa, and later joined the 1914
exploration of the River of Doubt (subsequently renamed Rio Roosevelt) in the heart of
the Amazon. After returning from South America in 1914, TR credited Kermit with saving
his life during the course of that expedition.
It seemed it was always Kermit — the lucky one, his brothers called him — who got to go
along with TR on his most splendid adventures. Family tradition says Kermit’s luck was
not, however, accidental. Early on, TR sensed in Kermit the seed of something he had
seen before, in his brother Elliott. There was, it seems, something about the young Kermit
that TR recalled from many years before, in the years before his beloved brother became a
full-blown addict enslaved by drink and drugs. In an effort to head-off what he hoped
would not be a repeat of Elliott’s tragedy, TR made a special effort to spend time with
young Kermit.
And there would, indeed, be some measure of drink and some measure of tragedy in
Kermit’s future, but there would also be great successes. He proved a worthy man of
business in his early years after his marriage to Belle Wyatt Willard in 1914, organizing the
Roosevelt Steamship Company and the United States Lines. He was also, like his father, a
great hunter, explorer and writer on these themes, and he enjoyed splendid literary
friendships with the likes of Rudyard Kipling, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Gertrude Stein
and William Butler Yeats. A few of the gems from Kermit’s pen include The Happy
Hunting Grounds (an eloquent look back on his outdoor experiences both with and
without his father), Trailing the Great Panda (co-authored with his brother and fellow
explorer, Theodore Jr., with whom he traveled to China in 1929 in quest of a Panda for
display by the Field Museum), and Quentin Roosevelt: A Sketch with Letters, which
commemorated the youngest Roosevelt brother who died in the First World War.
Along with being a fine writer, Kermit was also a courageous soldier. Unwilling to wait
for American entry into World War I, he fought first with the British in the Middle East
and subsequently served with the American Expeditionary Force in France. He later wrote
a splendid memoir of his time fighting with the British entitled War in the Garden of Eden.
During World War II, he once again served briefly with the British in the days before the
United States entered the fracas. He subsequently received a commission in the United
States Army, this despite the fact that his recent years of hard-drinking and hard-living had
rendered his body useless for the type of service he most craved: front-line action, the
absence of which made him feel inadequate and went against his Rooseveltian grain.
Assigned to Fort Richardson, Alaska without any specific portfolio, he endeavored to
create his own. He convinced army pilots to allow him to come along as an observer when
they made bomb runs over Japanese positions in the Aleutians. And he volunteered to help
his friend Muktuk Marston establish a territorial militia of Eskimos and Eleuts — these to
form the backbone of an insurgent underground should the Japanese overrun the region.
Two or three times a week he’d visit a little place in Anchorage called Nellie’s Diner and
have a few glasses of wine — all his broken body could handle. He was severely weak: his
stomach distended, his arms and legs mere sticks. He had little strength, and found most
tasks exhausting. Towards the end, it was all he could do to gather himself to make the
rounds and enforce the local blackout, which he did many an evening in the company of
Marston. This is how the two men were occupied early in the evening of June 3rd, 1943.
When they were done, and had returned to the post, Kermit asked Marston what he was
going to do next.
“Sleep,” said Marston.
“Sleep,” echoed Kermit. “I wish I could sleep.”
A short while later, alone in his room, Kermit put a .45 to his chin and pulled the trigger.
His father had always said: “Where a tree falls, there let it lay.” Kermit lays today at Fort
Richardson in Grave 72, Plot-A, beneath a simple white military headstone no different
from that of any other serviceman.
-- Edward J. Renehan Jr.
[Ed Renehan is the author of The Lion's Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in
Peace and War as well as The Secret of Six: The True Tale of the Men who Conspired
with John Brown and John Burroughs: An American Naturalist.]
Like most of the other Roosevelt children, Kermit, began his formal education at the local
public school. As his father's career relocated the family he proceeded to Albany Military
Academy, and eventually followed his father and older brother Ted's footsteps to Groton,
a prestigious private boarding school.
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Kermit went on to Harvard, completing the standard four year course in a mere 2 1/2
years after accompanying his father on the African Safari.
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The most sensitive of the children, Kermit first found companionship in his imagination.
Though he and Ethel later ruled together over Archie, their earliest contacts with each
other were disagreeable; they were constantly waging war on each other. Dreamy and
detached as a child, Kermit developed into a great source of pride to his father.
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The 3rd child and 2nd son, was a fierce defender of his father as a young boy, close
companion as a young man and as his father neared the end of his life, Kermit became one
of his father's "closest confidantes". At the age of nine, his father was preparing to go to
war - Kermit knocked down and bloodied a boy who said Roosevelt would be killed.
Kermit accompanied his father on both the African safari in 1909, and again in 1914 for
the exploration of the River of Doubt (renamed Rio Roosevelt) in the Amazon of Brazil.
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Kermit accompanied his father on both the African safari in 1909, and again in 1914 for
the exploration of the River of Doubt (renamed Rio Roosevelt) in the Amazon of Brazil.
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Both athletic and intellectual, Kermit was also moody, described as having black moods, a
black heart. In a letter to Ethel during his African excursion in 1909, TR said of Kermit,
"It is rare for a boy with his refined tastes and his genuine appreciation of literature - and
of so much else - to be also an exceptionally bold and hardy sportsman."
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It is possible that Edith was never told the true cause of her son's death; initially at least
her family apparently told her Kermit died of heart failure. Not until the 1980's, well after
Edith's death, was his suicide openly discussed.
In her diary Edith wrote Kermit's epitaph:
June 4th, 1943
Ft. Richardson, Alaska.
K.R.
O God, my God, where're Thou art,
Fold in thy Heart that head so bright
Heal him with Thy most gentle light
Forget what'er Thou find'st amiss
And since Thou mad'st remembering
Remember every lovely thing,
And then my God look down and see,
And pityingly remember me.
[Source: Edith Kermit Roosevelt by Sylvia Jukes Morris]
Resources for this web page include: Old Orchard Label Copy; Edith Kermit Roosevelt -
Portrait of a First Lady, by Sylvia Jukes Morris; The Roosevelt Women, by Betty Boyd
Caroli; Edward J. Renehan and Dr. John Gable of the Thedore Roosevelt Association.
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