Bully Pulpit

Bully Pulpit

Noel Laflin

1-6-19

Teddy Roosevelt died one hundred years ago today. He was sixty years old.

As president, he gave the country our national parks, some fine quotes, and demanded that better looking eagles adorn newly minted gold coins.

He broke with the Republican Party in 1912 to run as an independent, but lost.

He conquered Brazil’s Rio da Dúvida (“River of Doubt”), which was later named Roosevelt River. The tropical diseases which nearly did him in on that trip were probably the cause of his eventual demise five years later.

He purportedly drank 40 cups of coffee a day, and as legend has it, put Maxwell House Coffee on the map when credited with the quote, “Good to the last drop.”

Roosevelt was a complicated man, but one worthy of study.

I think I will find my old Teddy Bear and toast his memory with a cup of coffee - only my third so far, but the day is young.

He is pictured here with John Muir at Glacier Point in Yosemite in May, 1903.

For the protection of that park alone, we owe him much gratitude.