Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City, New York, October 27, 1858. His happy parents, Theodore and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, marveled at their baby boy.

As Teddy grew he had problems such as asthma and nearsightedness, and because he was so sick most of the time, he could not exercise, so he was very weak. One day, he and some other boys were out playing, and they challenged each other to read what a distant billboard said. Not only could Teddy not read the words, but he couldn’t even see the letters. Another time two bullies came and teased him. They beat him up and left him.

When Teddy came home with a black eye and bloody nose, his dad knew that Teddy needed to build his body. Teddy trained with an ex-boxer and got slowly stronger.

In 1876, at the age of 18, Theodore attended Harvard University. He married Alice Hathaway Lee who soon had a baby girl, Alice. Teddy’s wife, Alice, soon died. Theodore re-married to Edith Kermit Carow. They had five children: Theodore Junior, Kermit, Ethel Carow, Archibald Bulloch, and Quentin Roosevelt. Theodore enrolled at Law School, but that didn’t work out. He tried writing; that didn’t work out either.

During the Spanish-American War, he led an attack on a Spanish blockhouse on San Juan Hill, Cuba, and conquered.

He tried politics and was elected President in 1904 and again in 1908. He suggested better arming his forces and set up battle ships. He needed a passage way so that he could transfer his ships from one side of America to the other. He suggested to the Congress making a canal through Panama. They agreed and the waterway was built. He was an organizer of forest services and decided to set some of the land in the West aside for the wild animals, and to let other sections of land be made into farming plantations. He had a personal liking for bears, and because his nickname was Teddy, the toy companies made a stuffed bear and called it a teddy bear, in honor of Roosevelt.

On October 14, 1912, a would-be assassin shot Roosevelt shortly before he gave a speech. Thankfully, his glasses case and folded speech protected him from any serious injury by slowing the speeding bullet down. Later he slowly stumbled up to the stage. He was growing faint but he said: “I will deliver this speech or die, one or the other.” He finally finished his rather long speech.

Teddy died of a blood clot on January 6, 1919.

Roosevelt was truly a great man, not only for what he did, but for who he was. “He had a life and death fight with a grizzly bear, an exciting buffalo hunt, a cougar hunt in Colorado, falling forty feet from a cliff, winning a prize in a boxing contest, playing ninety-one games of tennis in a single day, herding cattle during a roundup in the Badlands, bronco busting on a ranch, a close escape from a rattlesnake, capturing three dangerous thieves, scaring off five warlike Sioux Indians, and charging a Spanish blockhouse on San Juan Hill,” as said in Vol. XIII of Childcraft Encyclopedia.