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- [00:05]
Leslie
Today, I'm so excited to be Speaking with Edward O'Keefe about his new book, the Loves of Theodore the Women who Created a president. Edward O'Keefe is the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation. He previously spent two decades in broadcast and digital media, during which time he received a Primetime Emmy Award for his work with Anthony Bourdain for Parts Unknown, two Webby Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and a George Foster Peabody Award for ABC News coverage of 9 11. A former fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt is O'Keeffe's first book. In today's episode, Ed and I talk about these extraordinary women who shaped Teddy Roosevelt and about Ed's work launching this amazing presidential library for Roosevelt in North Dakota, the first and only one of its kind. I learned so much from Ed about one of our country's most impactful and extraordinary presidents. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation, and I know that you will, too. And with that, here's Ed O'Keefe. Ed, it is such, such a pleasure to have you here. I'm so excited to talk to you about this book.
- [01:17]
Edward O'Keefe
Leslie, it's a pleasure to be with you.
- [01:19]
Leslie
Thank you so much. So, the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, the way, and the women who Created a president. Tell me, how did you come upon the subject matter? How did you learn about this? I know you know, you're a native North Dakotian, Is that correct?
- [01:35]
Edward O'Keefe
North Dakotan, I think. North Dakotan, yeah. Well, we'll call the South Dakotans South Dakotans. We're North Dakotans.
- [01:42]
Leslie
And I like how the little twang there when you say that.
- [01:44]
Edward O'Keefe
Yeah. Thank you. Rivalries, they exist everywhere.
- [01:48]
Leslie
You know, it's funny. It's like the New Yorkers. I'm from New Jersey originally. New Jerseyans, maybe. And so, yeah, I think that works. But you've always been a fan of Teddy Roosevelt. But how did this whole thing come about?
- [02:02]
Edward O'Keefe
Leslie, when you grow up in North Dakota, you have a limited number of potential heroes, right? You've got Lawrence Welk, Roger Maris. Right. Now maybe Phil Jackson or Josh Dumal. Louis L'Amour. Peggy Lee. Peggy Lee. I chose Theodore Roosevelt.
- [02:19]
Leslie
Okay.
- [02:20]
Edward O'Keefe
And tr. I mean, just. It's a legendary story. For those who don't know, Theodore Roosevelt lived for the better part of two years in Maduro, North Dakota, the badlands of North Dakota, as a rancher and a cowboy. And these were the formative experiences of his life. It was. It was the fulcrum of the hero's journey. Those two years, he said really were the experiences that allowed him to become President of the United States. So when you're growing up in North Dakota and obviously TR is a New Yorker, I admit this to my New Yorker wife, she reminds me all the time, he was governor of New York. He was born in New York. I say back, he's born by chance. Yes, but he was in North Dakotan by choice.
- [03:02]
Leslie
I love that. I love that. And that's true. That was the big transformative experience of his life, right? That period of North Dakota.
- [03:09]
Edward O'Keefe
He lived in North Dakota and lived what he would later call the strenuous life, I think, you know, growing up in New York. And imagine he's growing up, he's born in 1858. So his formative years are 1860s, 1870s. These are smog ridden, you know, environmental disaster of all kinds of coal fires and soot. And the streets are, you know, we're not talking about indoor plumbing at this point, right. It's sewage and waste. And he's asthmatic. He's deeply asthmatic. And so this boy is growing up wanting to be outside, but he's literally suffocated by his surroundings. And, you know, he lives a life of the mind. He's, he's a naturalist and a scientist. He does taxidermy for fun. He's an oddball, right. He's not a, he's not the Theodore Roosevelt we necessarily know from Mount Rushmore. And so you just can imagine what it must have been like when he got his first breath of fresh air, you know, going out to New Jersey during the summers, going out to eventually Oyster Bay as they got older, going up to the Maine woods while he was in college and then having that formative experience in the Dakota Badlands. Nature was Theodore Roosevelt's tonic and healer. Nature. It was his classroom. And he really viewed nature as being the source of his resilience and where he would go to restore his health.
- [04:29]
Leslie
So you are obviously a lifelong fan and I love, by the way, that as part of your education in North Dakota, it's such an integral part of it, learning about Teddy Roosevelt. But how did you come to decide to write this book or get inspired to write this book? Because your background is in media, right? You're a producer and reporter and then you ended up at Harvard, right?
- [04:55]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes. So I was 20 years in media. I worked for ABC News. I was the founding editor in chief of now this and then I worked for CNN for five years, the show that most people recognize as I worked on Explore Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain. And after his very Sad passing in 2018, I left CNN and I was fortunate enough to become an entrepreneurship fellow at the Shorenstein center at the Harvard Kennedy School. So that was technically a faculty position. Now you don't need faculty access to the archives. Anybody can go to the archives and explore the history of Theodore Roosevelt or any other of the amazing figures for which they have all kinds of incredible collection. But because I was for the first time in my professional life able to take a breath and take some time with the collection, I dove in and was, was preparing what became the book proposal that we sold to Simon and Schuster and now is the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, the Women who Created a President. You know, it was, it was a lifelong passion that I had had for tr, But I actually, when I began doing the research, I thought I would write the story of Theodore Roosevelt's time in the West. How his experiences in my home state of North Dakota really allowed him to become the president that, that changed the country and opened up the American century. When I was doing my research, I kept encountering these incredible women. Bami, his older sister Connie, his younger sister, his mother Mitty, who's been much maligned in history as having basically no consequence in Theodore Roosevelt's life. And then of course, his two wives, Alice and Edith. And each one of them played this integral role in supporting and promoting Theodore in a way that I had never known. I mean, the story that I knew growing up is that Theodore Roosevelt was a self made man. Quintessential American resilience story. It's a great story, but it's, it's not the full story. It's not the full story. It's not exactly true. He needed help. He had help. He had his sisters, his wives, his mother. All of these people in his life, as all of us who have ever had any success in anything do. I mean, if you're fortunate enough to have family, friends, brothers, sisters, a mother, a father, somebody, colleague, somebody that helps you in your moments of work, it takes a village. As Hillary it takes a village. And Theodore definitely had a village. And I didn't know that story. And I thought, wow, I thought I knew everything about Theodore Roosevelt. And here are these amazing women who have not gotten their due in history. I want to write that story.
- [07:36]
Leslie
But had you when you went to Harvard as a faculty member, were you going there to research Roosevelt?
- [07:42]
Edward O'Keefe
No, no, no. I was somewhat breaking the rules a little bit. You know, nobody's ever chastised me before. I don't know. I think I'M exposed. I published the book. So, so I was there to do research on how the streaming networks, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Apple would do shows like we were doing with Anthony Bourdain, nonfiction news documentaries, you know, things that I think convey important information about our past and present and that really, you know, that's how people are learning about their world. Now it's, I did that at now this, at now this. It's a social mobile video company. We were the first people to publish any news of any kind in video form on Instagram. I mean, now it's obviously a very big source of information for people. We the, we were the most, you know, popular publisher on Facebook for news and information. That's obviously become a bit of a hotbed of, of news and information. So this was back in 2011, 2012. You know, it was a new idea that we needed to go where the audience is and tell them news and information in the way that they wanted.
- [08:47]
Leslie
To and how they're consuming it.
- [08:49]
Edward O'Keefe
That's right. And that's, that's what I was at Harvard to study and was. I'm still very deeply interested in that subject because I think it's critical to our democracy. But did you apply sort of for.
- [08:58]
Leslie
A fellowship there or were you.
- [08:59]
Edward O'Keefe
That's right.
- [09:00]
Leslie
Okay.
- [09:00]
Edward O'Keefe
That's right. You have to be. We have to basically put yourself forward. And then they make a selection of a certain number of fellows at the Shorenstein center every year. It's a wonderful program. I mean, a number of my colleagues have done the program. Writers, journalists, producers. It's sometimes mid career, sometimes post career, sometimes, you know, as they're coming up in their career. It's a good opportunity to step back and think about something that is facing the industry that you don't have the time necessarily in your day job to really explore fully that. Then I did produce a. The longest thing I've ever written outside of this book is about a 40,000 word paper on the future of news and streaming that I did publish in 2019 called Streaming War One. It's, it's still available at Harvard and at the Shorenstein Center.
- [09:47]
Leslie
Oh, that's amazing. So you're there, you're considering. You. You knew that there are these archives there of Teddy Roosevelt's writings. Right. You must have known this. You decide you're going to play hooky. You go down into whatever this, you know, room is in the Harvard library.
- [10:04]
Edward O'Keefe
You have to lock your phone away. You have to lock your. Take pictures, you can take your phone in, but you have to lock everything. Pens. But you can only have pencils. You know, it's, It's. It's. I'm supposed to be in the 21st century, right? I'm talking about Apple and Hulu and Netflix, and yet secretly, I'm in the 18th and 19th century, maybe a little 20th century, you know, looking at Theodore Roosevelt and these incredible archives.
- [10:26]
Leslie
Now, are you wearing. Do they make you wear certain gloves?
- [10:29]
Edward O'Keefe
I wish, but no.
- [10:31]
Leslie
So do you. You go in and then you discover letters. Is this right? I was reading about. Kind of.
- [10:36]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes. Yes. Well, so a couple of amazing things happened during the research and writing of this book. I mean, first of all, I met Joanna Sturm, who is the granddaughter of Alice Roosevelt Longworth. So Alice Roosevelt Longworth is the first of the Roosevelt children, born in 1884 and the last to die in 1980. She knew every single amazing. I mean, she's 96 years old. She knew every president from her father all the way to Gerald Ford, and was often. She was known in Washington as Washington's other monument. She had a pillow in her living room that said, if you have nothing nice to say, come and sit by me.
- [11:16]
Leslie
I actually have a replica of that. I know it was this house. Anyway, it's hilarious. I love that Alice. One of her. One of her.
- [11:23]
Edward O'Keefe
Alice is. She's great. She's great. She's the one who. She becomes a global celebrity during the. The Roosevelt administration. And she's 17 to 20 years old. She gets married in the White House. She has a pet snake whom she names Emily Spinach after her aunt Emily. And Spinach, because she doesn't like either. I mean, she's just a character. She's just wonderful. And her granddaughter Joanna is alive and well, vibrant and vivacious and completely incredibly intelligent. Just. And she was raised essentially by her grandmother. And so there's this link to Alice and T.R. that, you know, you can still call upon. And after her grandmother died, Joanna donated about 24 letters to Harvard that had never been known before 1986. Now, they have been, you know, written about in some other works, but they were not a part of some of the most famous biographies of Theodore Roosevelt. For instance, the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, which was published in the late 1970s, won the Pulitzer Prize. Everyone loves that book. It's a great book. Doesn't have any of these letters between Alice and Theodore. David McCullough's famous book, Mornings on Horseback, you know, also a wonderful book about the childhood of TR and delves a bit into Alice entering his life Also doesn't have access to these letters. So one being able to look at the actual words between Alice, his first wife, and Theodore really opens up a new dimension in their relationship. And then while I was at Harvard, there were 11 new letters that had been locked in a safe since 1954. And Greg Wynn, who is now president of the Theodore Roosevelt association, thank goodness, for whatever reason, he opened that safe and these letters.
- [13:15]
Leslie
So no one had access to those letters before.
- [13:17]
Edward O'Keefe
Presumably they have not. I mean, I've never, I've, I've written, I've read everything I possibly could about Theodore. And no, there's nothing that makes reference to these. Let one of the most extraordinary letters is actually the first letter ever written from Theodore Roosevelt's father to Theodore when he was three years old. So obviously he wasn't reading the letter. It was going to be read to him by his mother, but it's actually on stationary that shows a statue of Andrew Jackson which sits outside the White House to this day. And the TR's father had been meeting with President Lincoln about matters relating to the Civil War. And he writes his son on December 31, 1861. So this is right at the start of the Civil War. There is a statue outside the White House where the President works. He governs our whole country. And I have just met with him about these matters relative to the Civil War. There is, there is an inscription on the statue. I want your mother to read it to you and learn it by heart so when I come home, you can repeat it back to me. And it says, the Federal Union, it must be preserved. I mean, that's pretty extraordinary.
- [14:24]
Leslie
Very moving, actually.
- [14:25]
Edward O'Keefe
Very moving. Right. And to think also the.
- [14:28]
Leslie
He's also what, what did his father do?
- [14:30]
Edward O'Keefe
Well, his father, so he's married to a Southern, a Southerner Midi, who has two brothers fighting for the Confederacy and she has moved to New York with her mother and her sister. So the Roosevelt house is a house divided in a nation divided. Theodore Roosevelt and his sisters are watching and his brother are watching. Their mother, who's a Southern sympathizer, and their father, who is a decided Union Northerner, civilly disagree on the most disagreeable thing you could possibly find. I mean, they, they, they've managed to still love one another despite this incredible political difference that could have obviously ripped them apart.
- [15:10]
Leslie
Was this some sort of passive aggressive letter from the father?
- [15:12]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes, it was. I'm glad you picked up on that, Leslie.
- [15:15]
Leslie
That's the other thing I took wife saying, you know, basically using the three year old as Proxy delivered the message.
- [15:22]
Edward O'Keefe
Exactly. Yes. Preserving the union, which tells you something about their relationship. So Midi has been written off as inconsequential, that she basically is this Victorian stereotype, the antebellum drawing room, taking to the fainting couch, really not having any consequence in Theodore's right life. In the loves of Theodore Roosevelt. I completely refute that and show with definitive evidence that she was the source of TR's personality. She's vivacious. She says to her husband, the, you know, you, I am impetuous. You know what my temperament is. He says in a letter to Mitty. Fee says to Mitty, you know, do not become a strong minded woman. And I mean, she is a strong minded. It's already there. I mean, she's born that way. Her brother describes her as a bright eyed, sharp tongued lassie with a lively disposition. If that doesn't sound like Theodore Roosevelt, I don't know what does. And it's Midi who's got these coy turns of phrase, this Southern kind of way of looking at the world. She teaches Theodore literally from the McGuffey Readers, phrases like nervous Nellies and speak softly and carry a big stick. He learns that from his mother, not from his father. You know, Theodore Roosevelt's father, his own brother says of thee and Midi, between your solemnity and her liveliness, you make an even pair. As the cliche goes, opposites attract. And you know, as great as Theodore Roosevelt's father was, and he was, he was a phenomenal influence on his son. And he dies very young in his son's life. I mean, Theodore is only 20 years old when his father passes away. So whatever greatness he bestowed on him, it becomes even greater in the memory because he's gone. Midi Mitty, after the death of TR's father, teaches him the most important lesson of his entire life. She says, we need to live for the living and not for the dead. As great as your father was, and as much as we miss him, you have one life. And if you don't grasp it and go on, move on through the hardest things that happened to you in life, you're dishonoring his memory. You need to find a way through it.
- [17:40]
Leslie
Well, that lesson, I mean, obviously was hugely impactful to him because he did experience so much loss later in his life. But his father also was at war. I mean, you're talking about him writing to his mom.
- [17:51]
Edward O'Keefe
So he, so he never served, he never served in the army. He hired a substitute, which was pretty common at the time. His, his wife forbade him so he.
- [18:00]
Leslie
Was just in Washington meeting with the President. He wasn't away fighting in the war.
- [18:04]
Edward O'Keefe
So what he did is he found another way to help. He was petitioning Lincoln and Congress to pass what became known as an allotment bill so he could go around to the soldiers and have them send a certain amount of their pay back home to their families, which complemented his puritanical bent. Because if they had full access to their salaries, they might spend it on liquor or, or fun or other things. Right. And so he was trying to convince soldiers, who were obviously the primary breadwinners for their families, to take a portion of their pay and automatically send it back to their families at home. And he succeeded. That did pass. And he went around. I mean, he was. He was on battlefields, he was meeting with soldiers to sign them up for this allotment system. I mean, he did quite a lot during. He was a. You know, he's the. He's the co founder of the American Museum of Natural History. Bami. Theodore Roosevelt's older sister has a spinal defect. And so concerned is Thea about his daughter's spinal defect. He forms the first orthopedic hospital in New York City. He's part of the foundation of the Met. I mean, you can't throw a stone in New York and not find something that isn't connected to the Theodore Roosevelt legacy. And specifically his father, He's a wonderful philanthropist and a really giving person in society. What he did in the Civil War was actually very commensurate with his personality. He didn't fight, but he did fight for the Northern cause.
- [19:29]
Leslie
And then how did he die?
- [19:31]
Edward O'Keefe
Well, stomach cancer. And it was quite sudden. You know, he was in this political battle, and they thought that he was showing some signs of stress from the political battle. It turned out he had stomach cancer. Theodore came home from college to visit him at Christmas and thought that, well, he's. He's probably not doing well, but he'll get better. And gets a note in February of 1878, gets a telegram, you need to get home immediately. Gets on the train and does not make it in time. Theodore never forgives his brother Elliot, who will become the father of Eleanor Roosevelt, for basically not letting him know in time that he needed to come home and say goodbye to his beloved father. And he is devastated. I mean, he has lost his North Star. He says, the only person to whom I've ever been able to confess everything, my father is gone. And then he. Interestingly, he also has this twist. He's 20 years old. He says he starts to wonder who will replace his father in his life as the most important person. And he starts thinking about who will my wife be? And he says, a rare and radiant maiden, I hope, borrowing from the Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. Interesting that he would write about a. You know, he's citing a poem about. About a deceased lover.
- [20:43]
Leslie
Yeah.
- [20:44]
Edward O'Keefe
Upon the death of his father, in kind of wondering who's going to replace.
- [20:48]
Leslie
This center of my life, almost like.
- [20:51]
Edward O'Keefe
And everyone thinks it's going to be Edith. Everyone thinks Edith, who has grown up with Theodore his entire life. They've known each other since she was three years old. Now, the. The carots are very much different than the Roosevelts. As the Coro's fortunes have declined, the Roosevelts have increased. And Edith has been a part of their family from the very beginning. But I was kind of watching from the outside. Her father was an alcoholic. He had. His father died, and he had to take over the business long before he was ready. He was no good at it. And Edith is watching all of this. She would say when the Roosevelt children were coming over, I want to hide my toys because they're in such shabby condition. So she's always kind of on the outside looking in. But everyone expects that they'll be together. And so this 1878 is a very consequential year. Theodore's father dies in February. And then in August, Edith turns of age to potentially marry. And now what is that?
- [21:52]
Leslie
18?
- [21:53]
Edward O'Keefe
17. She's 17. So she's come out in society. She's eligible for proposal. And what happens is that she celebrates her birthday on August 6th. Theodore and Edith are together. They go rowing together in Oyster Bay. They pick water lilies. They have a picnic. There's these wonderful, idyllic scenes described in his diary. And then August 22, 1878, something mysterious happens. They go up to the oddly named Tranquility because it was anything but tranquil when the Roosevelts were around. And they never describe what happens, but they have a uproarious, vicious fight and they split. They do not get engaged now. They'll never say what happened. They take the secret to their grave. Theodore later writes that they had tempers, and I suppose have tempers not being the best. And Edith, many years after TR died, will claim that Theodore proposed and she rejected him, which was actually pretty common in Victorian era. A woman would demur the first time a man proposed, and then naturally you'd propose again. So that doesn't really explain it, but, you know, this is a work of nonfiction. If it gets adapted into a work of fiction, somebody's going to have a field Day with August 22, 1870.
- [23:11]
Leslie
Tranquility.
- [23:11]
Edward O'Keefe
That wasn't tranquility. They split, and then all of a sudden, two months later, he meets Alice Hathaway Lee, this gorgeous, incredibly intelligent Boston Brahmin, the most eligible bachelorette in all of Boston.
- [23:25]
Leslie
And how did he meet Alice?
- [23:28]
Edward O'Keefe
So a friend of his was at Harvard, brought him out to Chestnut Hill, which was six miles away from the campus at Cambridge. And these are the Cabot Lees, so the old Boston toast, you know, and here is good old Boston, home of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots and the Cabots talk only to God. So I love that she is one of the. She's one of the Cabot leads. When I say the most eligible bachelorette in Boston, I mean, she was sought after. And this family was not going to just give her to Theodore Roosevelt. I mean, he's not. Again, he's kind of a odd naturalist interested in science. He's, you know, what is he going to do with his life? His father has died, he's wealthy. But, you know, knickerbockers and Brahmins, I mean, to this day, Boston, New York, there's a rivalry. Right. But I love this. I'll tell you briefly, Leslie, because I just, I hope, I would imagine some of your audience are New Yorkers. So, you know, knickerbocker is a term that originates with Washington Irving's satirical A History of New York in about the 1820s. The Knickerbockers versus the new money that comes in in the industrial age. That's the whole story is the Knickerbockers versus the. The newcomers. Boston Brahman's Brahmin is actually from the Sanskrit to the highest Hindu cast of priest. And so it's literally, you know, you can't break into the highest cast of. Of society versus the people that find their origin in the founding of New York. Right. So Theodore Roosevelt wasn't just going to make his way in because he's.
- [25:11]
Leslie
Yeah, because you couldn't. It didn't have that sort of up. New York's always had sort of a. I think, a respect for sort of those that are upwardly mobile and.
- [25:19]
Edward O'Keefe
Right.
- [25:19]
Leslie
You know, where Boston. It seems as if is always.
- [25:21]
Edward O'Keefe
You were either born in that cast or you weren't. That's what it says. A Brahmin was born that way and a knickerbocker who fought their way in and Never the twain shall meet. So, so you can imagine, I mean, this energetic scientist with specimens in various stages of decay in his pockets. He smells like formaldehyde some of the time. Because he's not, not Theodore that you think of. Right.
- [25:46]
Leslie
So what was her interest then?
- [25:48]
Edward O'Keefe
He is irrepressible. I mean, and he was determined. He spent two years trying to win her hand and he was absolutely relentless. I mean, he spent the modern equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars on trinkets and jewelry. He would ride to her house so many times. I mean, I document it in the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt. 60, 70, 80 times over the course of a year. And this is again a 12 mile round trip from Cambridge in the 1870s.
- [26:16]
Leslie
He's in Cambridge. He's got his horse.
- [26:19]
Edward O'Keefe
He's got his horse. Light horse. Yep.
- [26:21]
Leslie
And your horse is sort of in your stable there at Harvard.
- [26:24]
Edward O'Keefe
Well, and you have to pay for that. Right. That's like having a car at, at college. Right. Mom and dad have got to make sure you got a car. I mean, he's got it all. So he lames his horse, Lightfoot, and so then the next year he gets a dog cart, which is the 1870s equivalent of a roadster. So he steps it up a notch and it's just, you see, my, I.
- [26:45]
Leslie
Wish you people could see my, like the dog cart. It's not really a car.
- [26:48]
Edward O'Keefe
It's a, it's like a sleigh. So he had a, you know, he would be pulled by a horse on a. Yeah, I mean.
- [26:54]
Leslie
Right, right, of course.
- [26:54]
Edward O'Keefe
And I, I, in the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, I document how Theodore is recording in his diary what a great success all of this is. And all of his classmates are saying, oh, my goodness, this guy is really strange. I mean, how could never have you seen more comic, a courtier than Theodore Roosevelt on this not so stylish turnout. A dog. He was that determined. I mean, he didn't, he didn't necessarily care what other people thought of him. He wanted to win the hand of Alice. And why did he want you? So Alice, like Mitty, is also written off. You know, she spends six years in his life from 1878 to 1884. In the four years that they are married, he, in his own words, rises like a rocket. He becomes the youngest New York State assemblyman in the history of New York. To this day, he writes his first major book, the Naval War of 1812. The only thing he doesn't do, the only thing. Theodore Roosevelt ever quit law school. He went to Columbia Law School. And did not graduate. They conferred a degree later for good reason. But if you've got a law degree out there, you've done something that TR. Never accomplished.
- [28:00]
Leslie
Who knew that I had something on that? You got something on him. But. So tell me, though. So I. In reading a little bit, you know, about your book and him for today, his senior thesis at Harvard. So now it's 1880. So said that he met Alice at Edith breakup in 78. He meets her two months later. So he's in his courtship in and around now, Right. With Alice. I think his thesis, he wrote that women ought to be paid equal to men, and they show the option of keeping their maiden name. So it's. That's. Those are pretty, like, progressive feminist ideals. Is he trying to get Alice's attention? 100%, okay. I was gonna say. Or is this a midi influence or what is the.
- [28:50]
Edward O'Keefe
It's. We have no documented evidence of Mitty's feelings about suffrage. I mean, she was, you know, born in the 1830s, so it's hard to imagine she would have been very progressive on the issue. But. But Alice and her family, again, those Boston Brahmins, were progressive. They were the ones leading social reform and equality. Suffrage was one of those tenets. And so, you know, you have to imagine that Theodore Roosevelt is now. He's lost his father, he's away at college, and he's surrounded by this family, the Lees and the Salton stalls, who share a big plot of land in Chestnut Hill. And they talk politics, they talk poetry, literature, and all of it is around social reform. And so right at that crucible, when he finally wins the hand of Alice, they announced their engagement publicly on February 14, 1880, Valentine's Day, and in June. So just a couple of months later, he produces the practicability of men and women having equal rights. And so he says that women should become judges and lawyers, that, as you said, Leslie, they should keep their maiden names upon marriage, that they should undoubtedly have the right to vote and get equal pay for equal work. He's saying this in 1880. This is 40 years before suffrage. Obviously, he's commenting on things we still debate to this day. It's very progressive.
- [30:13]
Leslie
So he. When do he and Alice get married?
- [30:17]
Edward O'Keefe
They get married on Theodore Roosevelt's birthday, October 27, 1880. He was a fan of a little numerology engagement on February 14th.
- [30:27]
Leslie
I like everything about him except for the. The dead. Taxidermy, Lots of that.
- [30:31]
Edward O'Keefe
Yeah, you're gonna. Yeah, yeah.
- [30:32]
Leslie
He's an intellectual, as you described, and he's graduating from Harvard. They just got married. And he thinks about a career in academia.
- [30:42]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes, right.
- [30:43]
Leslie
And Alice intervenes.
- [30:45]
Edward O'Keefe
Well, you know, she, she, let's put it this way. Alice traveled in first class and science was issuing no tickets in that class. So it's, I think he had to, he knew he needed to live a life of consequence and that he had a certain standard that would have to be kept up if he was going to marry Alice. I'm sure, undoubtedly George Cabot Lee, his, his father in law might have made that point as well. Theodore Roosevelt grew up about five blocks away from Edith Jones, and Edith Jones became Edith Wharton. So the, the phrase keeping up with the Joneses is quite literally describing how the Joneses were moving from the Lower east side further and further uptown to Fifth Avenue, to Park Avenue. Right. That's the origin of the phrase keeping up with the Joneses. You know, there's no way.
- [31:40]
Leslie
Amazing.
- [31:40]
Edward O'Keefe
He wanted to be a naturalist and a scientist. Now a couple of things happen. To be fair at the time. Science was now going into the laboratory, it was going into experiments and, and it was going out of the natural world and into a laboratory. And he wasn't much interested in that. So those two things, you know, Alice and the way science was progressing at the time really pushed him into a different life. But you know, Alice, she, he said of Alice, I like to talk over everything with Alice, from politics to poetry. You could not find two more diametrically opposite women on the face of the earth than Alice Hathaway Lee and Edith Kermit Carot. And yet they both become Theodore Roosevelt's wives within the space of six years. And it's kind of extraordinary to think about because Alice has grown up wealthy, she's grown up privileged, she's athletic, she's very tall, she's, she's known as Sunshine. I mean, so vibrant is her infectious personality that, that they call her Sunshine. Everybody loves her. She lights up a room. And Edith is more circumspect and quiet. She's had a harder childhood and she knows tougher times in life. And you know, she, she's more introverted and quiet and reserved and tact turn. I mean, her stepdaughter will eventually, you know, she say she's has a quality sort of like parchment. She's a little detached. They'll say of, of Edith that, you know, just as she comes into view and the click of the shutter is about to happen, she turns out of view, you know, so, so I'm trying to imagine in the loves of Theodore Roosevelt. These two incredibly different women. And I think Alice had an opinion that she would say, when Theodore returned home from Columbia Law School, Teddy's home, come and share him. And by the way, she was the only one amongst a very small set of family and friends who called him Teddy. And after she died, because that was her nickname for him. He hated the name. He did not want to be called Teddy. He loathed it. He was smart enough to know that he wasn't going to fight it politically when it became his public nickname. But nobody called him Teddy. And other. Privately. No, no, just Alice. Alice and very close family at that time.
- [33:56]
Leslie
So he wants to go teach at Groton. He wants to go be a science teacher. Alice says, absolutely not.
- [34:01]
Edward O'Keefe
Yep. There's a great letter from 1882, by the way, where he says, where Theodore Roosevelt writes the Smithsonian and says, I've just recently gotten married and I have all of this taxidermy by chance. Would you want it?
- [34:14]
Leslie
Just imagine, like a lot of couples who get married, you get rid of, like, the bad sofa and the. Those prints that you just.
- [34:21]
Edward O'Keefe
We get rid of the hundreds and hundreds of mice. Yes.
- [34:24]
Leslie
That is.
- [34:25]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes.
- [34:26]
Leslie
So he goes to Columbia, he drops out. But does he immediately pursue a career in politics?
- [34:30]
Edward O'Keefe
Almost immediately. He, you know, he gets to New York, he starts studying the law. And as I write in the loves of Theodore Roosevelt, he's. He's very interested what he's interested in. He's interested in the law relative to how the law can empower the people. He doesn't like the arguing about the law. He thinks, well, why shouldn't I be the one making the law? Right? I mean, what does a politician do? Right. They make the law. And then you. The lawyers figure out what we meant when we made it. You know, lawyers and judges. So it doesn't fit him well to be in law school or to be a lawyer. He wants to be the one who's actually affecting social change. And very quickly. And, you know, for this time, being in politics was not something that the elite in society did. They had access to power through their money, through their influence. It wasn't like today, where it's. Well, maybe not like today, but I.
- [35:25]
Leslie
Was going to say, you know, it is interesting because he might have even sort of set the standard for that. That kind of service. Right. Of those that did come from.
- [35:36]
Edward O'Keefe
Come from means. Right. To actually care about. Yes.
- [35:39]
Leslie
And public service.
- [35:40]
Edward O'Keefe
Exactly, exactly. He was definitely like fdr, thought of as a traitor to his class, because why would you go be a Politician, and especially a populist politician who will fight for fair wages or equal work or safety conditions or trust bust or, you know, conservation. What is conservation at that time, Right. I mean, the speaker of the House during TR's first conservation bill said there will not be one dime for scenery. That was. There wasn't. There wasn't an opposing view of conservation. There was no opposite. There was no view on it. So he was very far ahead of his time. And a lot of this really has its origins in the women in his life. I mean, Alice, Edith Mitty and, you know, we'll talk about Bami and Connie who are there throughout the entirety of his life, really always helping shape and shift what he'll become.
- [36:33]
Leslie
So Alice, they, they're partners, real partners. It sounds like he talks to her about everything. She influences his career decisions. He's. He's a politician now they're in New York and she is having their first. An only child and dies.
- [36:52]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes, very tragically. I mean, just to set the stage, you know, Theodore mysteriously goes to Albany even though he knows his wife is due any day now. It wasn't uncommon for a man at that age to not be in the delivery room, Right. Which would have been at home, not at a hospital, but still, you know, they'd have a lot of trouble getting pregnant. It will be later revealed that Alice had to undergo a gynecological surgery in order to get pregnant. So he knew she might be in some strain or danger. And he returns to Albany, he gets a telegram saying that the baby has been born on February 12th and that Alice is only fairly well. He completes his committee work and he gets a second telegram that we don't know the contents of it, but we know from a fellow state legislator that Theodore Roosevelt's face went, quote, ashen. He went stark white, ran out of the New York State assembly to the train station and there was a dense, horrible fog in New York. The New York Times actually wrote an article about the weather and called it suicidal weather that the fog was so thick you couldn't see one inch in front of your face that they had to shut down the ports. And it was lucky the train was even going to come. It took five and a half hours for a trip that normally would have taken about two, two and a half hours. So he finally reaches New York and he runs from Grand Central station to 6 West 57th Street. There, Elliot says, famously, there is a curse on this house. Mother is dying and Alice is dying too. And he goes up, he runs to the third Floor. He sees his wife, who has given birth to their daughter two days earlier, holds her in his arms until 2:30 in the morning when he's called down to the second floor where Mitty, his mother, is dying at the same time, at the exact same time, one floor apart, in the same house, on Valentine's Day. I mean, if you wrote it, you could. It's unbelievable. His mother dies at 2:30 in the morning surrounded by their family. Then he goes back upstairs to the third floor. He holds Alice, refuses to let him let her out of his arms for 12 hours. And at 1:30 in the afternoon on February 14, 1884, Alice dies in his arms. On the same day, he writes an X in his diary. The light has gone out of my life. And remember Alice's nickname. Sunshine. Right? The sunshine. The light of my life is gone. He really, truly. I mean, he was. He had to be handled like a child. At the gravesite, it was a, you know, a horrific double funeral at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, which is still standing today. You can go to Fifth Avenue Presbyterian and see the site. They had two twin hearses that went to Greenwood Cemetery. And he turned west. He quit his job in the New York State assembly, didn't stand for reelection. He was defeated. His political candidate was defeated at the 1884 Republican National Convention. And that's when he went to Dakota. He said, I'm out. I'm done.
- [39:53]
Leslie
How did he decide to go to North Dakota?
- [39:55]
Edward O'Keefe
He had gone there in September of the previous year and hunted. He wanted to hunt a buffalo, ironically, before he thought they were going to be extinct. I don't know that he saw the irony in that, but he had been there. And while he was there, he had invested half of his inheritance, $14,000 at the time, equivalent to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars today in a ranch. And so at that time, you know, he would open range, right? So he didn't buy the land, he bought the cattle. So he always was going to have a life in both worlds. He knew. You know, I like to say now that in the east, you feel Theodore Roosevelt's ghost. In the west, you feel Theodore Roosevelt's spirit. Because that is where TR came to be reborn. That is where.
- [40:45]
Leslie
This is what you say to your wife.
- [40:46]
Edward O'Keefe
That's what I say when she says it takes two flights to get there. I know, I know. It's great. But I renounce.
- [40:54]
Leslie
So he is out there for two years. What is he doing during this time? Is he hunting or. He's.
- [40:59]
Edward O'Keefe
He's absolutely. Yeah, he's mourning. I mean, he's depressed. The only person who will ever use the D word is his daughter Alice. She will say, dad is depressed, right?
- [41:09]
Leslie
I mean, so Alice stays behind in New York.
- [41:11]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes. And this is where Bami comes in. So Bami, his older sister T.R. says of her, she is the real atlas of the family, carrying the world on her shoulders. Eleanor Roosevelt will later say of Bami that had she been a man, had Bami been a man, she, not Theodore, would have been president of the United States. I mean, so she's a remarkable woman. She takes care of Alice, the baby. They named the baby Alice. So Alice had died, and now you have baby Alice. Bami takes care of baby Alice for three years while he is out in the badlands. And she sells the house at 6 West 57th Street. She takes charge of the construction of what will become Sagamore Hill, Theodore Roosevelt's home. And she's caring for the baby for the larger part of three years. I mean, she's remarkable.
- [41:59]
Leslie
And what compels him to come back?
- [42:02]
Edward O'Keefe
Love.
- [42:03]
Leslie
Okay, so tell us about the. This is. This is when Edith. But how does Edith get back into his life if he's out there?
- [42:08]
Edward O'Keefe
So it's kind. There's a great kind of mystery, a historical mystery. He comes back and he's at Bami's home for tea. And he's told Bami, under no circumstances do I want to see Edith. The only person I don't want to see when I'm back here is Edith. Because I think he knows if he sees her, he will dishonor the memory of Alice in his mind and fall back in love with her. And indeed, we don't know who set it up. But as.
- [42:37]
Leslie
What was Edith doing? I mean, she's.
- [42:39]
Edward O'Keefe
Edith was preparing for life as a spinster. On her marriage certificate, she writes, occupation spinster. I mean, she's reached the age where she. If she doesn't marry.
- [42:51]
Leslie
I know you'll probably know this, and if you don't know this, we can edit it out, but what is the. What is. What is the origin of the term spinster?
- [42:59]
Edward O'Keefe
I don't. You know, that's a good question. I don't know the. I don't know the. I'm going to look that up. That's a good. Now. Now I'll know. I need to know.
- [43:05]
Leslie
Maybe I'll use the world wide web here and see if I can find it, because it's interesting, right? That. That actually, you know, that there's some aura.
- [43:11]
Edward O'Keefe
Maybe it's occupation they would be. He puts Branchman, she puts spinster. Right, Right. And she knew that was. I mean, she never married, she never had a serious boyfriend. It was. Her father had died during that period and she was left with debt. Eventually, Edith's mother and her sister, they'll all move to Europe because they can't afford to live in New York. So imagine this. Theodore Roosevelt is out in the Dakota badlands. That's about as far as the train will go. And Edith goes to Europe. In the meantime, they've become secretly engaged. As soon as they see each other again, they fall immediately back in love. And the other thing is, I think at that point, you know, Theodore had suffered loss. Again. I mentioned Edith had a hard life, she had a harder childhood than Theodore, certainly. And I think at this point they're more mature. You know, the rough edges of their personalities from their youth had been ebbed away a bit. And I think, you know, they could now live a life together of more maturity and, you know, they knew what they had, what they had lost. I mean, and here they are back.
- [44:19]
Leslie
Together again, plus she's had some years. So I've looked up spins.
- [44:23]
Edward O'Keefe
Okay, great.
- [44:24]
Leslie
We have to do a sort of a deeper dive, but it refers to an unmarried woman, which we know, but the term originally denoted a woman whose occupation was to spin. So maybe it does have to do with. I'm thinking of the loom.
- [44:38]
Edward O'Keefe
Oh, sure, right, yes. Well, you've given me an assignment now. I know, right.
- [44:42]
Leslie
This is something.
- [44:43]
Edward O'Keefe
More research.
- [44:44]
Leslie
We've got. Exactly, more research. So they are kind of brought back together. Right. Two people who've experienced loss, they had this earlier connection and then what was Edith's influence?
- [44:57]
Edward O'Keefe
Well, it's just like, how much time do we have? I mean, this is what's extraordinary about all of this, is that Edith comes back into TR's life. He will not hold elected office for 15 years after the death of Alice, which I remark on in the loves of Theodore Roosevelt, because he only lives to 60. That's a quarter of his entire life. She.
- [45:19]
Leslie
So what was he doing during that time?
- [45:21]
Edward O'Keefe
He was appointed to positions. He was civil service commissioner. That's when he was on the. That's when he was on the New York Police Commissioners. That's his Assistant Secretary of the Navy, you know, political oriented positions, but not. He didn't stand. He ran for mayor and lost of New York. And he did that right before he got married to Edith. He thought about running for mayor of New York again in 1894, and Edith said no. I don't think that's a good idea. He was furious because he probably would have won. But, you know, imagine that had Theodore Roosevelt run for mayor in 1894 and won. He probably never becomes president of the United States. I mean, he. No New York City mayor has ever become president of the United States. It's a horrible position from which to run because of course, you have to be an incredible executive of a major city, but eventually it's hard to get a constituency outside of the city. And, you know, he just made the right call. Absolutely.
- [46:14]
Leslie
So what. What was the first elected office that he pursued after?
- [46:18]
Edward O'Keefe
Governor of New York.
- [46:19]
Leslie
Okay.
- [46:20]
Edward O'Keefe
Isn't that incredible? I mean, 1898. So he goes to Cuba in the Spanish American war. He becomes a hero, in no small part due to the fact that Bami, when he was police commissioner, had introduced him to journalists, including Richard Harding Davis, who began writing these incredible, glowing stories about Theodore Roosevelt as the police commissioner stalking the night streets and making sure that everyone was on the up and up. You know, so he supported the press.
- [46:47]
Leslie
Bami knew Bami was sort of building his Persona.
- [46:50]
Edward O'Keefe
That's right. Bam and Connie. Connie, his younger sister, really, was his first press secretary before there was such a role.
- [46:58]
Leslie
Were there three of them?
- [47:00]
Edward O'Keefe
Yeah. So he. So he had Bami, his older sister, and Connie, his younger sister. And the two of them were so integral to his political career. I mean, for instance, when he was governor of New York, Connie would sit in the room when he would meet with the bosses, the political powers that be in New York, and say, well, you don't mind if my sister stays? I mean, she's going to be of no consequence. Right. I mean, they took advantage of the misogyny of the era. And she would sit in the room often sewing or just doing.
- [47:33]
Leslie
Maybe spinning.
- [47:34]
Edward O'Keefe
Yeah, maybe spinning. Maybe she was spinning. And afterward, you know, she would heard everything so they could talk.
- [47:40]
Leslie
Then she'd go back with him and say, did you pick up on that?
- [47:44]
Edward O'Keefe
Right. What he should think, what he should do after his governorship. He said to Connie, haven't we had fun being governor of New York? Think about that. Right? That's how integral Connie was to. To his governorship. And Bami is the one at every major turn, you know, he. He looks to be out of the kaleidoscope that. That he's not going to have the right position. And she's the one who introduces him to the McKinley camp and says, you know, you should really get a position as assistant secretary of the Navy. That's the Position from which he resigns and goes to Cuba, becomes a hero, and then based on his popularity, gets elected governor. And he's such a pain to the political system as governor of New York that they say, we gotta get this guy outta here. We gotta bump him upstairs to the vice presidency. We want him out of New York. That's how he becomes vice president. He's just a total pain and everyone's behind in New York. He's such a reformer.
- [48:45]
Leslie
So was Bami. How did she know to introduce him to the McKinley camp? I mean, she was sort of a very obviously very political. And her. An operator in her own right.
- [48:55]
Edward O'Keefe
Yeah. There should be a book written about Bami. I mean, she. She is. I say Bami is what Robert F. Kennedy was to John F. Kennedy. Right. Maybe Valerie Biden is to the current president, Joe Biden. Right. This. This sister, this sibling, this trusted advisor who's inside, who knows who to talk to when who not to talk to. You know, how to make the connection to the right person. She'll move down to Washington before Theodore, and it's her home becomes known in the press as the little White House. Yeah. He'll take walks for afternoon tea and sit with Bami. For the first 10 days of the Roosevelt administration, his cabinet meetings were held in her home. I mean, it's amazing. An extraordinary degree of influence for somebody basically they haven't heard much about in history.
- [49:42]
Leslie
Well, I was gonna say, that's what's so interesting to me and so exciting about your amazing book is that you're exploring this side of Roosevelt that very few people know anything about. And it's coming out of these original sources. Right. These letters that you.
- [49:58]
Edward O'Keefe
These letters. And, you know, I think it's been hiding in plain sight too. I mean, there's been one major biography written about Edith. So let's talk about Edith for a moment. Right. Edith, you asked, you know, what influence did she have? Well, when she becomes first lady, there's no real precedent for the first lady having anything but other than ceremonial duties. She changes all that. She. She hires the first social secretary in the history of the. Of the role, which is very common. Every single successor will. Will hire that role to this day. So she renovates the entire White House. And, you know, so with Jackie.
- [50:36]
Leslie
So this is sort of her. Her background kind of brings that level of refinement to the White House for the first time.
- [50:42]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes. And practicality, she's very practical. So she says, wait a second. This is supposed to be the executive residence of. This is the executive branch of government. So it needs to be both magisterial and powerful. Also is the home of the president.
- [50:58]
Leslie
Right.
- [50:58]
Edward O'Keefe
We've got six children. So I want to separate. She says, you know what, let's do the work over here in the West Wing and let's call this the East Wing, and let's have two different components and purposes for the East Wing and the West Wing. Right. They changed the name of the Executive Mansion to the White House. Right. I mean, they literally changed the stationary. Because that's not very populist, that's not very with the people. Let's call it what it is. It's the White House. She invents the Colonial gardens, which become the Rose Garden. She, you know, is the forerunner for, I mean, all of it, all of the changes. She basically fit, you know, the. The executive function of the White House and the residents of the White House. And then she does something extraordinarily clever. She puts her husband's private office on the second floor and puts her office right next door. So she is in the room of power, because she designed it that way. And Edith advises. She reads four to five newspapers a day. She takes walks with Theodore every morning. They go out on horseback in the evening. They talk about all the major issues of the day. Everyone says. I mean, Theodore Roosevelt says, whenever I go against Edith's judgment, I regret it. And every single lot of. A lot of men and women can relate to that.
- [52:13]
Leslie
I was going to say, my wheels are turning. I can't wait to take some of these TR quotes back to my house.
- [52:19]
Edward O'Keefe
Well, and Franklin wrote, as Teddy would say, as Teddy would say, whenever you go against your wife's judgment, you regret it.
- [52:25]
Leslie
But Franklin, Eleanor also had. And John and Abigail Adams had that kind of partnership. There are those, yes.
- [52:31]
Edward O'Keefe
I think some of our most successful presidents have had incredibly formidable intellectual and powerful spouses who have not been afraid to exercise that. That influence, whether they got recognition for it or not. So FDR says of Edith, she managed TR Very cleverly, without his being conscious of it. No slight achievement, as anyone will concede. So he saw it, too.
- [52:57]
Leslie
So how did. How did he die? Teddy Roosevelt?
- [52:59]
Edward O'Keefe
He actually died of a pulmonary embolism at age 60, January 6, 1919. And he was the leading presidential contender for the nomination in 1920. So it would, you know, it'd be the equivalent of, you know, the leading contender for 2024 suddenly dropping dead. And, I mean, it shocked the nation. And there was a rush to memorialize TR because he wasn't an assassinated or fallen president in that way. But. But again, everybody expected that he would return to power the next year.
- [53:29]
Leslie
And remind me, it was during his presidency, obviously, when he established the national park. Right. He was the.
- [53:36]
Edward O'Keefe
It actually had been established prior to tr, but he doubled the part, the national parks in size.
- [53:42]
Leslie
Oh, I see. Okay.
- [53:43]
Edward O'Keefe
So, yes.
- [53:43]
Leslie
Who was the first president then to.
- [53:45]
Edward O'Keefe
It actually dates all the way back to Grant with the founding of Yellowstone.
- [53:48]
Leslie
Oh, right. Okay, then that. I must be getting the two.
- [53:51]
Edward O'Keefe
It's very. Well, I mean, what. What T.R. did is he has 234 million acres of preserved and conserved land. 151 national forests, the first bird preserves, five additional national parks, four game preserves. His record of conservation has never been equaled. I mean, no president has conserved or preserved that much land again, ever. Yellowstone was set aside. And then actually, Wilson establishes the National Park Service. So while he didn't do that, he is the environmental conservation president. No question.
- [54:25]
Leslie
So here you are. You've written this incredible book, or maybe you had sent the proposal to Simon Schuster. How did this project then lead to you becoming the CEO of the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Foundation?
- [54:42]
Edward O'Keefe
Yeah. What came first? The book of the library. The book came first. I'm at Harvard and I meet a fellow North Dakotan who is on a Truman Scholarship at the Kennedy School. Robbie Loff. Robbie is now working at the TR Library as our Director of partnerships and programs. But then he was in school at Harvard. We meet and he says, wait a second. You're from North Dakota, you're writing a book about TR and you're thinking about what to do next in your career. Have you heard about this little project, the TR Library? And I'd heard about it. I knew that there was an effort back in my home state to potentially build the TR Library. But I honestly, I thought, you know, this would be. Maybe I could join the board. Maybe I'll, you know, maybe I'll do something to help the effort. I never in a million years thought that I would become the CEO of the TR Library.
- [55:32]
Leslie
Well, I'm just so shocked by a president who had such incredible impact and is so well known, doesn't have his own library yet or his own museum.
- [55:42]
Edward O'Keefe
Yeah, predate tr. Predates the presidential library system. It started with FDR and then Hoover, retrospectively, retroactively, even though he was out of office, did establish his presidential library in West Branch, Iowa. And so when TR died, as I said unexpectedly, the Congress passed the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial association act, which is the first and only time in US history that Congress has passed a memorialization of a president in that way. Not for Washington, not for Jefferson, not for Lincoln. Nothing. TR is the only one that established efforts that then preserved his boyhood home and eventually Sagamore Hill, which is now a national historic site, but no presidential library for perhaps. You know, he's top five president, right? Yeah, we just saw the poll come out again. I mean, he consistently is in the top five. He's on Mount Rushmore. He's obviously an incredibly. If I let me just put it this way, if my book proposal, if TR did not exist in my book proposal, told the story of his life, it would have been rejected for being too fanciful and crazy.
- [56:40]
Leslie
Right.
- [56:40]
Edward O'Keefe
I mean, TR's. He's the only president that you can really say his time out of the White House is more interesting than his time in the White House. And his time in the White House is pretty interesting.
- [56:51]
Leslie
Right?
- [56:51]
Edward O'Keefe
You know, I mean, he's first food and drug laws, the conservation record that we talked about. You know, a work week that actually invents the weekend. I mean, you know, he. He's just like everything you can point to. First American to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Panama Canal, that without which we don't win World War II. He kicked open the door to the American century. And what I love exploring in the loves of Theodore Roosevelt is that it was the women around him, that it gave him the power and influence to do it, that we're there to support him with the TR library. So we're under construction now in Medora, North Dakota. We have raised at present $234 million. And we've got a $50 million endowment from the state of North Dakota to support ongoing operations and maintenance. Our anticipated opening is July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of America.
- [57:47]
Leslie
That's amazing. And I've seen some of the schematics of it, and I love how it really just kind of is part of the landscape.
- [57:57]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes. So Snohetta is our architect. They are here in. Well, they're all over the world. They're a global architecture practice. They're landscape integrated architects. They designed the 911 memorial here in New York, the SFMOMA on San Francisco, a lot of work in the Norwegian National Park System. And what they've designed out in the Badlands, which is now currently under construction. And you're starting to see is a celebration of the land. It's 93 acres in which people are going to be able to, you know, come in to go to a museum, certainly, and see this extraordinary life. Experience this extraordinary life. But they're going to get out into nature. Right. Go on a walk, go on a hike, get on horseback. Would be the only presidential library you can ride a horse to. I love.
- [58:41]
Leslie
Now, is this land part of his property that he had his ranch on?
- [58:45]
Edward O'Keefe
He never actually owned land, so he, you know, because he didn't have to at that time. You open. Rain. Oh.
- [58:50]
Leslie
So it went out, though. But when you were saying earlier that he had sort of spent kind of a big chunk of his inheritance on cattle.
- [58:58]
Edward O'Keefe
He had the cattle. Cattle.
- [58:59]
Leslie
I see.
- [59:00]
Edward O'Keefe
So he did have two ranches.
- [59:02]
Leslie
Was it in that area?
- [59:03]
Edward O'Keefe
Oh, yeah. So this. This is where Theodore Roosevelt. So again, when TR died, there was an effort to build a memorial in the east, and that became a park in Oyster Bay that exists to this day and in the West. And so they knew from the very beginning that they wanted to have a park that became a memorial park and eventually a national park. The only park, Theodore Roosevelt national park, named for a person, let alone a president, that is literally 20 yards from where we're building the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
- [59:33]
Leslie
Now, tell me about. And if. If you can't speak to this, I won't put you on the spot. But the statue outside at the Museum of Natural History.
- [59:40]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes.
- [59:41]
Leslie
Was removed, and we can. You know, I have my own opinions about that, and I guess it should still be there, and if there has to be a plaque explaining certain things, but it's not. And that was the decision of the board of the museum. But I believe that the statue might have made its way out your way.
- [60:00]
Edward O'Keefe
Yes, Leslie, we like to say it is in a safe and secure location in North Dakota.
- [60:06]
Leslie
I didn't realize we probably have to keep it under breath. But you, when you and I first met, you told me the story of how you. I should mention that Ed and I met at a dinner, and I could talk to Ed for hours and hours about all the incredible knowledge that he has about Teddy Roosevelt and everything else you've done in your incredible career. But it was sort of in the dark of night that you had to take the statue and. Right. So tell.
- [60:32]
Edward O'Keefe
Yeah, I mean, you know, so obviously, you know, the American Museum of Natural History was in a bit of a conundrum because the statue, the equestrian statue, which has stood there since the 1940s, was actually city property. And so AMNH could request its removal. But ultimately, it was up to the city, and that fell within the design committee of New York. I'm forgetting the actual name of the committee that's responsible for it. But essentially, the city had to agree with AMNH to remove it. In order to do that, they had to have a receiving institution. And I'll say, you know, not everyone loves that statue for. For good reason. Right. We saw the composition of the statue as presenting a racial hierarchy. We saw that there was very little context. You know, a QR code at the base of the statue is not the same as, you know, putting Guernica in the back of a museum and saying, go ahead and look at it if you'd like, but, you know, it's out in public view. So there was very little context. And, you know, consent was also an issue. Again, it's outside, it's public. It's not in the institution where you make a conscious decision about seeing it. So those were the things they had to deal with. What we said is, look, we believe that, you know, Theodore Roosevelt never wanted any statues to himself. I mean, believe it or not, he said one of the things that doesn't wear well is statues. And he explicitly said that he didn't want any of these efforts that eventually came to pass. His sisters were extraordinary in preserving that legacy. You know, they preserved the boyhood home. They obviously later preserved Sagamore Hill. I think what we felt is that in order to preserve the life and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, let's take this object and store it for a good long while and have a productive and constructive conversation around it about what, if anything, should ever be done with it. And we've. We've taken a lot of pains and done a lot of work in us, particularly with the tribal nations that share geography with North Dakota. We had the tribal chairs out to the land. The first thing we did when we acquired the land from the US Forest Service was have the tribal chairs there for a land blessing and a private meeting with the Roosevelt family to not just talk about the past, but to talk about the future.
- [62:40]
Leslie
Reservations are really what are there around the Badlands?
- [62:44]
Edward O'Keefe
Yeah, I mean, you know, tribes want. This is an amazing fulcrum of history here. Right. It's not just in his personal story. This is not far from the Madora, and the Badlands are not far from where Sacagawea met Lewis and Clark.
- [62:56]
Leslie
Right.
- [62:56]
Edward O'Keefe
This is the pathway that leads to, you know, the Battle of Little Bighorn, or it's known by our tribal friends, a Battle of Greasy Grass. Right. They. There's just an amazing amount of history. And the tribal communities that we work with, they. You know, they have a third Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, tribe, which is about 50 minutes east of the north unit of Theodore Roosevelt National park. They have a $30 million interpretive center that tells their story from their point of view. It's an extraordinary experience. They want people to come. They want people to visit. They may not love Theodore Roosevelt, but they love the idea that more people will be coming to North Dakota, will be coming to the Badlands, and hopefully will come visit the tribal nations and see for themselves and hear their own story from their perspective, not ours.
- [63:43]
Leslie
Well, I can't wait. I hope that we can. We can somehow arrange a. A, a visit for this. I want to come to the opening. I'm inviting myself to the opening.
- [63:53]
Edward O'Keefe
It's.
- [63:54]
Leslie
It's going to be in July of 2026.
- [63:56]
Edward O'Keefe
July 4, 2026. It's going to be extraordinary. We're still. We're actively fundraising. If anybody's interested in joining the call.
- [64:02]
Leslie
Yes, I was going to say, let's.
- [64:04]
Edward O'Keefe
Trlibrary.com donate yes, we very much want people to be in the arena with us. I mean, this is not just a North Dakota effort. This is a global project with very proud North Dakota roots. We've got donors from all 50 states and seven countries. I mean, Theodore Roosevelt is a remarkably popular figure around the globe. Rene Brown's entire philosophy of vulnerability is based on Theodore Roosevelt's in the arena speech. LeBron James, when he broke the NBA scoring record, you know, he cited Theodore Roosevelt, you know, but in the arena, on his shoes before the game. And Miley Cyrus when she was singing at the Grammys. Hey, there's the TR speech right now.
- [64:42]
Leslie
Have you hit these people up?
- [64:43]
Edward O'Keefe
Do we need to call Miley?
- [64:45]
Leslie
Can we connect?
- [64:46]
Edward O'Keefe
She just did. I didn't hear back. Maybe she'll hear the podcast that is. It's pretty wild, right?
- [64:53]
Leslie
I mean, it speaks to his influence. I mean, that speech is so incredible. My husband ran for office and didn't win. And, you know, it's just such great perspective, and it's so true and it's so inspiring.
- [65:04]
Edward O'Keefe
Not the critic who counts. Yes, to the man in the arena today. The woman in the arena. I mean, which is. I just want to say quickly, that is the point of the TR Library. It's not about the past. It's about the future. And it's not about necessarily even just telling TR story. It's about your story. You know, this is. This is where we want people to come. Our pillar principles are leadership, citizenship, and conservation. And as much as we want to celebrate the life and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, I think it would be more important to him, and it is more important to us that we create citizens of the future, that we have people who are engaged and know that they can make a difference in their communities. If there's one lesson of Theodore Roosevelt's life, it is that action can make a difference. Right. You need whatever cause you care about, whatever you think needs to be changed in the world, you need to take part. You need to be a part of the solution that. That's what he did, and that's why I think he's remembered, is that he got in the arena. And, you know, we'll have artifacts and we'll have all kinds of great immersive, the almost theatrical experiences, but at the end of the day, I think we hope people exit that museum thinking, I.
- [66:14]
Leslie
Want to make a difference and be inspired.
- [66:17]
Edward O'Keefe
Yep, absolutely. That's. That's the story of TR's life.
- [66:20]
Leslie
Oh, it most certainly is. And I. I cannot wait. The book comes out May.
- [66:25]
Edward O'Keefe
May 7. May 7. The loves of Theodore Roosevelt.
- [66:27]
Leslie
I have a. I have a advance copy.
- [66:29]
Edward O'Keefe
You do?
- [66:30]
Leslie
From Ed, which is. So you might have to. Will you sign this for me?
- [66:33]
Edward O'Keefe
Absolutely.
- [66:33]
Leslie
Of course I'll sign it.
- [66:35]
Edward O'Keefe
Absolutely.
- [66:35]
Leslie
And, you know, you mentioned Tranquility or the Hill of Tranquility. I mean, this just. Even though I haven't read it yet, because it just came out, I've read, obviously, snippets and summaries and things, but I can't wait to read it. And I somehow think it's gonna end up on a screen somewhere because it's just such an incredible story.
- [66:53]
Edward O'Keefe
I mean, August 22, 1878. Some director is gonna have fun with that. I mean, we've got five female characters, strong leads. We've got Love Lost, love found again, February 14, February.
- [67:06]
Leslie
Upstairs, downstairs, two people dying at the Same time.
- [67:09]
Edward O'Keefe
I like to say I think the story of the Roosevelts is like the American crown. I mean, if you start with that family and grandfather, you know, their 1820s, 1830s, they go all the way through. Basically. Eleanor's last interactions are with President Kennedy. You know, so that span from 1820 to 1960, that's just an incredible part of American history. And you could have a lot of fun with.
- [67:33]
Leslie
You know, I mean, forget about the. The Windsor, Mount Mountbatten. I mean, they've got.
- [67:38]
Edward O'Keefe
Right, exactly. They've got the Roosevelts. They're our quintessential American families.
- [67:42]
Leslie
That's the pitch to Netflix right there.
- [67:44]
Edward O'Keefe
I mean, the Crown meets Yellowstone. If you're listening, Netflix, let's do it.
- [67:50]
Leslie
Ed, thank you so much for coming. I so enjoyed seeing you again and talking with you. I'm so excited about the book. I know all of our listeners will like me, rush out to buy their copy on May 6th, and I'm sure also will want to come in two years for the opening of the museum itself. And don't forget to visit the website to learn more about it and get involved in honoring this incredible, incredible American.
- [68:14]
Edward O'Keefe
Thank you, Leslie. It's been a joy to be with you. Last thing I'll say is we just launched edwardfoke.com and that has all the places I'm going to be on tour. So if you want to come out, we're going to be in Washington, D.C. kansas City, a whole bunch of stops in Ohio. We'll be back in North Dakota this summer. So we're coming to a town near you. We'd love to see you out there. That's great. F o'keefe.com you can see where I'm going to be on the book tour. And as we said, trlibrary.com donate if you'd like to be a part of the TR library.
- [68:44]
Leslie
Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm going to look that up too, Ed, so I can see where I get to see you again soon.
- [68:50]
Edward O'Keefe
Sounds good. We'll see you out there.
- [68:51]
Leslie
Thank you so much.
- [68:52]
Edward O'Keefe
Thank you.
- [68:54]
Leslie
That brings us to the end of this episode of the interview. A huge thank you again to Ed O'Keefe for joining and as always, thank you again for listening. If you enjoy the show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and follow us on Instagram at the interview with Leslie.