WASHINGTON (TND) – Growing up in North Dakota, Edward O’Keefe recalls being taught the myth that Theodore Roosevelt, thought of as the most masculine president, was a self-made man. In his new book, “The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President,” O’Keefe dismantles that myth and replaces it with a comprehensive history of the five “extraordinary and unsung” women behind Roosevelt’s legacy.
O’Keefe, who serves as the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, said through his years of studying the twenty-sixth president, he realized how instrumental these women were in his survival and success.
“I think now, in this time, in 2024, we can hear the story of Theodore Roosevelt and only appreciate him more knowing that he had help, that he had a mother and his two sisters and his two wives who picked him up and pushed him forward,” O’Keefe said.
From the beginning of Roosevelt’s life, his health was so poor, doctors were doubtful he’d live past five years old. Though Roosevelt’s father has been celebrated by history, it’s his mother Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, known as “Mittie,” who tended to his severe asthmatic episodes, often saving his life.
“So it’s from (Mittie) that he gets this incredible personality and empathy and also this ability to will his way through physical pain, to live what he would later call ‘the strenuous life,’” O’Keefe said.
While Roosevelt studied at Harvard, he spent his spare time courting the woman who would become his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, a Boston Brahmin who almost certainly inspired Roosevelt’s feminist ideals. In his senior thesis titled “Practicability of Giving Men and Women Equal Rights,” the future president argued why women should have the right to vote, own property and be paid the same as men. Far ahead of his time, Roosevelt even believed a woman should assume her husband’s last name upon marriage.
“(Alice) believes that the government should really be helping advance people and progress in the country and this infuses in Theodore Roosevelt what will later become one of the hallmarks of his policies and his approach to the presidency,” O’Keefe said.
When Mittie and Lee die within hours of each other on Valentine’s Day in 1884, Roosevelt writes in his diary, “The light has gone out of my life.”
It’s Roosevelt’s older sister Anna Roosevelt Cowles, known as “Bamie,” and his younger sister Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, known as “Conie” who revived him emotionally and politically following this tragedy.
Bamie cared for Roosevelt’s infant daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and kept him apprised of political happenings during his westward venture to what was then the Dakota Territory following his wife and mother’s deaths.
Once he was back in New York and elected governor, O’Keefe describes how Roosevelt and his younger sister used the misogyny of the era to their advantage.
“At some point, the political bosses would say, ‘Alright, now everybody clear out. I need my time with the governor,’” O’Keefe said. “Theodore and his sister knew that they wouldn’t care much if a woman was in the room, so they’d say, ‘Well surely my sister can stay and listen to the discussion, she’s so interested in all that I do.’ And she would knit or sew in the corner silently listening, taking it all in and then afterward, they would strategize about his personal and political choices.”
First Lady Edith Kermit Roosevelt, Roosevelt’s childhood companion and second wife, also proves to be an indispensable political compass to the president.
“He said of Edith his wife that ‘Whenever I go against her judgment, I regret it,’” O’Keefe said. “She could see the dynamics, she could read people’s character and motives much better.”
An astute and unassuming first lady, O’Keefe explains in the book how she managed to be immensely influential without drawing public fanfare.
“She’s the first first lady to hire a social secretary, which every single successive first lady since Edith has done so,” O’Keefe said. “She also designed her office to be next to Theodore’s on the second floor of the residence. She was quite literally in the room where it happened because she designed it that way.”
In “The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt,” O’Keefe shows readers how these five women were dedicated not only to the man, but to making sure in the public’s eyes, the credit for all that was accomplished in his life was all his—likely the product of a time when women could only have such influence if it went unnoticed. It’s also possible, O’Keefe explores, that it speaks to the amount of love these women had for their son, husband, and brother.
As O’Keefe writes, “We are, all of us, the product of those who believed in us.”
The book leaves a reader to wonder: What other women, marginalized and unacclaimed people should also share credit for the achievements of the titans of our democracy?
These loves of Roosevelt, O’Keefe writes, “prove no person is self-made, perhaps especially the great ones.”
