Quentin Roosevelt
From Kaiserreich
Quentin Roosevelt (November 19, 1897 – ) was the youngest and favourite son of President Theodore Roosevelt. Family and friends agree that Quentin has many of his father's positive qualities and few of the negative ones. Inspired by his father and siblings, he joined the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps in 1918 (the forerunner of the modern United States Army Air Corps) where he has risen up the ranks, and is extremely popular with his fellow pilots and known for being daring, and has tested many prototype aircraft. He is the author of several books and the cousin of the murdered Democratic politician Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Contents |
Childhood
Quentin was only three years old when his father became president, and he grew up in the White House. By far the favourite of all of President Roosevelt's children, Quentin was also the most rambunctious. He was nicknamed "Quentyquee" and "Quinikins" by his father. He shared T.R.'s physical, intellectual, and linguistic characteristics.
Quentin's behaviour prompted his mother, Edith, to label him a "fine bad little boy". Amongst Quentin's many adventures with the "White House Gang" (a name assigned by T.R. to Quentin and his friends), Quentin carved a baseball diamond on the White House lawn without permission, defaced official presidential portraits in the White House with spitballs, and threw snowballs from the White House's roof at unsuspecting Secret Service guards. Charlie Taft the son of Secretary of War and future President William Howard Taft was also part of the white house gang.
He quickly became known for his humorous and sometimes philosophical remarks. To a reporter trying to trap the boy into giving information about his father, Quentin admitted, "I see him occasionally, but I know nothing of his family life." The family soon learned to keep him quiet during dinner when important guests were present.
Once, when his brother Archie was terribly ill, it was Quentin (with the help of Charles Lee, a White House coachman), who brought the pony Algonquin to his room by elevator, sure that this would make his brother better.
As a young man, Quentin displayed a natural mechanical aptitude. He could fix almost anything, and even rebuilt a motorcycle to present to a friend as a gift.
Education
Quentin attended the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia. Later he was a student at Groton School and the Evans School for Boys. Quentin sailed through all his formal schooling, consistently scoring high marks and showing much of the intellectual capacity of his father. He was admitted to Harvard University in 1916. Quentin loved machinery and rebuilt a motorcycle while in college. By the time Quentin was a sophomore at Harvard, also like his father, he was showing promise as a writer.
Personal life
The young Roosevelt was engaged to Flora Payne Whitney, the great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the country’s richest men, and also an heiress to the Whitney family fortune. The couple met at a ball in Newport, Rhode Island, in August 1916 and soon fell in love, although the alliance, between the modest, old-money Roosevelt's and the flamboyantly wealthy Vanderbilt-Whitneys was at first controversial on both sides.
Quentin’s letters to Flora, from the time they met until shortly before their wedding day—discovered and revealed to the world by W.S. Mactier via the New York World (Quentin sued Mactier, and eventually settled out of court with him) -- show how the Roosevelt's wanted to drag America into the war. Theodore Roosevelt, incensed at America’s continuing neutrality in the face of Germany's actions—including the initial adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare, Charles Evan Hughes, during which he severely criticized Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was subsequently reelected on a neutrality platform. While he was initially neutral, Quentin came to agree with his father, writing to Flora in early 1917 from Harvard University, where he was studying, “We are a pretty sordid lot, aren’t we, to want to sit looking on while England and France fight our battles and pan gold into our pockets.”
Politics
He has publically declared his sympathy for the America First Union Party.
Military service
All the Roosevelt sons except Kermit have had some military training. With the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914, there had been a heightened concern about the nation's readiness for military engagement. Only the month before, Congress had belatedly recognized the significance of military aviation by authorizing the creation of an Aviation Section in the Signal Corps. In 1915 Major General Leonard Wood, a friend of Theodore Roosevelt since the Rough Rider days, organized a summer camp at Plattsburg, New York, to provide military training for business and professional men at their own expense. It would be this summer training program that would provide the basis of a greatly expanded junior officers corps if the Country entered the Weltkrieg. During the summer of 1915, many well-heeled young men from some of the finest East Coast schools, including Quentin Roosevelt and two of his brothers, attended the Camp. Quentin, just out of the rigours of Groton and Harvard, did not really enjoy the training, but stuck it out anyway. He joined the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps in 1918, and rose rapidly up the ranks, and played a notable role in the reformation of the Corps as the United States Army Air Corps in 1929.
