Posted on 08/24/2002 7:08:21 AM PDT by BigWaveBetty
Tweed Roosevelt, great-grandson of President Teddy Roosevelt, takes part in Teddy Bear Expo, marking the 100th year of the Teddy Bear in Washington Friday, Aug. 23, 2002. Roosevelt holds an original bear made in 1904, right, and a reproduction of the first Teddy Bear, introduced in 1902, at left. The Teddy Bear, with its link to Theodore Roosevelt, is easily the most popular presidential memento ever produced. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)
Teddy Bear Celebrates Centennial
WASHINGTON (AP) - The teddy bear, inspired by the helpless bear a president refused to shoot, turns 100 this fall, still fuzzy-eared, huggable and loved by millions of children around the world.
Theodore Roosevelt's teddy bear is easily the most popular presidential memento ever produced and the centennial celebrations have already begun.
Appearing on Friday at the Doll and Teddy Bear Expo here, Tweed Roosevelt, the 26th president's great grandson, said teddy bears have long been part of childhood for young members of the Roosevelt family.
Roosevelt, 60, is a Boston investment banker and a spokesman for the teddy bears produced by the Steiff Company, which has been making stuffed bears since 1903.
"I think that the teddy bear has come to represent all that's good about humans," Roosevelt said. "For a child it is a confidant that's entirely on the child's side. It's an honor to the Roosevelt family that we had a part of giving to the world this symbol of joy and solace."
The teddy bear's creation resulted from the accidental combination of a tethered bear in a Mississippi woods, news stories about the president's refusal to shoot it, and a cartoonist's eye for an arresting image.
As the end of 1902 approached, Roosevelt had completed a busy and successful first year in office and Republicans had breezed through the November elections. The president decided he deserved a break and a bear hunt seemed made to order.
Soon Roosevelt was clambering down from a private car on a railway siding in Mississippi in leather leggings, a blue flannel shirt, corduroy jacket and hobnail boots. He had a cartridge belt at his waist, a hunting knife on his hip and a favorite, custom-made rifle under his arm.
The president was clearly ready. But the bears were not.
As biographer Edmund Morris records in Theodore Rex, his account of the Roosevelt presidency, wherever an increasingly frustrated Roosevelt went in the deep woods the bears went elsewhere.
Finally, a pack of hunting dogs gave chase to a bear which lunged exhausted into a pond where a guide roped it and cracked it in the skull with a rifle butt.
The president was sent for. Here, finally, was a bear for him to shoot.
"He was both disappointed and upset, on reaching the pond, to find a stunned, bloody, mud-caked runt tied to a tree," Morris writes. "The bear was not much bigger than he. He refused to shoot. 'Put it out of its misery,' he said. Somebody dispatched it with a knife."
The hunt went on for three more days. Roosevelt never got a shot.
But back in Washington the newspaper stories of the president's sporting refusal to shoot a defenseless bear reached the desk of Clifford Berryman, then a cartoonist for The Washington Post.
Berryman sketched a small, bewildered, tethered bear, with the president turning away in disdain. The cartoon appeared on the front page of the Post on Nov. 16 over the caption, "Drawing the Line in Mississippi."
Readers took to the imagery at once, demanding more bear cartoons. Berryman obliged. Subsequent bears became "smaller, rounder and cuter." Soon Berryman was adding tiny big-eared bear cub mascots to every cartoon he drew.
Berryman, whose cartooning career was to extend into the Truman administration, described the cartoon beast as "a poor measly little cub with most of its fur rubbed off and ears like prickly pears."
"We have all been delighted with the little bear cartoons," Roosevelt wrote Berryman on Dec. 29, 1902.
The president's delight was widely shared. Soon people on both sides of the Atlantic saw commercial possibilities in the little bears.
In New York City, Rose Michtom, the wife of Brooklyn candy store owner Morris Michtom, made two stuffed toy bears. Her husband put them in his window at $1.50 each with a sign calling them "Teddy's Bears." Soon the stuffed bears were selling so briskly that the Michtoms, both Russian immigrants, established the Ideal Toy Company to keep up with demand.
Meanwhile, in Germany, toy manufacturer Margarete Steiff had added plush, stuffed, bear cubs to her line of stuffed elephants and other toy animals. Each had button eyes, long arms, movable joints and a distinctive button in an ear.
In 1903, a New York toy store ordered 3,000 Steiff bears. In 1907, the year teddy bear first appeared in a dictionary, the company sold 974,000. The teddy bear was on its way to becoming an essential of childhood. Steiff still sells more than 800,000 bears a year.
In 1904, the little bear became the mascot of Roosevelt's successful presidential campaign.
All of this had a touch of irony about it. The president disliked the nickname Teddy. Friends called him "Theodore."
But his fellow countrymen were far more informal. To them, the president was Teddy. And the little stuffed bear was "the teddy bear."
Oh, Dog, you dog, you.
Yummmmm. I wonder if I can cook salmon in a pressure cooker? Must check!
Oh and let me just add the mom in question is a republican!!!!
I expressed sympathy to my daughter with a soon to be three year old. I can't imagine what is in store for these young child 10 years from now.
I don't know about salmon but this is from one of my favorite sites and they recommmend a pressure cooker for artichokes in this recipe.
IG, good luck to #3 son!
Timeout, I thought you might enjoy this NYPost headline.....
PEE R. WHIZ AND PUSHY POSSE PUT ME IN MY PLACE (Lizzie Grubman story)
Hoooo-boy! That's a good one!
Clinton, looking trim and fit, was his usual brainy and interesting self, and on this night, his senator-wife stood and gave a loving toast to him, saying in so many words what a great president he had been. The three days closed with an outdoor barbecue given by the Iscols on a green hillside. Chelsea and beau were also on hand for that. Both Clintons said they are doing the lonely, difficult work of writing their memoirs. He didn't say anything about his progress, but they do have adjoining offices for this work in their Chappaqua house. Senator Clinton says she is about "one-third" through and is looking for a title.
I bet we could help her with that.
WHICH high-profile political candidate is concerned that a note he wrote two years ago to a sexy young divorcée could be misinterpreted? The letter, a copy of which landed here, says, "I look forward to developing our friendship. Let's do it - really." It was probably motivated more by the possibility of a campaign contribution than lust, but his wife might not see it that way . . . Page Six knows, but isn't telling.
Ouch. Full story here
Liza and Mr. Liza still in the news:
Liza Minnelli and her manager/husband, David Gest, are gearing up for their VH1 reality show, tentatively titled "Liza and David's Dinner Party." And last week, sources say, they were giving the network's execs a taste of the diva behavior they'll be serving. "They haven't been nasty," one insider tells us, "but haven't exactly been considerate." rest of story.
There's more on the Denise Rich cancer fundraiser at that link (NY Daily News). And in other news at that link, Larry Klayman has sued Bill Clinton. As LK is long overdue to win a case, any case, I hope this is the one with which he finds success.
Judicial Watch has now filed a lawsuit, claiming the former President sicced the tax man on the conservative public-interest group founded by Larry Klayman. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., charges that Clinton and several top congressional Democrats, including New York Rep. Charles Rangel, instigated "a retaliatory, politically motivated and unconstitutional audit" of Judicial Watch by the Internal Revenue Service.
Finally, Chelsea's friend Donatella Versace's company is not doing so well, story here.
That will be tomorrow's thread!
In Ayutthaya, Thailand, a four-year-old monkey has a one-year-old pet it adopted at birth after both were abandoned. All God's creatures need love.
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