Where is the humor?
Becoming President was a dream come true for TR.
“Where is the humor?” [nickcarraway, post 3]
“I don’t get it.” [Laslo Fripp, post 4]
Alice Lee Roosevelt (1884-1980) was the eldest child of Theodore Roosevelt. Aged 17 when her father became President, she became one of the first national celebrities (this was before film stars took over) - the absolute center of attention in society, fawned over by the media.
She loved all of it, much like her father did.
Alice was a difficult child and a tempestuous teen, flouting social conventions. The story goes that one day early in her father’s Presidency he was meeting with Western novelist Owen Wister (author of _The Virginian_). She flounced into his office, interrupting them to complain or demand something. After she flounced back out, the President supposedly said, “I can control Alice, or I can run the country. I can’t do both.”
She openly enjoyed life among the social set and resented the end of her father’s terms as President, looking down on William Howard Taft and his wife as dull and conventional. Despite all the attention, she could not resist poking fun at her fellow socialites and political mavens, who often found themselves targets of her razor-like wit.
Alice remained politically astute, connected, and involved all her life. Married Congressman Nicholas Longworth III (R-Cincinnati) in 1906, conspired with her cousin Franklin Roosevelt to bug the offices and homes of high officials during the Wilson administration, and she strongly supported her father’s run for the Presidency in 1912, cooling her relationship with Longworth (who later became Speaker of the House).
She birthed a daughter, Paulina, in the 1920s; the daughter married Alexander Sturm (co-founder with William B Ruger of Sturm Ruger Firearms). Sturm died suddenly in 1951 and Paulina died suddenly in 1957, after which Alice took over raising her granddaughter Joanna.