13. Theodore Roosevelt and Alice Hathaway Lee
TR was a wealthy young man and his young bride, Alice Hathaway Lee, a well-known New York socialite. The couple planned for a large family, purchasing property near Oyster Bay with the intention of building a spacious home. Alice gave birth to their first child, Alice Lee Roosevelt, in February 1884, while Teddy was in Albany, serving in the New York General Assembly. The telegram he received announcing the birth was followed by a second, announcing his wife’s perilous condition. He rushed home, and held her in his arms as she died on February 14, of a kidney ailment which her pregnancy had masked. Roosevelt’s mother had died earlier the same day, in the same house.
Teddy was so distraught over his wife’s death that he could not speak her name, nor care for the child she had borne. To escape his grief he fled to the Dakotas, where he developed the ranching and hunting skills which helped shape his public image and subsequent political career. It also developed his lifelong appreciation for the environment, which he used to expand the National Park System as President. Roosevelt eventually remarried and with his second wife achieved the large family he and Alice had sought. For the rest of his life, Teddy referred to the daughter they had together as Baby Lee, and later simply as Lee, unable to speak her mother’s name in the family home.
