July 14, 1918: 2nd Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt dies in action in World War I. He is the only child of a President of the United States to have lost his life for his country.
He was born on November 19, 1897 in Washington, D.C., where his father, Theodore Roosevelt, was then serving as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In 1901, TR became President, and presided over the country, while he and his wife, Edith, presided over 6 children who were all as rambunctious as he was: Daughters Alice and Ethel; and sons Theodore Jr. (actually, Theodore III, usually called "Ted," never "Teddy," and neither he nor his father liked that nickname), Kermit, Archie and Quentin.
Quentin carved a baseball diamond on the White House lawn without permission, defaced official Presidential portraits with spitballs, and threw snowballs from the roof at unsuspecting Secret Service guards. In 1905, at the age of 8, a reporter saw him, and asked him about his father. Sounding considerably older, he said, "Yes, I see him sometimes; but I know nothing of his family life."
In 1915, he graduated from the Groton School, a prep school in Massachusetts. He entered Harvard University, but, when America entered World War I in the Spring of 1917, he dropped out to enlist in what was then known as the United States Army Air Service. (It became the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1926, the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1941, and was separated from the U.S. Army as the U.S. Air Force in 1947.) He became engaged to Flora Payne Whitney, of the even wealthier Whitney family, but they were unable to get married before he was shipped out to Europe.
The Roosevelt family had a complicated relationship with war. Theodore Roosevelt Sr. had paid for a substitute to take his place in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was, his son the future President decided, the one blot on a sterling life.
Determined not to do the same, TR resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy when the Spanish-American War began in 1898, and accepted a command in the Army. His charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba became legend, and led to his election as Governor of New York that year, his nomination as Vice President in 1900, and his accession to the Presidency after William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
All 4 of his sons followed his example, and enlisted in World War I. The former President, pushing 60 years old, asked President Woodrow Wilson to give him a command, but he refused. Having previously admitted, "I abhor Wilson" before the war began in 1914, he grew progressively angrier at Wilson as he refused to take America into the war. Not letting him go over, because he was too old and out of shape, was the last straw.
But the sons all fought well. Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was gassed and wounded at the Battle of Soissons. Captain Kermit Roosevelt participated in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Captain Archibald Roosevelt was wounded badly enough to earn a medical discharge. Each was highly decorated.
Of 2nd Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, a noted auto racer before the war, and a hero pilot during it himself, said:
Every one who met him for the first time expected him to have the airs and superciliousness of a spoiled boy. This notion was quickly lost after the first glimpse one had of Quentin. Gay, hearty and absolutely square in everything he said or did, Quentin Roosevelt was one of the most popular fellows in the group. We loved him purely for his own natural self.
On July 10, 1918, during the German Spring Offensive, Quentin shot down a German plane over Saints, France. When word got back to Sagamore Hill, the family home at Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, TR expressed his pride with an expression he liked to use for men who responded to big moments with strength and bravery: "He has had his crowded hour."
Four days later, on July 14 -- Bastille Day, France's national holiday -- in a massive aerial engagement over Chamery, Quentin was hit in the head two machine gun bullets. He was already dead before his Nieuport 28 hit the ground. The German soldiers who found his body buried him with full battlefield honors. The French government posthumously awarded him the Croix de Guerre with Palm.
A surviving Nieuport 28, like the plane Quentin Roosevelt flew
There is doubt as to who fired the shots, with 3 different pilots, at various times, having been credited: The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force credits Leutnant Karl Thom, contemporary German reports credited Sergeant Carl Graeper, and Graeper and Leutnant Christian Donhauser each publicly claimed to have been the one.
Theodore Roosevelt had fought childhood asthma, coped with the deaths of his first wife and mother on the same day, started down rustlers as a rancher in the Dakotas, faced enemy fire in the Spanish-American War, survived a shooting in 1912, and survived tropical illness and exhaustion during a 1914 expedition in the Amazon. And, of course, he survived the stress of nearly 2 full terms of the Presidency.
But after Quentin's death, Theodore Roosevelt spent much of his time sitting at home at Sagamore Hill, staring into space, falling victim to the depression that he tended to call "black care." Six months later, on January 16, 1919, he died of a heart attack in his sleep. He was 60.
Quentin Roosevelt's body remained where he fell until 1955. Then, at the request of the Roosevelt family, his remains were exhumed. He was laid to rest next to his brother, Ted, who died of a heart attack on July 12, 1944, a few weeks after leading men ashore on Utah Beach on D-Day. Both men are buried in the Omaha Beach American Cemetery.
Flora Whitney eventually married twice, divorcing after 5 years and then being widowed after 45 years. She had 4 children.
All 3 of the men who may have been the one to shoot Quentin Roosevelt down, survived World War I. Christian Donhauser did not survive it by much: He was killed in a crash in Koblenz, Germany on January 13, 1919, just 24. Karl Thom returned to duty in World War II, flying with the Luftwaffe. He disappeared on the Eastern Front on March 3, 1945, and was never seen again. He was 51. Of Carl Graeper, I can find no additional information.
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July 14, 1918 was a Sunday. The innovative Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman was born.
These games were played in Major League Baseball:
* The New York Yankees lost to the Cleveland Indians, 7-1 at League Park in Cleveland. Jim Bagby Sr. outpitched Allen Russell. Tris Speaker went 1-for-4. Wally Pipp went 2-for-3, but the rest of the Yankees combined went 3-for-26.
* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati reds, 9-5 at Redland Field (later Crosley Field) in Cincinnati. Edd Roush went 4-for-5 with a home run and 5 RBIs. Ross Youngs went 1-for-4 for the Giants.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Washington Senators, 7-0 at National Park (later Griffith Stadium) in Washington. Bernie Boland pitched a 5-hit shutout. Ty Cobb went 1-for-3 with 2 walks, a stolen base and an RBI.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-5 at Weeghman Park (later Cubs Park and Wrigley Field) in Chicago.
* The Boston Braves swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Cardinals, 8-4 and 4-3 at Robison Field in St. Louis. (Yes, "Robison," named for the brothers who owned the Cards, not "Robinson.") Over the 2 games, the Braves' Buzz Murphy went 5-for-8 with a walk and 3 RBIs. The Cards' Rogers Hornsby was injured, and did not play in either game.
"Blue laws," prohibiting professional sports (among other things) from being held on Sundays, prevented games from being played in the States of Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. This didn't affect the Yankees, the Giants or the Phillies, all of whom were on the road. But it interrupted a series between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago White Sox at Fenway Park; one between the Philadelphia Athletics and the St. Louis Browns at Shibe Park; and one between the Brooklyn Robins (the once-and-future) Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field.
These laws were struck down in New York in 1919, in Massachusetts in 1928, and in Pennsylvania in 1933.
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