Monday, May 25, 2015

Theodore Roosevelt

OVERCOMING THE ODDS THEODORE ROOSEVELT PLEASE READ This ones a good one. I've told people on Social Media that I refuse to discuss my Political Views and still adhere to that principle. I enjoy reading people's political posts though, whether conservative or liberal etc. I ask that we dont get into a political discussion. However, I will admit my Favorite U.S. President is Theodore Roosevelt. Despite being born to a Privileged Family, Theodore Roosevelt Overcame Odds like No other. This is not a Full Retrospect of his Presidency or Life in General. It's just a look at the Odds he Overcame throughout his whole life.
Roosevelt's youth was largely shaped by his poor health and his need to overcome severe asthma, which has a debilitating impact on the body and personality. He repeatedly experienced sudden nighttime asthma attacks that caused near deathlike experiences of being smothered to death, terrifying Theodore and his parents. Doctors had no cure. Nevertheless, he was energetic and mischievously inquisitive. He even began to work out to build his body. He had discovered the significant benefits of physical exertion to minimize his asthma and bolster his spirits With encouragement from his father, Roosevelt began a heavy regime of exercise. After being manhandled by two older boys on a camping trip, he found a boxing coach to help him strengthen his weakened body and psyche. Roosevelt later articulated the abiding influence of the courageous men he read about, including those in his family: "I was nervous and timid. Yet from reading of the people I admired – ranging from the soldiers of Valley Forge and Morgan's riflemen, to the heroes of my favorite stories – and from hearing of the feats of my southern forefathers and kinsfolk and from knowing my father, I felt a great admiration for men who were fearless and who could hold their own in the world, and I had a great desire to be like them.
Due to his poor health as a child, Roosevelt was mostly Home Schooled. However, that didnt stop him from being a Star Student at Harvard. Roosevelt's Father died while he was at Harvard which greatly devastated him. However, Teddy doubled his activities and focused even harder on his studies and excelled.
Fast forwarding to Teddy's First Marriage. TR's first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, died the same day as TR's mother and this was just two day's after Alice had given birth to Teddy's first child.
On October 14, 1912, while campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Roosevelt was shot by a saloonkeeper named John Flammang Schrank, but the bullet lodged in his chest only after penetrating his steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick single-folded copy of the speech he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not completely penetrated the chest wall to his lung, and he declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. Afterwards, probes and an x-ray showed that the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pleura, and it would be less dangerous to leave it in place. Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life.
During a trip to South America in his Post-Presidency, Roosevelt suffered a minor leg wound after he jumped into the river to try to prevent two canoes from smashing against the rocks. The flesh wound he received, however, soon gave him tropical fever that resembled the malaria he had contracted while in Cuba fifteen years before. Because the bullet lodged in his chest from the assassination attempt in 1912 was never removed, his health worsened from the infection.This weakened Roosevelt so greatly that six weeks into the adventure, he had to be attended to day and night by the expedition's physician and his son Kermit. By then, he could not walk because of the infection in his injured leg and an infirmity in the other, which was due to a traffic accident a decade earlier. Roosevelt was riddled with chest pains, fighting a fever that soared to 103 °F (39 °C) and at times made him delirious. Regarding his condition as a threat to the survival of the others, Roosevelt insisted he be left behind to allow the poorly provisioned expedition to proceed as rapidly as it could. Only an appeal by his son persuaded him to continue. Teddy survived.
Teddy Roosevelt overcame poor health as a child, the odds of not excelling at an Ivy League School due to an unstructured education, the loss of his father, the loss of his wife and mother on the same day, an Assassination attempt in which he then spoke for 90 minutes with the bullet in his body, a near death experience in South America and became President and a War Hero.
My friends, If this is not OVERCOMING THE ODDS I dont know what is?? Teddy Roosevelt, An American Lion, A Man Who Could Not Be Bought!! Long Live TR!!!






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