"Great-Heart": The Life Story of Theodore RooseveltHenderson, Daniel
General
"Great-Heart": The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt
Henderson, Daniel
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
Then there was Quentin--the youngest--who derived his name from an
ancestor who left France 225 years ago. Quentin suffered from a defect
of vision, which led to his rejection in the first officers’ training
camp. He was wild to get to the front; and his next thought was to
become an airman. It was natural that the father, who had ridden
bucking broncos, should be pleased to see in his youngest a desire to
gain mastery over a bucking airplane. And it was also very natural that
the father should want to try the aerial steed for himself. Hence it
was that early one morning the car of the Colonel, driven by Charley
Lee, his colored chauffeur, shot down Sagamore Hill to the aviation
camp at Mineola, Long Island.
The Colonel’s arrival had been anticipated, for a group of army
officers left a nearby hangar and strode forward to greet him. For
a moment the Colonel was a youth again, keenly interested in the
mechanics of the car and as eager as Quentin to explore the virgin
reaches of space. With nonchalance, yet with a heart that no doubt
thumped with excitement, the Colonel climbed into the airplane and
helped the pilot to buckle him in. The next moment the former President
of the United States had soared away on his first air flight. After
a forty minutes’ ride over and about Long Island Sound, in which all
of the eccentricities of aerial travel were demonstrated, the Colonel
was volplaned to the ground. Every other experience in the realm of
sportsmanship had been his--and now the climactic experience had been
accomplished.
Having met his own boy Quentin on his own ground, and having, as a
father, learned for himself just what his son was proposing to do, he
went back to that interview with Quentin, which resulted in his giving
his consent to his enrollment in the most dangerous branch of the
service. Quentin was on the verge of applying for enlistment in the
Canadian Flying Corps when it was announced that the War Department
had accepted him in the U. S. Aviation Section. He went with the first
flying unit to France in July, 1917, reaching France a few weeks after
Archie and Theodore, Jr.
One day, just after his brothers, Theodore and Archie, had gone to
France, Colonel Roosevelt was entertaining about a thousand visitors at
a patriotic rally at Sagamore Hill. An army airplane soared up the bay.
The airman performed various maneuvers that thrilled the throng but the
father did not know till days afterward that the daring aviator was
Quentin.
It was one of the ironies of life that not long after this episode
there came an overseas cable to Colonel Roosevelt which brought the war
home to him in a way that can only be realized by the man who has lost
a son.
Mr. Philip E. Thompson, a newspaper man stationed at Oyster Bay, has
thus described how the Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt bore the news of
their loss:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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