21 Great Leaders: Learn Their Lessons, Improve Your Influence (23 page)

The two bullies didn’t hurt T.R., but they humiliated him. His physical weakness made him deeply ashamed. Later that summer, when he returned home, Theodore asked his father if he could take boxing lessons. Theodore Sr. didn’t ask why his son wanted boxing lessons, though he probably suspected. Young Theodore took lessons from a former prizefighter, John Long. He took to the sport with enthusiasm, and boxing proved to be another experience that solidified his self-esteem and his character.
⁵

T.R. was educated by tutors at home. In 1876, he passed the challenging entrance exams for Harvard College, and enrolled in the fall. Before he left for school, his father gave him a bit of advice about character: “Take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies.” At Harvard, he studied biology and philosophy. He was active in boxing and rowing, and was an editor of the
Harvard Advocate
. He graduated from Harvard with a bachelor of arts magna cum laude in 1880.

While Theodore Roosevelt was at Harvard, his father was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. Young Theodore knew his father was ill but had no idea how serious it was. Theodore Sr. didn’t want to disrupt his son’s studies, so he kept the seriousness of his illness from Theodore Jr. When Theodore Sr. was on his deathbed, the family sent a telegram to T.R., informing him his father was dying, and he should come home right away. The young Roosevelt took the next train home, arriving just a few hours after his father passed away.
⁶

Theodore Roosevelt celebrated his twenty-second birthday, October 27, 1880, by wedding Alice Hathaway Lee, the daughter of banker George Cabot Lee. Theodore and Alice had one daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt, born on February 12, 1884. Two days later, on Valentine’s Day, Theodore’s mother succumbed to typhoid fever at three in the morning. Later that afternoon, in an upstairs room in the same house, Theodore’s wife, Alice, died from kidney failure, which had been masked by the pregnancy.

In a twist of fate too cruel to comprehend, Theodore Roosevelt lost both his mother and his twenty-two-year-old wife on the same day in the same house. That night before he went to bed, a grieving Theodore Roosevelt inscribed a huge black X in his journal then wrote a single tortured sentence: “The light has gone out of my life.”
⁷

Crushed by grief, Roosevelt placed baby Alice in the care of his older sister, Anna (he would take baby Alice back into his home after she turned three). He dealt with his sorrow by plunging into his work, focusing on state legislative issues and problems of corruption in New York City. Roosevelt’s crusade against public corruption won him considerable praise and popularity.

After a while, he found that his workaholism didn’t ease his pain. He needed a change—a
big
change. He left New York City and headed west. In the Badlands of the Dakota Territory, he purchased the Chimney Butte Ranch. There he hunted buffalo and lived the life of a working cowboy.

An incident from this part of his career shows how far he had come from that sickly, timid thirteen-year-old who was so easily bullied. Roosevelt was traveling by horseback around the western Dakota Territory and eastern Montana Territory. It was late in the evening when he arrived in Mingusville (now known as Wibaux, Montana). He was tying up his horse in front of Nolan’s Hotel when he heard gunfire from the barroom.

“I disliked going in,” he later recalled. “But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night.” He walked into the bar and found the bartender and several patrons being intimidated by a man Roosevelt described as a “shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand,” pacing the floor and “talking with strident profanity.”

Roosevelt sized the man up as a bully. “As soon as he saw me,” T.R. recalled, “he hailed me as ‘Four Eyes,’ in reference to my spectacles, and said, ‘Four Eyes is going to treat.’ I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice.”

But the bully had selected Roosevelt as his victim. He strode over to where Roosevelt sat, leaned over him with a gun in each hand, and ordered “Four Eyes” to set up a round of drinks.

“Well,” Roosevelt replied, rising carefully to his feet, “if I’ve got to, I’ve got to.”

Then, summoning his boxing training, Roosevelt delivered a quick, hard right jab to the point of the bully’s jaw, then a left, then another right. The guns in the bully’s fists both fired—though T.R. didn’t know if the man was trying to shoot him or if he just clenched his trigger fingers convulsively when struck in the face.

The bully went down like a felled tree, striking the corner of the bar with his head. Roosevelt was ready to drop low if the bully came up shooting—but the man lay still at T.R.’s feet. “I took away his guns,” Roosevelt recalled, “and the other people in the room, who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put him in the shed.”

The next morning, the bully departed of his own volition on a passing freight train.
⁸

Roosevelt was twenty-six at the time and undoubtedly felt a sense of personal redemption in finally having the upper hand over a bully. He had already taken on the bullying of political bosses in New York. Now he had proven he could take on a gun-toting thug of the Badlands. Consciously or unconsciously, he undoubtedly saw his ability to deal a counterblow to oppressors as a sign of character growth.

After several harsh years as a cattle rancher in the Dakotas, Roosevelt returned to New York City. In December 1886, he married his childhood friend Edith Kermit Carow. They had five children; Theodore III, Kermit, Ethel, Archibald, and Quentin. He ran for mayor of New York City and lost, but in the 1890s he became a vigorous foe of crime and corruption as New York City police commissioner.

In 1897, largely on the strength of T.R.’s highly respected book,
The Naval War of 1812
, President William McKinley appointed him assistant secretary of the navy. Roosevelt used his authority to modernize the navy prior to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War.

When the war broke out in 1898, it was clear that the United States Army was still weakened and ill-prepared three decades after the Civil War. Roosevelt resigned his post with the navy and joined with Army Colonel Leonard Wood to create the First US Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. Roosevelt recruited cowboys and college athletes, mostly from the American Southwest. Wood and Roosevelt put the men through intensive training and drilling. The newspapers dubbed them “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.”

In May 1898, more than a thousand Rough Riders, along with their horses, mules, and equipment, made their way by rail to Tampa, Florida, where they shipped out for Cuba. The Rough Riders came ashore at Daiquiri, Cuba, on June 23, 1898, with Colonel Wood in command and Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt as second in command.

In their first encounter with Spanish forces, the Battle of Las Guasimas, the Rough Riders fought an enemy that was well-hidden by trenches, fortifications, and jungle brush. Early in the battle, one of the men reported to Roosevelt that Colonel Wood had been killed in action. Roosevelt gave himself a field promotion to Colonel then rallied his men and led a charge on the fortification at Las Guasimas. After a battle lasting an hour and a half, the Rough Riders won. They counted their casualties—eight dead and thirty-one wounded.

Roosevelt was surprised to find Colonel Wood among the living—the report of his death had been a case of mistaken identity. If Roosevelt had not seized command of the Rough Riders and led the charge, the outcome of the battle might have been different.

The Rough Riders’ next encounter with the enemy was the Battle of San Juan Hill. Colonel Roosevelt was given vague orders to seize and hold the San Juan Heights, which were occupied by a thousand Spanish soldiers. He was to hold his position until he received orders to advance up the hill. As time passed and no order came, Roosevelt grew impatient.

Finally, Roosevelt drew his sidearm and told his Rough Riders he was leading them up the hill. Then he went to the captain of the platoons behind them, declared himself the ranking officer, and told the captain to prepare his men to charge up the hill. Then he mounted his horse and rode off, waving his hat and calling his men to follow. The Rough Riders pursued Colonel Roosevelt up the hill.

Behind them, Lieutenant John H. Parker watched the charge unfolding and ordered his three Gatling gun operators to spray the top of the heights with machinegun fire. Parker’s quick thinking prevented the Spanish from launching an effective counterattack. Roosevelt, the only man on horseback, rode back and forth in front of the men so that they would have a visible leader to follow. His visibility made him a target for Spanish gunfire, but on that day he eluded every bullet fired at him. T.R. and his Rough Riders seized and held San Juan Heights.

At the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt returned to New York a conquering war hero. The newspapers and the public called him “Teddy,” a nickname he hated. He preferred “Colonel Roosevelt.” He was elected governor of New York, serving from January 1, 1899, to December 31, 1900.

In 1900, Roosevelt was elected vice president of the United States as William McKinley’s running mate. Six months into McKinley’s second term as president (and Roosevelt’s first term as vice president), a misguided anarchist shot President McKinley while he was visiting an exhibit at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley died eight days after the shooting, and Roosevelt, at age forty-two, became our youngest-ever president (John F. Kennedy, at forty-three, was the youngest ever
elected
president). Roosevelt went on to win a full term in 1904.

Roosevelt’s administration focused on guaranteeing a “square deal” for all Americans, including immigrants and the poor. He strengthened America as a global power. His famous slogan “Speak softly and carry a big stick” referred to his philosophy of combining quiet diplomacy with a powerful military that could deter any threats. In spite of Roosevelt’s war-hero image, America was at peace throughout his years in office. He brokered an end to the Russo-Japanese War, and this achievement earned him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize.

One of Theodore Roosevelt’s most lasting legacies resulted from a Mississippi bear hunting trip he took as president in 1902. Some well-meaning attendants had used hounds to chase a black bear then had tied the bear to a willow tree for the president to shoot. Appalled, Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear under unsportsmanlike conditions. Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman of the
Washington Post
drew a cartoon depicting President Roosevelt sparing the bear. The cartoon inspired Morris Michtom of the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company to produce cuddly stuffed bear cubs that were initially called “Teddy’s Bear” but which soon became known as teddy bears.

The issue of character was close to Theodore Roosevelt’s heart from his boyhood to his final breath. He wrote and spoke about character again and again throughout his life. Though few men prized the life of intellect and learning more than Theodore Roosevelt, he placed an even higher premium on strong character. He once said, “Character is far more important than intellect in making a man a good citizen or successful at his calling—meaning by character not only such qualities as honesty and truthfulness, but courage, perseverance, and self-reliance.”
⁹
Here are some of Roosevelt’s best insights on building character into your leadership life:

1.
As a leader, exemplify a strong work ethic
. In a speech to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1902, he said, “Your work is hard. Do you suppose I mention that because I pity you? No; not a bit. I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who doesn’t work…. If a man does his work well and it is worth doing, then it matters but little in which line that work is done.”
¹⁰

During his presidency, Roosevelt spoke to the student body at Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts, May 24, 1904, and said, “The man who wins out must be the man who works. He cannot play all the time…. Let him count in the world. When he comes to the end of his life, let him feel he has pulled his weight and a little more. A sound body is good; a sound mind is better; but a strong and clean character is better than either.”
¹¹

For Roosevelt, hard work was a social obligation, the duty we have to our society and our fellow man. When he began his campaign for governor of New York, 1898, he said, “We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.”
¹²

2.
As a leader, exemplify absolute honesty and integrity
. In his Groton School speech, he said: “To make a good citizen the prime need is to be decent, clean in thought, clean in mind, clean in action…. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground. Be truthful; a lie implies fear, vanity or malevolence; and be frank; furtiveness and insincerity are faults incompatible with true manliness. Be honest, and remember that honesty counts for nothing unless back of it lie courage and efficiency.”
¹³

3.
Be a leader of action, not just words
. Roosevelt believed that character traits and moral values had to be translated into action, or they were nothing but empty platitudes. In a letter to western novelist Owen Wister, July 7, 1915, T.R. said, “I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.”
¹⁴
T.R. also said that to be a person of character and action is to be a person who sometimes makes mistakes: “The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.”
¹⁵