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Reno County: Vice President Theodore Roosevelt

June 23, 2021 by Jim Potter 2 Comments

http://jimpotterauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Reno-County-Vice-President-Theodore-Roosevelt-online-audio-converter.com_.mp3

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt

•

Line drawing of Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, Hutchinson News, August 14, 1901.
President Theodore Roosevelt, c1904, Pach Bros. (Firm), photographer.

It’s noon Wednesday, August 14, 1901 in Hutchinson, Kansas, as the Santa Fe train pulls away from the crowded depot, headed east, then north out of town towards Kansas City.

Sarah “Sally” Lowber Hooper, 40, and John Walter Hooper, 46, with six of their seven children, are still waving at Vice President Theodore Roosevelt who remains on the rear-end platform as it picks up speed. Veterans and others are rushing after the Pullman car, attempting to shake hands with Colonel Roosevelt.

*

“It was worth the trip to town,” said Sally to John. “The vice president knows how to engage a crowd. It was a short speech, but he did not disappoint.”

“He’s had plenty of practice,” said John. “Roosevelt was all over the country campaigning for the McKinley-Roosevelt ticket last year. And he won a tight race for governor of New York before that.”

“He’s only been vice president for five months,” said Sally, “but he’s already made it clear that he’s running for president in 1904. If I have the vote by then, he’ll get mine,” she said with a straight face.”

“It’s an unusual political move for Roosevelt to announce his intentions so early in the game,” said John. “However, since President McKinley’s ineligible for a consecutive third term, TR’s still loyal to the Republican Party.”

“Hanna, the top political boss in the country, isn’t fooling anyone,” said Sally. “He made sure Roosevelt was nominated as vice president, not because he was a supporter, but because he wanted Governor Roosevelt out of New York before the reformer ran for a second term. Hanna got what he wanted. Roosevelt was kicked upstairs to the vice presidency.”

“Roosevelt is trying to outmaneuver Mark Hanna, the king maker,” said John. “The presidential election in 1904 will be especially interesting as we see who will compete against TR.”

Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Passenger Depot, Hutchinson, KS. Opened to the public in October 1897, at Main Street & 3rd Avenue, the photographer was Marion W. Bailey. Unknown date. Postmarked 1908. Author’s collection

“Roosevelt is an impressive speaker because he shows his personality and connects with individuals by speaking directly to them,” said Sally. “I’ll bet every Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) solider thought the colonel was talking to him personally.

“His strong jaw muscles remind me of a snapping turtle, if it had teeth” Sally continued. “Teddy has a hard voice yet it cracked in falsetto a few times when he got excited.”

“He was smiling and bowing to everyone,” said John. “I appreciate that he said it was a special honor to speak to those men who from ‘61 to ‘65 upheld the integrity of the nation and the honor of the flag. The old soldiers fought for a united country and an unsullied flag, but they also left a memory of deeds and an example for future generations.”

“I liked it when he asked that one old soldier what state he enlisted from,” continued John. “The soldier answered ‘Ohio.’ Then TR repeated the question to another soldier. ‘New York’ was that response. Then veterans started calling out every state in the union. I thought about my father, and almost cried out Kentucky.”

John was eight years old when his father, Sampson, died in 1864 at the infamous Andersonville Prison in Georgia. As a private, he had served with the 11th Cavalry, Company D.

“Roosevelt made his point that when men were marching into battle they didn’t care which state a man hailed from or what his religious belief might be,” said Sally. “They only cared about the worth of the man—would he fight and not run?”

“It was a simple but powerful message to our veterans,” said John. “It was by meeting difficulties and overcoming them that the men saved the union. It was because they met their duties manfully.”

*

Henry Hartford during the Civil War era when he was a member of the 8th New Jersey Volunteer Regiment. Lynne Hartford Collection

At age 64, Henry Hartford still looked trim and fit in his Lt. Colonel’s Army blue from his service days with the 8th New Jersey Volunteer Regiment. Henry and Alice Elizabeth, 47, were participating in the reunion while camping with their four living children at Camp Dan Sickles, at the new park on the north part of town. But they had arrived at the Santa Fe depot, eager to see and hear Teddy Roosevelt.

Henry, who had been wounded five times during the Civil War, and Elizabeth, who was only a child during the bloody conflict, were pleased with Roosevelt’s speech. TR was full of eloquence. He said all the right things without getting into politics. The vice president had given credit to the men in blue who had been in a real fight with long marches and privations.

On one hand, Civil War veterans regarded the Spanish-American War as mere fly-swatting and its veterans dressed in khaki as upstarts; on the other hand, Roosevelt was honored for his brief military service, and his work as assistant secretary of the Navy.

True enough, Roosevelt was a war hero for organizing the 1st Volunteer Cavalry and for his courageous charge up San Juan Hill (actually Kettle Hill), in Cuba. As commander of the unit known as the Rough Riders, it suffered heavy casualties. But, Roosevelt had made a big splash in the newspapers; it wasn’t comparable to four long years of deadly struggle, but it was bravery at its best.

*

Elizabeth appreciated Roosevelt’s speech. The vice president hadn’t mentioned Elizabeth by name, but he was talking to her and Henry because they had helped settle the land. After thanking the old soldiers for their service, TR spoke to the sturdy pioneers who first broke up the wild prairie soil and captured the west for civilization. That was the Thomas family, Elizabeth’s parents, in Indiana and again in Little River Township, Reno County. That was Henry, who also brought law and order to the county as its second elected sheriff.

*

A.T.&S.F. Passenger Depot and Park, Hutchinson, KS. Photo by Marion W. Bailey. Unknown date. Postmarked 1913. Author’s collection

After the crowd at the depot had thinned out, Alice Elizabeth Hartford asked Sally Hooper, “Did you know that TR’s first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, died two days after she gave birth to their first child, also named Alice?”

“Yes,” answered Sally. “TR’s mother died within hours of his wife, but I hear that Teddy doesn’t like to talk about his personal loss.”

Henry Hartford, a successful farmer and stockman, added some additional information to the conversation about the vice president. “After losing his wife and mother, Roosevelt threw himself into his political work but later fled to the Dakota Territory Badlands. He bought two ranches and a thousand head of cattle.

“He flourished in the hardships of the frontier,” continued Henry, “herding cows as a rancher, hunting grizzly bears, and chasing outlaws as leader of a posse.”

“He learned a lot from the frontier,” said Sally, “especially how the blizzards could decimate a herd of his cattle. But by that time, so I’ve heard, he’d fallen in love again with his childhood sweetheart back in New York.

“Even though people say Roosevelt has led a charmed life,” continued Sally, “he’s survived tragedies and seems to flourish in adversity. He’s the type of national leader who I could support, if I had the vote.

*

Until next time, happy writing and reading.

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Filed Under: Blog posts Tagged With: Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, Andersonville Prison, Civil War, Dakota Badlands, Governor Roosevelt, Grand Army of the Republic, Henry Hartford, Hutchinson Kansas, Hutchinson News, Jim Potter, John Walter Hooper, Kansas Authors Club, Kettle Hill, Lynne Hartford, Marion W. Bailey, Mark Hanna, McKinley-Roosevelt ticket, Reno County, Reno County Sheriff, Sampson Hooper, San Juan Hill, Sarah Sally Lowber Hooper, Sheriffs of Reno County, Spanish-American War, Teddy Roosevelt, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt

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Comments

  1. Alex says

    June 23, 2021 at 10:04 am

    History being made!

    Reply
    • Jim Potter says

      June 23, 2021 at 10:13 am

      It happened in Hutchinson, Kansas!

      Reply

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What People Are Saying

Denise Low, author of Jackalope (Red Mountain Press)

Jim Potter is a cop, retired, but he brings deep understanding of this job to his novel Taking Back the Bullet: Trajectories of Self-Discovery. This layered novel has literary dimensions as characters explore crisis situations. Congratulations to this fine writer for his debut novel.

Rebecca from Proud Police Wife

Taking Back the Bullet is an emotional, yet captivating novel. Jim Potter does a superb job of intertwining each character and putting their individual identities on display. All law enforcement storylines are a true reflection of Potter’s years as a police officer because they are realistic and relatable. This is a book I highly recommend.

Dennis Perrin, educator

Masterful storytelling, exquisite character development, so real as to HURT and HOPE, a real page turner. Begs for stage, screenwriters, and visual episodic development a.k.a. TV series . . . Thanks Jim Potter for telling it like it is AND providing us visions of how it could be. Well done!

Rebecca Schillaci

As a former law enforcement officer, I found the story very relatable as it details the life of a law enforcement officer and the struggles some face throughout their careers. . . Taking Back the Bullet is a journey of understanding, respect, and forgiveness . . .

Sheryl Remar

I enjoyed the different stories of this book because Tom, James, and Suanna, the three main characters, represent in their own way the different struggles with themselves and society’s idea of what is normal.

John & Cindy Morrill, 20 years Air Force retired, 17 years law enforcement

I enjoyed your book. When I am looking for a new read, I always read the first page, last page and choose a random page somewhere in the middle before I decide to buy it. You had me on all three pages. I also like reading a book where you can relate to the characters and the settings in which they live and work. It makes a story more realistic if you can say, I am familiar with the area; I know where that town is or I have traveled that street. It was easy to relate to the characters. In one way or another, I have met them all somewhere in my journeys.

Judy Hawk

. . . I was impressed with the Native American information as well as the depth of character development . . . .

Wynona Winn, PhD, retired school superintendent

Three main characters walk different paths but with the same destination – each coping with his or her self-discovery, self-identity, and self-realization. Much like their earlier counterparts – Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield – their journeys are often joyous, often tedious and often tragic.

Diana Dester

Good story line, building the characters along the way. Great job!

Deb Theis, LSCSW, clinical therapist/hypnotherapist

Jim Potter has done it again! After his book, Cop in the Classroom: Lessons I’ve Learned, Tales I’ve Told, Jim has written another great work. In Taking Back the Bullet: Trajectories of Self-Discovery, Jim Potter takes us on an insightful journey into the lives and relationships of numerous characters. Jim is such a talented storyteller that the reader quickly becomes immersed and has a ‘bonding experience’ with each of the characters, feeling their joy, fear, passion and pain. Jim’s novel speaks to the empowerment of persistence with the characters as they work through their trials. As a therapist, I appreciated the heartfelt struggles from each of the characters and their diversity. I also found value in the novel’s understanding of society’s misunderstanding of both mental health and other conditions in which people struggle. The novel contains rich exposure to various realities that many of us do not know about . . . but should. When I finished this captivating novel, I was wanting to read the sequel! It was an honor and a wonderful, mesmerizing experience reading this book. Congratulations, Jim!

Jane Holzrichter

I finished it last night around midnight. What a great piece of work. It kept me intrigued all the way to the end.

Sean McArdle, Winchester, England

Retired police officer Potter’s novel centres on very disparate characters and through the tried and tested means of gradually introducing each one, builds a sense of anticipation about what is going to happen to them. This often used methodology is not easy to do well but is superbly handled by Potter who knows how to give enough detail to bring the characters to life, yet not too much so as to slow down the pace of the developing story. A climactic event affects the main characters and it is at this point Potter’s deep knowledge of people and police procedures really hits home; page by page we read how a seemingly simple, though terrible occurrence, can have huge consequences. To Potter’s credit the story does not have a completely conclusive or simplistic ending. Instead it leaves the reader thinking about how the events of a single minute can affect lives forever. I would whole heartedly recommend this book not as a crime novel or even as a novel about crime but as a beautiful and positive affirmation about what it is to be human and how ultimately it is relationships which matter more than events.

Morgan Penner

Taking Back the Bullet is a novel that provides the reader with a window into the world of law enforcement. As the novel unfolds, the reader is able to see how split-second decisions alter the lives of the main characters in the story. Taking Back the Bullet also explores how humanity is impacted by mental illness. One of my favorite quotes from Taking Back the Bullet is “We’re all just a critical moment from being disabled or mentally ill, and we don’t want to think about it.” The novel also provides the reader an opportunity to gain a better understanding of how mental illness impacts the individuals, their family, friends, and society. Taking Back the Bullet is a story of forgiveness and overcoming life’s struggles and tragedies.

Steve Becker

I’m impressed. It was an excellent read. . . . I hope you continue with more projects in the future.

Larry Kruckman, anthropologist

Jim Potter displays ethnographic skills in Taking Back the Bullet: Trajectories of Self-Discovery, creating vivid scenes and fascinating characters. The Greeks had a word for subcultures and people’s behavior: ‘ethos,’ or ‘ways of being.’ In colorful, sometimes marvelous detail, this novel captures various people and settings . . . the ethos of rural Kansas: a jail, art fair, powwow, rehab center, courtroom, albinos, and even someone in the throes of postpartum depression. So detailed are the descriptions that they must be drawn from the author’s personal experience. Besides the artfully created characters such as the struggling jailer and husband Tom Jennings, local artist Jesse Thomas, and Native American Joe Morningcloud, there is a tight story line that grabs your attention and won’t let go. Human tensions, love, conflict, joys and sorrows are all there. Magically, all the many pieces come together in a final crescendo, giving hope that even when we find ourselves in big trouble we can survive. This is a novel I highly recommend!

Larry Kruckman
Anthropologist
Karleen Wilson-Moon

Terrific story relevant to today’s social issues . . . well written . . . likable characters . . . insightful perspective from an insider in law enforcement.

Karleen Wilson-Moon

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