A Father Mourns the Loss of His Son in Battle, 1919

“Roosevelt As He Mourned for His Son Is Typical of Millions” from the Feb. 6, 1919 issue of The Watauga Democrat, Boone

The intensely human side of Colonel Roosevelt’s life is indicated in a letter received by the editor of The Manufacturers Record from a friend, who, writing about Colonel Roosevelt’s death, said:

“Did you read where the Colonel had been found lately in the stable with Quentin’s pony, which is 20 years old? It is the pony that climbed to the second story of the White House when Quentin was a child. The Colonel was found shortly after he heard of the death of his boy in France with his arms around the pony’s neck, crying.”

In this little story is seen a touch of one side of Col. Roosevelt’s life of which the public rarely heard much. Here is the iron-nerved fighter melted into the tender-hearted father, as round the neck of Quentin’s boyhood pony he throws his arms and weeps in silence that in the great call of civilization his boy has had to make the supreme sacrifice.

As our hearts are melted at the thought of Roosevelt weeping for his boy, let us remember that millions and millions of fathers and mothers, wives and others have had to week because their loved ones had had to suffer and die because of the accursed work of Germany, which for half a century planned wholesale murder that it might loot and lust to heart’s content.

Roosevelt, as he threw his arms around the neck of Quentin’s pony and wept for his boy, typified the mighty woe of hundreds of millions who for four years lived in the agony of fear, and of tens of millions whose dear ones never came back and who unto the grave will carry the burden of their sorrow.