'Teedie' to Teddy to TR: Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1919-A Centenary Commemorative Essay

摘要

TR's New York City Knickerbocker family endearingly called the asthmatic future president "Teedie" in his prepubescence. Later, during his political ascendency, the press would jocularly refer to him by the despised nickname "Teddy," hence the iconic "Teddy" bear. Overridinglythen, as now-the world would also attribute the sobriquet "TR" to the charismatic Theodore Roosevelt (October 27, 1858 to January 6, 1919), the first president so familiarly addressed. In attempting to characterize TR's outsize personality, scholars have also routinely ascribed other epithets to him, such as "conservative elitist," "progressive reformer," "cowboy," "warrior," etc. For stages of TR's extremely complicated life-a life lived not at the margins， but centrally as the quintessentially self-styled "man in the arena"-these pigeonholing characterizations have afforded scholars conceptual insights into what friend and seminal biographer Hermann Hagedorn (The Boys' Life of Theodore Roosevelt, 1918; Roosevelt in the Bad Lands, 1921) termed as TR's "infinite variety." Charles L. Brown is assistant provost and dean of University Libraries at Sullivan University.