| Before his days as an environmentalist, author, before Edith or Alice, before his exploits in Cuba with the Rough Riders, and long before his dynamic presidency ushered in the 20th century with classic American boldness, Theodore Roosevelt was a dashing and charismatic undergrad at Harvard College. In an article dated October 12, 1901 in the Saturday Evening Post, Owen Wister, a college classmate of Roosevelt’s, wrote about his first meeting with the future president.
 The setting casts Wister as a sophomore pledge for a “joyful society” that he preferred to keep nameless. “It was my fortune to be chosen into this society; and during the days of penance that were, so to speak, my preliminary examination, it was still my greater fortune to encounter Mr. Theodore Roosevelt.”
Wister continued, “He was an upper-classman. The days of his penance lay two years behind him, and he was only visiting the tortures of a younger generation, as all upper-class members of the society were expected and invited to do.” Wister describes the room as “smoke filled,” full of books and pictures. According to Wister, there were four to five pledges seated on the floor. “I had been obeying the whims and inspirations of those members of the society who happened to be the torturers that evening.”
To Wister, this pledging session grew very boring rather fast. He and his pledge brothers grew weary, as time seemed to stand still. He claims that he felt more sorry for members of the society rather than himself. This went on until the arrival of on remarkable upperclassman. “I shall never forget the difference that his presence made in our spirits.” Wister enjoyed the “tricks” that the young Roosevelt enforced upon the pledges. The Manhattan native brought an energy that had been lacking in the room for those long drawn hours of eye bleeding boredom.
Wister and his pledge brothers enjoyed Roosevelt’s chiding so much that they wished to ask him to stay; yet Wister claims, “But this, of course, was impossible from a sophomore and a stranger to an upper-classman. Therefore I had to be content with my silent enjoyment, and presently it as all over.” Just like that, his first encounter with the man who would be the nation’s 26th president was all over.
Although Roosevelt’s time there would only last for a little over ten minutes, Wister describes the moment with such vivid detail. “There had been a breeze of robust good humor and geniality throughout the room. When he departed we all became again immediately as dull as ditch-water. I shall never forget it, this first impression of Theodore Roosevelt.”
After his days at Harvard, Wister went on to become a bank clerk in New York, but finally found his calling as a writer. After graduating from Harvard Law in 1888, Wister spent a brief time practicing law, but reached international fame with his writings centered on the developing western region of the United States. He would be one of the pioneers to create a genre that we know today as the “Wild West.” That’s right, without him, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood would have not been professionally tied to cowboy flicks, and Bonanza may not have become a classic American television hit. Kids, to this day play “cowboys and Indians” is based off the images that Wister placed in the American social fabric.
Their undergraduate meeting would not be the last encounter between Wister and Roosevelt. They would go on to be close friends well into Roosevelt’s presidency and the years after. It’s no surprise that America’s first “cowboy” president would befriend the creator of the genre that Roosevelt himself embodied.
-Club Relaford Staff |
