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His associates, concerned about security risks in an age of anarchist violence, urged the president to cancel a planned public reception at the fair. Knowing how much the kind-hearted McKinley hated to disappoint anyone, his personal secretary George Cortelyou tried another tack, reminding his boss that he couldn’t possibly shake hands with all the thousands assembled to see him.

“Well, they’ll know I tried, anyhow,” McKinley told Cortelyou.

In the event, a group of uniformed soldiers, added as a precaution at the last minute, obstructed the view of the president’s regular security staff, enabling Leon Czolgosz to get off two shots. “I didn’t believe one man should have so much service, and another man should have none,” explained the assassin. On the day of McKinley’s funeral, the nation observed five minutes of silence. Secretary of State John Hay declared of the late president that he “showed in his life how a citizen should live, and in his last hour taught us how a great leader could die”—words that would echo over seventy years later in Walter Mondale’s eulogy to his old friend Hubert Humphrey.

Ironically, the invalid Ida McKinley would outlive her husband by six years, during which the First Lady, who had been chronically ill, never again experienced one of the seizures that had cast a shadow over her married life.

—-RNS

Theodore Roosevelt

Buried: Young’s Memorial Cemetery, Oyster Bay, New York

Twenty-sixth President - 1901-1909

Born: October 27, 1858, in New York, New York

Died: 4:00 a.m. on January 6, 1919, in Oyster Bay, New York

Age at death: 60

Cause of death: Embolism

Final words: “James, will you please put out the light?”

Admission to Young’s Memorial Cemetery: Free

Theodore Roosevelt, “Rough Rider,” trust buster, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and champion of the Panama Canal, lived for ten years after leaving the White House and had one of the most active retirements of any president. Elected in his own right in 1904 after finishing McKinley’s term, TR promised to retire after only a single full term in the White House. His hand-picked protégé, William Howard Taft, easily won the election of 1908.

After his successor’s inauguration, Roosevelt returned to his Long Island home. He soon left the relative peace of Sagamore Hill to explore Africa. With an entourage numbering in the hundreds, Roosevelt and his son Kermit took a twelve-month safari, collecting samples of African wildlife for the Smithsonian Institution’s collection.

Teddy Roosevelt’s own words on a plaque near his grave

Returning to the United States in 1910, Roosevelt became convinced that President Taft had shifted too far to the right. He decided to challenge the incumbent. Falling short of winning the Republican nomination for president in 1912, he created the Progressive, or Bull Moose party, which split the GOP vote and put Woodrow Wilson in the White House. During the campaign, Roosevelt was the target of an assassination attempt by a deranged gunman. Shot in the chest, Roosevelt proceeded to give his scheduled speech before going to the hospital.

Over the next few years, TR continued to travel and write extensively. His lifelong passion for physical activity was his counterbalance for poor health, but his exertions caught up with him. He was hospitalized for a month in February 1918, following complications after emergency surgery on his leg. He never fully regained his balance. By the time he reached age sixty, TR was deaf in one ear, blind in one eye, and half-crippled with rheumatism. The pain in his joints grew so bad that his doctor ordered bed rest. TR disobeyed and was hospitalized a few days later. He remained in the hospital for seven weeks with his wife Edith by his side.

A considerably weakened Roosevelt returned home to his Sagamore Hill estate late in 1918. Devastated by the death of his youngest son Quentin in World War I, he spent most of his days resting. On January 4, 1919, Roosevelt’s White House valet, James Amos, came to the Roosevelt