All children inherit varying traits of both parents.

The Second Son

Kermit Roosevelt (1889-1943) was the second son of Theodore Roosevelt and his second wife, Edith Kermit Carow, named him for a great uncle and a brother, who died in infancy. While all TR’s six children inherited parts of his many traits, Kermit was the one most like his mother. He looked like her. He had her sensitivities. He was said to be her favorite (if she admitted to any).

As a boy, he was smart as a whip, athletic, practical, and like all Roosevelts, a voracious reader, lover of poetry and excellent writer. One could not survive at Sagamore Hill without exceptional literacy. His gift for languages was his own however. While both of his parents had mild linguistic competence, Kermit had a talent for it.

Kermit attended the local grammar school in Oyster Bay, followed by Groton (mandatory for the family boys), and then to Harvard. He had just started Groton when his father became President in 1901.

Throwback Traits

Kermit’s inherent melancholy and predilection for alcohol was also a family trait. 

Edith’s father, Charles Carow, was a source of disappointment and embarrassment to his family. He drank, and subsequently his business efforts failed. Some sources believe that an embarrassed adult-Edith destroyed a fair amount of Carow documents.

Then there was Elliott Roosevelt, TR’s younger brother. He developed a thirst for alcohol while he was still in his teens. It was complicated by a secondary addiction to laudanum. He spent more than a decade in and out of sanitariums, and died at 34. 

While Theodore and Edith had their moods and cares like everyone, Kermit was a different case.

Kermit the Companion

Of all TR’s sons, it was Kermit who also inherited his father’s enthusiasm and dedication to outdoor adventure and natural science. 

In 1909, when his 50-year-old father was “retiring” from the Presidency, he opted on a year-long safari in Africa, under the auspices of the Smithsonian. Kermit, who had just begun his Harvard education, opted to take a year off and join the expedition. It could arguably be said to have been his happiest year. Father and son bonded very closely, and the expedition was successful – and joyful.

Kermit returned to Harvard, plowed through his academics and earned a degree in engineering in 1912. He had just embarked on a career when his father was invited on a trip through an unexplored region of the Amazon. Edith Roosevelt, perhaps fearing for her always too-eager husband’s well-being, pleaded with her sensible, but reluctant son to accompany him.

Having become fluent in Portuguese, Kermit Roosevelt was more than a pleasant companion on what became a difficult and dangerous exploratory expedition. Keeping his melancholy confined to his diary, he became a leader in the expedition, and actually saved his father’s life. TR, seriously ill with malaria, had also gashed his leg to a point that could prove fatal, and insisted the group continue without him. He planned to overdose himself with morphine. Kermit, also ill with malaria, refused to accept that scenario, and oversaw TR’s evacuation on a stretcher until he could be transported to a hospital. 

The First War….and Beyond

After his return Amazon, Kermit married and joined a banking firm in Brazil, where his linguistic skills would be beneficial. But by 1917 when the Great War (as it was then called) erupted in Europe, all four Roosevelt sons were among the first to enlist. Their father lobbied hard to recruit and lead a regiment, but a wiser Woodrow Wilson refused. 

Unlike his three brothers (pictured above) who had some officer training, Kermit had little if any military experience. Nevertheless, he received a voluntary commission from the British government, and was sent to the Middle East, where he quickly learned Arabic, and proved his value, earning the British War Cross. He was also the only Roosevelt son who was not injured – or killed. He returned home, and wrote a well-received book War in the Garden of Eden.

He continued his outdoor exploratory travels through the 1920s, along with founding a steamship company. He also continued to write engaging books (co-authored with his brother Ted) about those adventures. 

But Kermit’s periodic depression and chronic alcoholism had become a part of his daily routine. The Great Depression, which drained his finances, did not help matters. Nevertheless, he continued writing and traveling. And while he was a great worry to his family, his dissipation was under tight wraps – and out of the headlines.

The End Is Near

As WWII approached, he (and his two surviving brothers) were eager to serve their country as they had in the First War, even though they were well over age and both Ted and Archie had serious, long-standing war-related injuries. Kermit enlisted with the British Army for a while, but was considered of a liability because of his drinking. He returned home, and descended further into alcoholism.

President FDR reluctantly commissioned Kermit into the US Army, and sent him to a remote outpost in Alaska, to engineer and build defenses. In 1943, after only a few months, he put a bullet in his head.

Kermit Roosevelt was a great lover of poetry. While still at Groton, he “discovered” the poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson and recommended him to his President-father, who agreed with his young son’s assessment. Robinson, eventually a multi-Pulitzer prize winner and frequent Nobel nominee, had written his most famous poem, Richard Cory, still considered a classic today. (Read it!) No doubt Kermit understood the poem better than most.

Edith Roosevelt, now past eighty, along with the rest of the world, was told that her son had a heart attack.

Sources:

Hagedorn, Hermann – The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill – Macmillan, 1954

Miller, Candace – The River of Doubt – Random House, 2005

Renehan, Edward J., Jr. – The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War – Oxford University Press, 1998

https://www.shakariconnection.com/kermit-roosevelt-books.html

https://www.nps.gov/people/kermit-roosevelt.htm