Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt enters the narrative not as its central subject but as a recurring presence in Harry S. Truman’s formation: a writer in books that stirred a boy’s ambitions, a president seen speaking in Kansas City, and a prominent Mason whose name helped give the fraternity historical stature. These appearances trace Roosevelt’s place in Truman’s world from private reading to public life and civic fellowship.

A Figure in Truman’s Reading

For his tenth birthday in 1894, Truman’s mother gave him four volumes of Great Men and Famous Women, a collection of essays for adult readers. Truman eventually read all four, including an essay by the young Theodore Roosevelt on Winfield Scott. The books ranged across subjects from Moses to Grover Cleveland, and their accounts of exceptional lives became a point of reference for Truman: he later said he had studied the careers of great men in order to be worthy of his mother. Roosevelt thus appeared among the writers as well as the historical figures through whom Truman encountered public achievement.

The President in Kansas City

Years later, while working at a bank, Truman and the other clerks hurried out and down 10th Street to see President Theodore Roosevelt speak from the back of a railroad car. It was Truman’s first opportunity to see a president. He found Roosevelt surprisingly short and noted his piping voice, but judged the speech good. The crowd, meanwhile, was delighted by the president’s familiar grin and display of teeth. The brief encounter brought the printed figure into view as a public performer, seen at close range by a young man in a rapidly growing western city.

Roosevelt in Truman’s Masonic World

After three years on the farm, Truman joined the Masons, took its ritual and spiritual teachings seriously, and helped organize a new lodge at Grandview. The fraternity’s lineage and fellowship mattered to him: he felt uplifted by belonging to an order said to claim great antiquity. In the book’s account of that appeal, Roosevelt is listed among the presidents who had been Masons, alongside William Howard Taft, his recent successor. Roosevelt’s name therefore served as one link between Truman’s local lodge life and a broader tradition of national public figures.