This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
On Feb. 14, 1884, Theodore Roosevelt lost his mother and his wife within hours of each other. The double tragedy led him to abandon his political career and head into the Dakota Territory. There, he lived rough during what would be a transformative part of his life.
Duane Jundt is a historian and Theodore Roosevelt expert. He joins In the Moment to discuss the former president's many visits to the area.
Jundt is the author of the chapter about Roosevelt's 1903 Sioux Falls visit in the anthology "City of Hustle."
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Lori Walsh:
Well take a walk around South Dakota. You might just be walking in the footsteps of a presidential icon. But on February 14th, in 1884, the future president Theodore Roosevelt lost his wife and mother on the same day, only hours apart. That double tragedy hit him hard. He left politics. He spent the next few years living rough in what was known as the Dakota Territory. Duane Jundt is with us now on the phone, he's going to talk about all things Roosevelt, particularly his time in South Dakota. If you want to learn more, you can read his chapter in the book City of Hustle, that one focuses on the 1903 visit to Sioux Falls. Duane, welcome to the program. Thanks for being here.
Duane Jundt:
Thank you for having me.
Lori Walsh:
City of Hustle as a book, by the way, has turned into quite a hot ticket for the publisher and for people in Sioux Falls. It's selling really well, so congratulations.
Duane Jundt:
It is. It's doing great. In fact, the last time, I think before Christmas, I went to the Belt Publishing website just to check up on it, and it said that they were sold out, that you couldn't order any from them at that point. So that's been great. And so John and Patrick have done a great job of promoting it, and they did a great job of putting together a really lively and well-rounded portrait of Sioux Falls.
Lori Walsh:
Tell me why you wanted to focus on Theodore Roosevelt's time in Sioux Falls, particularly 1903.
Duane Jundt:
Well, 1903, it's a very famous episode and the TR's life, and certainly in his presidency, he went on this just massive, what we call the Great Western Tour, took him 14,000 miles, he visited 25 states in over 150 cities. He was gone, which is remarkable to think about today, but he was gone all of April, all of May, and into June and went on this tour all over the United States. And one of the places that he visited on that tour was Sioux Falls. And I was struck by the fact when Roosevelt wrote a famous letter to his Secretary of State, John Hay, he wrote a 36-page letter describing this tour that he went on. And I was really struck by the fact that in this letter he spent way more time talking about his visit to Sioux Falls than he did talking about visits to Chicago and Milwaukee and Minneapolis St. Paul. And I was really struck by that, and I wondered why that was. So that's what got me interested in it.
Lori Walsh:
It wasn't the church services necessarily, but he seemed to have mandatory attend several times, that's a great part of your chapter. Tell me a little bit about what the expectation was for him, because he came, what, Palm Sunday Easter time during?
Duane Jundt:
He arrived on a Sunday. And we often don't think about TR in religious terms, that's a part of his life that hasn't been really fully explored until recently. But he very much was in favor of observing the Sabbath. He wasn't going to do any politicking. He wasn't going to do any campaigning, he wasn't going to give any speeches. He went to two church services, and he claims that he got blindsided by that. That he had to go to two church services, but he went to a German Lutheran service in the morning. And the service was entirely in German, was very old-fashioned, the women sat on one side of the church, the men sat on the other side. It was entirely in German, but this is Theore Roosevelt we're talking about. So he could understand the sermon that was given.
And in fact, again, given that it was TR, this is classic TR, after the service was over, TR went up to the minister and started to explain to the minister in German that he had understood and had appreciated his sermon. And then in the evening he went to a Dutch reform service, and that's the church that Roosevelt was baptized in and was raised in. And so he went to a Dutch reform service in the evening. And he said in his letter that he really actually enjoyed them despite what he thought might be in store for him.
Lori Walsh:
What captivated him so much about the City of Sioux Falls or Dakota territory, that it took so many pages to write about it. What did you decide?
Duane Jundt:
Well, the key thing that Roosevelt says is, "When I got to Sioux Falls, I felt like I was back in the West" because Sioux Falls represented to him, Dakota. He felt like, "Now I'm really in the West. This is the beginning of it. I may be just on the edge of it, but now I'm in the west." And Roosevelt will say more than once in his life that that time when he was out in Western North Dakota. And at that time it was all just still Dakota territory. He'll say, someone asked him once, "If you could go back to any one point in your life, what would it be?" And he said, "I would choose to go back to the days when I was a ranch man out in Western Dakota." So when he got to Sioux Falls, that turned on a switch for him. "I'm in the West now, I'm away from the east. I'm away from the crowded cities, I'm away from the crowds. I'm away from the big cities. I'm in the West."
And the other thing that really appealed to TR about being in Sioux Falls and being in South Dakota was actually not a place that was a person. And that person is one of the most famous people in South Dakota history. That's Seth Bullock. And Bullock and Roosevelt were good friends. And this time that they would spend together not only in Sioux Falls, but across South Dakota and all the way to Yellowstone National Park. And then later on in the trip, Roosevelt just really admired Bullock. And Bullock felt the same way about TR. In fact, I used the expression, and I don't think I'm exaggerating in my book chapter where I say that the two of them sort of stood in awe of each other.
So that was a big attraction that Bullock had said, "Yes, I will meet you in Sioux Falls" when Roosevelt in between the two church services on the Sunday that he arrived, he went for a 20-mile horseback ride with Bullock. And then going on a horseback ride, just reinforced for TR, "I'm back in the West, I'm back in the company of Westerners and people that I can really relate to."
Lori Walsh:
So Duane, we've been talking for listeners who are just tuning in about this chapter in the book City of Hustle, where you write about his 1903 visit to Sioux Falls. But since it is Valentine's Day, take us back to 1884 and this tragedy.
Duane Jundt:
This is really, I think probably the most consequential day in Theodore Roosevelt's life. Some historian [inaudible 00:06:57] might say that it was July 1st, 1898 during the Spanish American War where he led the charge up San Juan Hill and Kettle Hill in Cuba. But I really think today, this February 14th is the most consequential date because this is really a life altering and a life shattering experience for Roosevelt and something that just deeply affected him for a long time. He was married to his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, very much a blue blood from Boston on February 12th. She had given birth to their first child, their only child who also would be named Alice. And then literally just like a day later, Roosevelt was serving in the New York State legislature, the assembly up in Albany, and he got a telegraph that said, "You need to come home right away. Your wife is ill and your mother is ill."
And Roosevelt took a train ride through the fog and through the snow, got back to his home in New York City and his brother Elliot met him at the door and said, "There is a curse on this house. Mother is dying and so is your wife." And his wife was suffering from bright's disease or basically from kidney failure, was actually not related to childbirth. And then his mother was dying as people so often did, even though they lived in a affluent part of the city, of typhoid fever. And this was on Valentine's Day, and this was the day four years earlier on which Roosevelt had gotten engaged to his wife Alice. And Roosevelt was very much a Victorian sentimentalist, a Victorian romantic. We don't often think about him that way, but he loved poetry.
So he spent 16 hours going back and forth between his wife and his mother. His mother died first and in the home. And then his wife died later in the day. So he lost his wife and his mother in the same house on the same day on Valentine's Day. And Roosevelt had already lost his father to cancer a few years before this, I think in 1878. So he's lost his wife. He's now lost both of his parents and his child who had just been born two days before, no longer has a mother. And this really just, you can imagine the kind of blow that was, and this is important for us because this is one of the things that propels Roosevelt back to the West because he's trying to escape. He's trying to outrun this depression that will come over him.
He has this great quote where he says, "Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough." Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough. Meaning that basically so much... When we think about Roosevelt, we think about the strenuous life and bully and doing this and then doing that. Well, part of that was a response to this tragedy that if he could just keep moving and keep doing things, maybe this depression wouldn't overcome him. And he went out to Dakota. He had been there in the fall of 1883, but this is where he went to heal and in that landscape and that place that basically we think about it being Theodore Roosevelt National Park today. That's where he had time to be alone, had time to recover, had time to just nurse this incredible tragedy that he had endured.
Lori Walsh:
Duane Jundt, I want to thank you so much for bringing this story to us today. The book is called City of Hustle. That book has a chapter about Roosevelt's 1903 visit to Sioux Falls. But we really appreciate you joining us on this day since it was so significant in his history. Thank you so much.
Duane Jundt:
Thank you.
