Gardens of Stone --- A Cemetery Blog by Alexandra Kathryn Mosca

Major Quentin Roosevelt was the youngest son of President Theodore Roosevelt and his wife Edith. In 1917, when the United States entered WWI, Quentin --who had trained as a pilot on a Long Island airfield --dropped out of Harvard and joined the 1st Reserve Aero Squadron, the nation's first air reserve. A year later, on July 14, 1918 (Bastille Day), his plane was shot down outside of Chamery, France by a German pilot. Quentin was twenty years old. He was buried at the site beneath a makeshift wooden cross. Later, a wooden enclosure was added to the gravesite that had become a shrine to American soldiers and aviators. Because of the significance of the site, President and Mrs. Roosevelt decided not to bring their son back to the US for burial.    Already weak from an Amazon expedition and brokenhearted by Quentin's death, Theodore Roosevelt died six months later. In 1955, Quentin's remains were moved to the World War II American Cemetery in Collesville-sur-Mer , France, an...

Theodore Roosevelt became our nation’s 26th president—and the youngest in US history—in 1901, after the assassination of President William McKinley. He was elected to a second term on November 8, 1904. He had previously held posts in the United States Assembly (the youngest man ever to do so) and was elected as the Governor of NY on November 8, 1898. Roosevelt, a Republican, was a prolific writer, conservationist, and champion of civil rights. On Valentine’s Day in 1880 -–the same year he graduated from Harvard-- Roosevelt became engaged to Alice Hathaway Lee. They married in October of that year. Tragedy struck in 1884 when, two days after giving birth to their daughter, Alice, Mrs. Roosevelt died from complications of Bright’s disease. That same day, Mrs. Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the future president’s mother, also died from typhoid fever. In his diary that night, Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “The light has gone out of my life.” The Roosevelt wom...