B&C Member Spotlight – Theodore Roosevelt
In 1887, Theodore Roosevelt returned from his Elkhorn Ranch in the Dakota Territory with an idea. He would assemble a group of like-minded, influential men to turn the tide in favor of conserving our nation’s resources, which, at the time, was vanishing quickly. This is how he did it.
Like any good coach, Theodore Roosevelt hand-picked an all-star team that comprised the very first members of the Boone and Crockett Club. With these men, Roosevelt shared his vision to achieve unprecedented milestones in conservation, and then he allowed the team to carry out the plan. The great achievements of the Club—the creation of national parks, wildlife refuges, national forests, fish and game laws, etc—were not Roosevelt’s ideas alone. Rather, he served as a sounding board for those ideas and encouraged his fellow Boone and Crockett members to act upon them. Then, while serving as president of the United States from 1901-1909, Roosevelt became the best ally the Club ever had. His influence on lawmakers, connections to Club members, and strategic legislative mind built our country’s conservation legacy that still exists today.
The Early Years
At a young age, Roosevelt developed a fire in his belly that would never be doused. Born with severe asthma, he was, for a while, a scrawny little kid. Instead of allowing the affliction to slow him down, it only served to fuel the fire. By his early teenage years, he took up weightlifting and gymnastics, embracing the “strenuous life” that would come to define him. In 1872, on his fourteenth birthday, he got a shotgun. Eight years later, he graduated from Harvard and was married to his first wife Alice Hathaway Lee. By 1881, Roosevelt was elected to the New York State Assembly. He was 23 years old.
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