Childhood
Kenneth Kermit Roosevelt was born at the family residence Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, New York, the second son born to Theodore Roosevelt and his second wife, Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt. As a child he went by the nickname Kermit, and as an adult he adopted the name. He had an elder brother, Theodore Jr., and three younger siblings: Ethel, Archibald, and Quentin. His older half sister was Alice, from his father's first marriage to Alice Roosevelt.
As a child, he had little resistance to illness and infection. He had a flair for language, however, and read avidly. He showed a talent for writing that led to recording his experiences in World War I in a book.
After attending the Groton School, he enrolled at Harvard. In 1909 as a freshman, he and his father (recently out of office as President)—both of whom loved nature and outdoor sports—went on a safari in Africa. After this trip and a swing through Europe, Roosevelt returned to Harvard and completed four years of study in two and one-half years. He was a member of the Porcellian Club.
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Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“I long for scenes where man has never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator God And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below, above, the vaulted sky.”
—John Clare (1793–1864)
“We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
““Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)