History
The organization was founded in 1919 by friends and supporters of the president originally as the Permanent Memorial National Committee. Soon renamed the Roosevelt Memorial Association (RMA), it was chartered under Title 36 of the United States Code in 1920.
In parallel with the RMA was an organization for women, The Women's Theodore Roosevelt Association that had been founded in 1919 by an act of the New York State Assembly. Both organizations merged in 1956 under the current name.
The two ancestor organizations that eventually combined to form the modern Association established four public sites: the reconstructed Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, New York City, dedicated in 1923 and donated to the National Park Service in 1963; Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park, Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, dedicated in 1928 and given to the people of Oyster Bay; Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac in Washington, D.C., given to the federal government in 1932; and Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's Oyster Bay home, which opened to the public in 1953 and, together with nearby Old Orchard, home to Theodore Roosevelt Jr., was donated to the National Park Service in 1963. Along with the 1963 gifts of the Birthplace and Sagamore Hill properties, the TRA donated an endowment to help support both parks sites. The TRA currently owns Theodore Roosevelt's simple cabin, "Pine Knot", near Charlottesville, VA, which is managed by The Edith and Theodore Roosevelt Pine Knot Foundation.
Read more about this topic: Theodore Roosevelt Association
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)