His Death, and Its Impact On His Eldest Son
He died at the age of 46 from a gastrointestinal tumor which caused him great pain for months, and prevented him from eating. Initially, he kept the extent of his illness from his oldest son, who was away attending Harvard. At the end, however, 19 year-old Theodore Jr. was informed and immediately took a train from Cambridge to New York, where he missed his father's death by a few hours. The biographer Brands has argued that the timing of his death contributed heavily to the younger Theodore's psychology, since the future president knew his father fully while growing up, but missed knowing his father man-to-man, and therefore absorbed a view of his father entirely in his role as a parent, untempered by much realization of his human imperfection.
Read more about this topic: Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.
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