Let’s drag this mystery out a bit more. Last night we drove late into the evening, before checking into a hotel, our base of operations for the weekend. But where is this?
Here’s a hint. This is a tree I stood under to avoid the midday sun.
The peeling bark, characteristic of the species, and the brilliant contrast of green leaves and a blue sky aren’t giving it away? They are good clues. Not a clue: my standing under a tree, seeking shade. My skin is so fair it will turn red anywhere. So while that’s no help at all, the bark might tell you something. Give it another look.
No? Need more? OK then.
I saw this on a wall in a hotel near ours.
Let’s have a closer look at that plaque.
I know this story, perhaps you do, too. I hadn’t put it together that we’d be so close to this moment of American history. This would have been on that trip, at the train station, but not the actual moment.
There are plenty of photos of Roosevelt’s trip — he was a former president and campaigning for the office again after all — including one taken just before he was wounded.
It was October; there was a chill in the air. Roosevelt was moving from the Gilpatrick Hotel to a nearby auditorium, where he was to give an evening speech. It’s dark, there’s a crowd, and among them is a man named John Schrank. He’s a bartender, a lay Constitutional scholar, a bad poet, a New Yorker. A short man with red hair, round cheeks and thin lips, he blends into the crowd, and manages to work his way right up to the car where Roosevelt is waving to a crowd.
Schrank has been waiting for this moment for a month. He’s been trying to get this opportunity in any of the eight states and big cities Roosevelt has visited in the last few weeks. He’s been waiting in this town all day. He’s been waiting here, specifically, for hours. He’s not going to fail now. He got to within six feet of the former president, fingering the revolver hidden in his vest. In a surging moment of adrenaline, amidst the noise of the crowd, he squeezes off a round.
The place looks like this today.
It did not look like that in 1912.
Before he could fire again Elbert Martin, a man who grew up about four hours away from here, threw his body at the shooter. Martin was a high school football player, and in every photograph he looks the part. He’s a stenographer, has a law degree, and is also Roosevelt’s security.
Others leap in to help, wrestling the attacker to the ground. They’re holding him by his throat. The gun has skittered away. Roosevelt staggered back, catching himself on the car, and sees his shooter.
Roosevelt says, “He doesn’t know what he is doing. Don’t strike the poor creature. Bring him here. Bring him to me.”
They’re now face-to-face. Martin puts the gun in Roosevelt’s hand. The crowd didn’t realize the former president had been shot. He didn’t know it either. Some people thought the round went wide, but there are immediately chants to string the man up, but police take him safely away. Roosevelt gets in the car and taken to the auditorium where he’s supposed to speak. An aide notices the hole in his coat. Reaching under his overcoat, Roosevelt feels blood, but says it is a minor wound.
At the auditorium his personal physician gives Roosevelt a closer look. The round from that .38 went through Roosevelt’s coat, and through the doubled-up 50-page speech, and his metal eyeglass case, before piercing his chest. Roosevelt refused his doctor’s plea to call off the speech. “This may be my last talk,” he said. He was intent on delivering it.
The man who introduced the president told the crowd he’d been shot. There were gasps in the auditorium, but at least one man shouted “Fake! Fake!”
So that’s been around a while.
Roosevelt came to the stage, unbuttoned his coat and the people could see his bloodstained shirt. He spoke, wavered, spoke some more. Along the way he delivered the immortal line, “It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose!” The crowd ate it up. He asked his very worried physician how long he’d been talking, and the doctor said 45 minutes. The former president said he’d speak for a few minutes more. The crowd laughed again.
Later he did go to the hospital, and they sent him to another one, to see a renowned specialist. Roosevelt, who had first come to the presidency when William McKinley was assassinated, was cheerful, and walked into that second hospital, smiling, cracking jokes, waving. He had X-rays at the second hospital — not available for his predecessor. Roosevelt’s doctors decided he was lucky. The bullet did not go into his rib, did not hit anything vital, and the man was in good shape. They didn’t operate.
He would, of course, go on to give many more speeches. He lost his campaign for a third term in office, but continue to build the legend of Roosevelt, the great man, until his death seven years later, in 1919. He carried the bullet in his pectoral muscle the rest of his life.
Schrank pleaded guilty. He said he was afraid Theodore Roosevelt was trying to establish a monarchy by running for that third term. Schrank died in custody in 1943, at 67. Over the years he talked with more reporters than you’d imagine possible today for a would-be assassin. Those interviews make for curious reading. He had apologized to the city — figured this out yet? — and was later pronounced a model patient at the ward where he spent the rest of his days. His body was donated to a medical school.
We drove by it last night.
So where are we?
