Kermit Roosevelt Sr. was born in October 1889 in the Roosevelt House of Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, NY
As a child, he spent most of his time reading and writing. After graduating from the prestigious Groton School, he enrolled at Harvard in 1909. During his freshman year, he went with his father on a year-long expedition through Africa. After graduating from Harvard in 1912, he undertook another expedition with his father to Brazil to map the Rio da Dúvida (River of Doubt), which was renamed Rio Roosevelt in honor of his father, while an arm of river was named Rio Kermit. in his honour. The young Roosevelt wrote about his experiences during the Brazilian Expedition in one of his most popular books “Through the Brazilian Wilderness”. After the expedition, he married Belle Wyatt Willard, the daughter of the American Ambassador to Spain, in 1914.
On August 22, 1917, Roosevelt was given the role of honorary captain in the British Army, where he was transferred to the Mesopotamian Theater (modern Iraq) to the 14th Light Armored Motor Battery for the Machine Gun Corps. On April 28, 1918, he left his position in the British army and was transferred to the American Expeditionary Force in France. On May 12, 1918, he was appointed captain of Battery C, 7th Artillery, 1st Division, where he took part in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, one of the last offensives of the war. He then returned to the United States on March 25, 1919, and was released two days later.
After the war, Roosevelt founded the Roosevelt Steamship Company and the United States Lines. He played a vital role in the development of the United States Merchant Navy. He also wrote about his World War I experiences in a book titled “War in the Garden of Eden” in 1920. When World War II broke out, Roosevelt, now 50, negotiated to be appointed major in the Middlesex Regiment with the help of his friend Winston Churchill. He took part in a raid into occupied Norway in 1940, where he was wounded in the Battle of Narvik. After recovering, he was sent to Egypt, where he saw little action. On May 5, 1941, he returned to Britain to resign due to health problems. He was commissioned by President Franklin Roosevelt as a major in the U.S. Army and sent to Fort Richardson in Alaska, where he worked as an intelligence officer and helped establish local native militias to help repel Japanese attacks. on the Aleutian Islands. Roosevelt, who struggled for so long with alcoholism and depression, was found dead in his bedroom at Fort Richardson on June 4, 1943, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
During his two world wars, Roosevelt received several medals, including a World War I Victory Medal, a British Military Cross, and a US Defense Service Medal.
We honor his service.
