Theodore Roosevelt
and the Teddy Bear Fasttrack to America's Past |
|
The
Teddy Bear
An interesting fact about Theodore Roosevelt is that he was the inspiration for the "Teddy Bear," the popular toy for children. On a hunting trip to Mississippi in 1902, Roosevelt refused to shoot a small bear that other hunters on the trip had chased, captured, and tied to a tree. He said it would not be sportsmanlike at all to shoot a tied up bear. A cartoonist at the Washington Post newspaper who heard the story made the drawing below and it was published in the paper. A store owner in Brooklyn, New York, who saw the cartoon asked "Teddy" Roosevelt if he could use the Teddy name for the stuffed toy bears he wanted to create and sell. Roosevelt did give his permission. The photo on the right shows a factory worker in the early 1900s putting stuffing in the cloth body of a Teddy Bear. |
Far better it is
to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even
though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits
who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray
twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1899 |
Copyright Notice
Copyright 2009, 2020 by David Burns. All rights reserved. |