![]() He loved repairing mechanical things, especially motorcycles. His mother called him her “fine little bad boy.” In the summers on Long Island he competed with his older brothers Ted, Kermit, and Archie, joining in their recklessness. Charlie Taft, son of the secretary of war and the next president, was his best friend. He attended public school but sometimes his teacher didn’t know what to do with him, as a letter from TR to her reveals. “Quentikins” was three when his father became president and almost twelve when he left. TR joined in many of these (not the spitball episode, though the “trial” for which he presided over). They made faces at the president in his carriage, and threw spitballs at Andrew Jackson’s portrait. They re-enacted famous military battles in unused rooms. Quentin’s antics with his friends in the executive mansion were later described in a book called The White House Gang. Born just before the Spanish-American War, Quentin Roosevelt spent much of his boyhood in Washington. They shared the same vitality, originality and sense of humor, according to author Hermann Hagedorn. The youngest of six children, he was said to have been the one most like his father. He was Theodore and Edith Roosevelt’s son, Quentin. ![]() On July 14, 1918, close to the village of Chamery, he did. He was just twenty years old and had been trying hard to pilot his plane into the action of World War 1. ![]() One hundred years ago today in France, an American first lieutenant died in a dogfight. ![]()
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