If I might get personal, today my grandson Rhys graduates from kindergarten. His mother got him a teddy bear as a graduation present. This reminded me of one of my favorite stories about my favorite President.
One of the most famous toys in history was named after an American president. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt went to Mississippi for a hunting trip. Roosevelt was an avid hunter and this was not his first bear hunt. There was lot of pressure on the guide to make sure the President went home happy. But Holt Collier was used to pressure. He was a former slave who had served under Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the famous cavalry leader who had been a slave trader and would later found the Ku Klux Klan. After the Civil War, Collier became a hunter and hunting guide. He killed over 3,000 bears in his life. He had to make sure Teddy killed one. At first, things did not go well as the first few days no bears were found. Collier got desperate so he had his hunting dogs track down a bear. It was an old, fat black bear that was surrounded at a watering hole. It put up a good fight, killing a dog and wounding several, until Collier knocked him out by clubbing him with his rifle. The bear was tied to a tree and Collier led Roosevelt to the spot for the kill. Teddy took one look at the bruised and battered old bear and refused to shoot it. Sportsmen did not shoot defenseless bears. Teddy returned to the White House bearless and that should have been the end of it. But Teddy was a celebrity and an article ran in newspapers about his refusal to shoot the bear. A political cartoonist named Clifford Berryman drew a cartoon of the incident. He had Teddy in his Rough Riders uniform and he made the bear small and cute. The caption was “Drawing the Line in Mississippi” which may have been a reference to his stand against lynchings in the South. The cartoon was seen by many Americans and Teddy became associated with bears. A couple in New York saw the cartoon. Morris and Rose Michtom were Jewish immigrants who owned a candy store. Rose sewed a stuffed bear and they put it in the window of the store with a placard saying “Teddy’s Bear”. Everyone wanted one. They mailed the bear to the White House and asked Roosevelt if he would mind if they named it after him. Teddy, who hated the nickname “Teddy” (his friends and family called him “Teedie”), gave his permission and made the Michtom’s millionaires. They created the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company. In 1963, one of the original bears took a deserved place in the Smithsonian Institute. In 1999, the Teddy Bear was one of the original inductees in the Toy Hall of Fame.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_bear
http://socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/cultures/teddy_bear_history.htm
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