Edward O'Keefe
Edward F. O’Keefe brings to life the mission and design behind the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, and ties T.R.’s story to the present moment. He is CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation and author of "The Loves Of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created A President."
Transcript
Ed O'Keefe:
The museum isn't here to tell you this is the correct interpretation of Theodore Roosevelt. No. I mean, I think the best strength of Theodore Roosevelt is that he is quintessentially American. He unites Republicans, Democrats, Independents. He just seems to have that quality that people look to and say, "Now that is an American president."
Ted Roosevelt:
Welcome to Good Citizen, a podcast from Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. I'm Ted Roosevelt. Given that intro, you may be surprised to discover that Theodore Roosevelt doesn't actually have a presidential library. Well, that's about to change, and today's guest, Ed O'Keefe is leading that charge. Ed is the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, which opens next summer in Medora, North Dakota.
I've had the privilege of working with him on this ambitious project for the past five years. And in this episode, we talk about the building and its landscape, but also its larger mission, a mission that extends to this very podcast and the effort to share Theodore Roosevelt's legacy in thoughtful new ways. Ed is also the author of The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, a book about the smart, insightful women who shaped TR's life in the way we remember him.
We discussed Theodore Roosevelt's experiences and values, why the library belongs in the Badlands, and maybe most importantly, where to find lessons and hope in history. This conversation is packed with compelling stories, rich details, and inspired ideas. Thank you for joining us. I want to start with the library and really actually understand why you decided to get involved with it, because at the time it was really nothing more than an idea. So it was a pretty bold step for someone like you to step into that project.
Ed O'Keefe:
Well, I don't know what you mean, Ted. We had no architects, no money, no land. I mean, what an appealing prospect.
Ted Roosevelt:
He's ready to go.
Ed O'Keefe:
You just jump right in. That's my sweet spot is somewhere between a great idea and impossible. I don't know if you remember, but we first met at the Theodore Roosevelt birthplace. It was a design charrette, a conversation about the possibility of what this could be. I was just coming off being an entrepreneurship fellow at Harvard. I had been 20 years in the media working at ABC News and CNN and other locations. And I met you. I met some of the benefactors involved in the project, and I met Governor Doug Burgum, all of whom were compelling personalities saying this could happen.
Ted Roosevelt:
You grew up in North Dakota.
Ed O'Keefe:
I did.
Ted Roosevelt:
Maybe for people that don't know, can you explain the role that TR plays in the state of North Dakota?
Ed O'Keefe:
Theodore Roosevelt is our adopted son. He might be a born and bred New Yorker, but we consider him a North Dakotan. You got to give us this one, right? We've got Lawrence Welk. We've got Roger Maris. We got Peggy Lee, Phil Jackson. I mean, that's not bad.
Ted Roosevelt:
Those are good.
Ed O'Keefe:
But Theodore Roosevelt is the apotheosis. He is the one and only. Actually when I went on the book tour, my wife Allison accompanied me to my high school. We've been married 20 years, Ted, and she looked around and said, "Oh, I finally understand. It's the home of the rough riders." And Theodore Roosevelt is literally emblazoned everywhere. His quotes, his images, his iconography.
So it's all because Theodore Roosevelt spent these formative two or three years in North Dakota after the death of his wife and mother. He lived what he later called the strenuous life out in the Badlands, and he healed and recovered in nature. And now he had interestingly come to Dakota before those tragic events and invested half of his inheritance in a cattle ranch.
He's clearly envisioning a life where he will have Sagamore Hill in the East, live in Oyster Bay in Long Island, and he'll have this life in the West. And then tragedy intervenes and he spends more time than he probably ever intended in Dakota. And he said that it literally saved his life. I mean, he never would've been president, but for his experiences in North Dakota. It wasn't just a political statement. He actually believed that this was the place. The nature and the experiences he had with the people reclaimed him.
Ted Roosevelt:
You've mentioned the tragedy intervening. Can you say more about that because this was really the inflection point in Theodore Roosevelt's life?
Ed O'Keefe:
So he was engaged on February 14th, 1880. And so he was firmly believed that his first baby was going to be born on the anniversary of his engagement on February 14th, 1884. So he goes back to Albany where he is a New York State Assemblyman, the youngest ever elected to this day, and he gets word that the baby has indeed been born at about 8:30 at night on February 12th. So it's too late for him to get back to New York City.
He resumes his work on February 13th thinking everything is fine, and he gets a second telegram. His face goes ashen white. He drops the telegram, he runs to the train station in Albany, and he takes an agonizing five and a half hour trip. He had to walk 15 blocks to 6 West 57th Street where his brother Elliot said, "There is a curse on this house. Mother is dying and Alice is dying too." So he runs up to the third floor.
He holds Alice in his arms until about 1:30 in the morning when he's called to the bedside of his mother Mittie, who dies of typhoid fever. Then he goes back upstairs to the third floor and holds Alice in his arms for another 11 hours, until about 2:30 in the afternoon, when she too dies of Bright's disease, which was a kidney disorder exacerbated by the childbirth. So in the space of 12 hours, he loses his wife and mother on the same day in the same house.
Ted Roosevelt:
These are hugely important people in his life. They both die on the same day, and he goes into a very dark place. Can you talk about that?
Ed O'Keefe:
He writes an X in his diary and says, "The light has gone out of my life." And on the next page of that diary, which you and I have seen in person at the Library of Congress, he says, "For better or worse, my life has been lived out." I mean, he really truly believes his productive life is over. He's 25 years old and he does not stand for re-election to the New York State Assembly. So he has been lost politically. He is lost personally.
He really truly doesn't know what he's going to do with his life. That's where he finds himself in the Badlands surrounded by 65 million years of geologic history, out in nature, living the life he's only read about. And he says that the Badlands look as Edgar Allan Poe writes. I mean, that is a sign of depression if anyone ever says that to you. I'm not a professional, but I believe that that is a sign of depression.
And I don't think he risked his life at that point because he had a death wish. I think he had a life wish. As his mother taught him, life is for the living, not for the dead. You have to live a life of purpose or you dishonor the memory of those who have gone before you.
Ted Roosevelt:
And so he goes out to Medora, North Dakota and it's literally the last stop on the train. He cannot get any further into the American wilderness at this point. But it's very unclear what he's going to do with his life at this point. What happens over the ensuing 18 months that he's out there that he comes back a very different person?
Ed O'Keefe:
Well, first of all, Medora is the crucible of manifest destiny. This is where Sitting Bull surrendered to US forces. This is not far from where Sacajawea met Lewis and Clark. This is where Custer came through on the last evening before the Battle of Little Bighorn. He's in an American Western adventure story. He's dressed in Brooks Brothers. He's got a Tiffany knife. He's a dude from the East, but he gets to live the life of adventure and he has to pull his weight.
I mean, it doesn't matter how much money you have, it doesn't matter your creed or color, when you're in the west in the 1880s, if you can't survive, you aren't going to survive. There's a letter from April 29th, 1885 from TR to Bamie in which he describes two horses suddenly taking off from the Elkhorn, which is pretty remote to this day. In 1885, it's really remote.
And he chases after these horses and goes for 40 miles out of the ranch and realizes he's lost in a snowstorm and can't find his way back. And a Texan cowboy comes along and they find shelter for the night, make a fire and survive. And he needed that. He needed the hearty life of this physical challenge to recover emotionally. As he would later say, "Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough." He was trying to outrun depression. That's the way he needed to process or not process his emotional turmoil.
Ted Roosevelt:
This is a grand presidential library. It is a big project, but it's a very small town. It's sort of 500, 100. How many people live in...
Ed O'Keefe:
About 130.
Ted Roosevelt:
130 people live in Medora. Can you paint the physical scene of where this library is going to be? Because I think one of the questions most people ask me about this is like, you're going to do this in Medora, North Dakota? I sort of know the story, but this seems a little crazy. And the more time I've spent on it, it goes from crazy to obvious and I can't believe somebody hadn't thought of this before. This is clearly where it needs to be.
Ed O'Keefe:
Well, the journey is the destination. I mean, you have to take a TR- like adventure to get there and to be there and want to be there. It's a pilgrimage. It's a place that has almost a spiritual like quality. Snøhetta is our architect. They are landscape integrated architects. They have designed this building that almost disappears into nature. You're situated on 93 acres of land.
So what Snøhetta has done is make the library the landscape. It's not a museum where you come to get inside and see artifacts under glass. We'll have that too, but it's really meant to get you out into nature, to gather with your family and go on a picnic, a hike, a horseback ride. We're the only presidential library you can ride a horse to. You have a vaunted roof that is walkable.
You can get up 38 feet on top and take a 360 degree view of all the landscape around you. To the North would be the Elkhorn Ranch. To the South, you have the Maltese Cross, his working ranch. You also perfectly frame a view of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the only park named for a person, let alone a president.
Ted Roosevelt:
So the library is living up to the Living Building Challenge. Talk about why that's important and what that is.
Ed O'Keefe:
Theodore Roosevelt looked out 100 years in the future when conservation wasn't even really a political concept. When TR proposed his first conservation bill, the speaker of the house literally replied, "There will not be one dime for scenery. Land was there to be built upon." But he was the first president and certainly maybe even first politician to really take seriously the idea of conservation as a policy.
So we at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library also feel like we need to look 100 years into the future like would and embrace the sustainability of this museum. It's zero waste, zero carbon, zero energy, zero water. We'll be the first museum of this size to achieve the Living Building Challenge, which is beyond lead platinum. It is a system, a way of being, which is dependent upon living people being a part of it. It takes into account that humans are going to interact with this space and be the lifeblood of this space and land.
We're working with the local ranching community to graze the 93 acres. We're going to show how the system and design of the building collects the rainwater and natural water sources. We're going to use the gardens and surrounding area to grow some of what we provide in the restaurant. The museum is a living demonstration of sustainability in action, and we believe that that is what TR would do.
Ted Roosevelt:
You mentioned that artifacts are going to be a part, but not as central as they might be in some others, but there're going to be some really important artifacts in this library. You mentioned earlier Theodore Roosevelt's diary. That for the first time is going to get displayed in this library.
Ed O'Keefe:
Well, thanks to the efforts of the Library of Congress and the Roosevelt family, we are going to be able to display the diary from February 14th, 1884. It has never been publicly displayed in any setting beyond a private event. Look, it's not the Declaration of Independence, it's not the Emancipation Proclamation, but it's a spiritually symbolically significant object. It shows you in one page of a diary the suffering of a person who felt very deeply and mourned at that point and then recovered.
It is the pivot point of a life that could have gone in another direction. That's a powerful artifact. I mean, an object is just an object until you tell a story. And the story that that object tells is one of renewal, a fight against depression, a belief in a bigger purpose, and the commitment to citizenship and action. And I think the fact that the Library of Congress has loaned it to us to tell that story is very powerful. And I hope many, many millions of kids especially will be inspired by it.
Ted Roosevelt:
I had only recently seen the diary in person, and I was struck by how moved I was by having seen electronic images of it my entire life, being able to go through the pages was just so crushing to see how clearly broken he was in that moment.
Ed O'Keefe:
Well, and it's a universal feeling. I think that this is something I talk about. Theodore Roosevelt has largely been caricatured such that people remember him. Robin Williams in Night at the Museum. I mean, it's great that he's culturally remembered and relevant, but he was a deeply feeling person and he went through things that we all go through. And my feeling as an author, as the head of this museum is that there is universality in this specific. What that diary says is Theodore Roosevelt was not invincible.
Ted Roosevelt:
It's really powerful and it's a theme that I've heard you reference, and this is something that you brought to the project, is this idea of humanizing Theodore Roosevelt, not lionizing him. I find the story much more compelling, much more useful as a tool in terms of people learning from someone. And so I think this is a really modern way to review and look at a historical figure in a way that I believe is going to be quite a bit more powerful than maybe some of the modern presidential libraries.
And one of the abilities to do that is the fact that TR has been dead for 100 years. And so you have the benefit of not having a principle in your ear saying, "I want you to shine up this part of my legacy and emphasize this great thing I did." You can really do it with a much more holistic view, and you have the huge benefit of having 100 years to see what the various impacts were that his policies had. I mean, we're not trying to forecast out.
Ed O'Keefe:
Look, the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri just did a $50 million renovation because they wanted to reinterpret the story of Harry Truman. They didn't talk about the decision to drop the atomic bomb as crucially as they probably should have, and now they do. And the Richard Nixon Library, they didn't talk about Watergate until it was redone in the late '90s, early 2000s after Pat and Richard Nixon died.
I mean, how do you tell the story of Nixon without talking about Watergate? But you can see how that would be difficult if you're working with the living president or the living ex-president. And almost all of the presidential libraries are that way. They're working with the immediate descendants right after the president's death, or they're working with the living president who's interpreting their own legacy from their own perspective.
You don't know what is going to be remembered 100 years later until 100 years later. We know that Theodore Roosevelt's conservation legacy endures. We know that being the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize endures. We know that saving football was probably a prescient thing. I mean, Theodore Roosevelt's story, if you made it up and submitted it to an editor, you'd be completely rejected.
You say, "You know what? Why don't we take the Amazon River of doubt out? I mean, do we really need the ex-president risking his life in the ems? That's far-fetched." But it's there. I mean, the challenge of making a museum to Theodore Roosevelt is that every chapter is more interesting than the last.
Ted Roosevelt:
So I want to pivot to your book. TR has been written about by a lot of authors. I mean, he's probably one of the most written about presidents in our history. There's no shortage of books. I mean, he's always the alpha male in the story. I mean, the prototypical story is this idea of weak boy goes and makes himself strong and then goes on to make the nation strong. You take a completely different starting point, which was to look at the women in his life as being foundational to who the person was. Where did that idea come from?
Ed O'Keefe:
Well, I originally set out to write Theodore Roosevelt in the West. I wanted to write a definitive account of his time in the Badlands and how that place, my place, North Dakota, changed him. And as I was doing the research, I kept bumping into the two wives, his two sisters, and his mother. And I read and saw a different side of the story than I had ever known, but I thought, wait a second, who told that story?
I had known about Bamie and Connie, his older and younger sister, and certainly Bamie in particular, has been appreciated by historians and Ted heads, but she's never central to the story. And his two wives, Alice we didn't know a lot about. She died at 22, almost 23 years old. She basically disappears from the historical record because she was married to a New York State Assemblyman, not the President of the United States.
But fortunately, 24 new love letters have come out and they tell a totally different story, and they show an Alice who's involved in his politics and poetry. And they exchange ideas and they're madly in love. I felt like I thought I knew everything I could possibly know about Theodore Roosevelt, and yet there were all of these women who helped him, who pushed him forward, who gave him the strength to go on.
Here's a guy who had a mother, a wife, had two sisters. He had colleagues. He had friends. He had people who are constantly pushing him and prodding him toward something better. And man, if you're lucky in life, you've got that.
Ted Roosevelt:
Well, I think that's an important point because it's not that they're in the background doing the manual labor that frees up TR's time. These are substantive women in their own right. And talk about a little bit more of the contributions they're doing for his political career, for his thinking, for his intellectual pursuits.
Ed O'Keefe:
So Bamie is basically a substitute mother to TR. She's only three years older, but she's constantly doing things for him that structurally add composition to his life. She moves him into his Harvard apartment. She is the one to whom he writes in college talking about how hard he's working and what he's accomplishing. She oversees the construction of Sagamore Hill.
Bamie is the one who takes care of his daughter, Alice, for almost three years. Bamie is the one who suggests perhaps he should be civil service commissioner. Bamie is the one who writes Edith and says, "Hey, if you're coming back into TR's life, guess what? He's going into politics. You're going to have to share him with the world." Bamie is the one who introduces him to the McKinley campaign and swears he won't be the rabble-rousing, crazy person you think that he is.
You need to make him assistant secretary of the Navy. It was hard to find an issue that TR didn't discuss with Bamie. I mean, in TR's own words, she is the feminine Atlas on whose shoulders the whole world rests. I mean, I liken her in the book to RFK to JFK, and that might actually be underselling it a bit. I mean, I think she might be the most consequential sibling perhaps of a president in American history.
It was Alice Roosevelt Longworth, TR's daughter, that says, "Had Bamie been a man, that she, Bamie, would've been president, not Theodore Roosevelt." And Eleanor Roosevelt is later asked about that quote, and she too agrees.
Ted Roosevelt:
When TR got inaugurated, he had a ring on his finger. What was in that ring?
Ed O'Keefe:
The ring contained a lock of Abraham Lincoln's hair.
Ted Roosevelt:
That's right. I've always thought that he understood the connective tissue, so to speak, of hair, that he wanted Lincoln there with him. He admired Lincoln deeply. He was somebody he wanted in the proverbial room when he was sworn in as president. You discovered in your journeys a lock of hair. Can you talk about that and what the lock of hair was?
Ed O'Keefe:
So I was so determined to see anything that exists of Alice Hathaway Lee, who was Theodore's first wife, died at 22, almost three years old, that I went to Sagamore Hill. And Laura Cinturati, who was the wonderful national park ranger and curator there, we literally opened every book that Alice was ever given. What's the inscription? What's the book? What do you think the meaning of the book was? And there was a record that said, "Alice hair. Nine months old."
And I said, "I'm sorry. I have to see it." And so we pull this box out that looks almost like a Tiffany box. We open it up, and underneath the top portion we said, "I think there's something under there." We open it up and there is about 16 inches of Alice's hair, like a ponytail almost that was just purely cut off. And there's a note in Theodore Roosevelt's very distinctive handwriting that says, "The hair of my sweet wife Alice cut after death." He kept this keepsake hidden for the rest of his life.
Ted Roosevelt:
You talk about the support that all these women around Theodore Roosevelt provided. And keeping in mind the context of the times, can you articulate how Theodore Roosevelt thought of women and their role in society at this time, given that they're literally propping him up into the White House?
Ed O'Keefe:
In 1880, inspired by Alice and her family, Theodore Roosevelt pens his senior thesis at Harvard. He calls for suffrage 40 years before the 19th Amendment. He says that women should be doctors, lawyers, and judges. He says that women should own property, and that they shouldn't necessarily take their husband's name upon marriage. All very radical ideas in 1880. In the 1912 campaign, he endorses suffrage becomes, the first major presidential candidate to do so.
He adopts suffrage into the platform. A woman seconds his nomination. It's the first time that's ever happened in US history, women are allowed to work for the campaign. First time women hold campaign offices. I love this. There's a great saying at the time. It says he was the Bull Moose candidate. So it says, "Well, don't call me the missus. Call me the mooses." They were the mooses.
Ted Roosevelt:
I love that. You once described actually Theodore Roosevelt as the quintessential American. What is it about Theodore Roosevelt that makes him the quintessential American in your mind?
Ed O'Keefe:
Northern father, Southern mother, Eastern political identity and birth, Western embracing of the New America. He was a little bit of everything to everybody. I like to say Theodore Roosevelt is like a Rorschach test. What you see in him says more about you than it does about him. Josh Hawley's favorite President. Elizabeth Warren's favorite president. We don't want to ruin that for people. The museum isn't here to tell you this is the correct interpretation of Theodore Roosevelt.
No. I mean, I think the best strength of Theodore Roosevelt is that he is quintessentially American. He Unites Republicans, Democrats, Independents. He just seems to have that quality that people look to and say, "Now that is an American president. I can get on board with him." He's all over the political spectrum. He's always fighting for what he believes in for the best interests of the American people.
Ted Roosevelt:
I think there's a real hope in history. There's an opportunity to use the lessons from Theodore Roosevelt to tell us something about this moment in time. Is the goal of the library and the relevance of the library driven in part by the fact that this is a moment in time that really is reminiscent of TR's time?
Ed O'Keefe:
Well, I believe you look to the past to understand the present and make a better future. And that's what a museum does if it does it well. I mean, the only other time in US history where a greater percentage of the wealth has been concentrated by fewer people is the Gilded Age. Second only to now. You have technology rapidly changing the way society works. You have a wave of immigration changing the composition and definition of America.
And you've got an intense debate about whether America should be isolationist or whether it should be broadly out into the world and globalist. Does any of this sound familiar? And you have a really dynamic political figure who knows how to master the press and knows how to garner executive power and attention. There's so many parallels. It does serve to remind you that we have been here before.
And history is something you can look to, not to just comfort you that this too shall pass, but it should give you some instructive lesson in how to get to a better future. I think that Theodore Roosevelt is particularly relevant and resonant because he was quintessentially American. He didn't take anybody's side, but the people's. Every party wants to claim him, and that's great.
We don't want to ruin that. He believed in policy, in debate, in understanding the issues and fighting for the greatest good for the greatest number of people. History is a roadmap to the future, and those who don't pay attention do so at their peril.
Ted Roosevelt:
I hear a common theme whenever you talk about the library and what you want people to come out of the library with is to be maybe better citizens to some degree. And so it begs the question, which we ask everyone on the podcast, what is a good citizen?
Ed O'Keefe:
A good citizen is someone who's engaged, who's involved. You don't have to be President of the United States to make a difference. TR was a great president. But you can get involved in your student council, your local government, your group or nonprofit of a particular passion point. You need to be in the arena for what you believe in, bending toward justice in whatever way you feel you can make a difference. A good citizen is involved.
Ted Roosevelt:
So this library sounds amazing. When's it going to open? When can people get to it?
Ed O'Keefe:
July 4th, 2026. The 250th anniversary of America. Open to the public next year.
Ted Roosevelt:
Ed, thank you so much for joining us today.
Ed O'Keefe:
Happy to be with you.
Ted Roosevelt:
That was awesome.
Ed O'Keefe:
Thank you.
Ted Roosevelt:
Thank you, Ed, so much for welcoming me into your office to discuss this exciting project. You have such a deep well of knowledge. It's always a pleasure for me to talk to somebody who knows more about my family than I do. And we are lucky to have you at the helm of this effort. Listeners, while you wait for the opening of the library next July, pick up a copy of The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President.
And be sure to spread the word by sharing this podcast with a friend. Good Citizen is produced by the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, in collaboration with the Future of StoryTelling and Charts & Leisure. You can learn more about TR's upcoming presidential library at trlibrary.com.
