“The one who falls and gets up is stronger than the one who never tried. Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.”               Roy T. Bennett

October 14, 1912, 8 p.m.  – Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Theodore Roosevelt was on his way to deliver a presidential campaign speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium. As he stood in the open-air vehicle waving to the crowd, a would-be assassin shot him from close range with a Colt revolver. The 53-year-old former President reached inside his overcoat to find a dime-size hole in the right side of his chest.

Roosevelt, an experienced hunter, coughed into his hand. Not seeing any blood, he knew the bullet had not penetrated his lungs. When his accompanying physician instructed the driver to head directly to the hospital, Roosevelt glared at the doctor, then told the driver, “You get me to my speech!”

Born into a wealthy New York City family in 1858, Theodore Roosevelt had been a frail and sickly child suffering from chronic, severe asthma attacks. Too sick to go to school, he was homeschooled. He was often confined to bed, where he read adventure and natural history books to escape his illness and his boredom. 

Doctors tried various treatments, including caffeine, cigars, ipecac, and massages without much success. It wasn’t until he was 12 that Roosevelt discovered physical exertion helped reduce the frequency of his asthma attacks. So began a life-long rigorous regimen of exercise, including boxing, climbing, hiking, horseback riding, polo, rowing, tennis, swimming, weightlifting, and martial arts, all of which he did to the extreme.

Roosevelt graduated from Harvard with an emphasis in natural history and participated on the boxing and crew teams. He married Alice Lee and studied law at Columbia University but dropped out after winning a New York Assembly seat at age 24.  

In 1884, Roosevelt’s wife and mother both died on the same day, two days after Alice had given birth to their first child. To deal with his grief, he retreated to the family ranch in the Dakota Badlands. There, he became a cowboy, drove cattle, hunted buffalo, and captured outlaws while serving as the sheriff.

During the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy to command the Rough Riders, a volunteer U.S. Cavalry unit in Cuba. He became a national hero after leading a daring charge up San Juan Hill, where he was forced to continue on foot after his horse became ensnared in barbed wire. This would prove to be one of the most significant and final battles in the war.

In 1889, he was elected Governor of New York, and two years later, he joined the Republican Presidential ticket as William McKinley’s Vice-Presidential choice. Six months after he took office in 1901, President McKinley was assassinated, and Roosevelt, 42, became the youngest President in the nation’s history. He won a second term in 1905, serving until 1909.

Three years later, Theodore Roosevelt was once again running for President, this time on the Progressive Party ticket, nicknamed the Bull Moose Party. He was on his way to deliver a campaign speech in the Milwaukee Auditorium when shot by John Shrank, a delusional saloon owner.

On that chilly October night Roosevelt began his speech, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been shot.” The former President opened his coat and pulled out his bloody 50-page speech with a bullet hole. “Fortunately, I had my manuscript in my pocket.” Pounding the podium he shouted, “It takes more than a bullet to stop a Bull Moose!”

The crowd watched in astonishment as the blood stain grew on Roosevelt’s white shirt during his 90-minute speech. At the conclusion, aides rushed him to the hospital where doctors decided it was safer to leave the bullet in his chest rather than risk removing it. Roosevelt overcame the gunshot wound, which sidelined him for two weeks, but the 54-year-old ultimately lost his bid for a third term to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

Despite his loss in 1912, historians generally rank Theodore Roosevelt among the nation’s five greatest U.S. Presidents. His image stands alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. Among his many accomplishments was constructing the Panama Canal and receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in mediating a settlement to the Russo-Japanese War.

Roosevelt’s most enduring accomplishment was the huge expansion of the United States’ national parks and forests. He set aside 230 million acres for five national parks and 150 national forests and in 1905 established the U.S. Forest Service.

Roosevelt’s blood-stained white shirt and speech can be found at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace Museum in New York City. They testify to his determination, toughness, and refusal to quit. On the wall nearby is one of Roosevelt’s most notable quotes: “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”