Posted on 08/24/2002 7:08:21 AM PDT by BigWaveBetty
Tweed Roosevelt, great-grandson of President Teddy Roosevelt, takes part in Teddy Bear Expo, marking the 100th year of the Teddy Bear in Washington Friday, Aug. 23, 2002. Roosevelt holds an original bear made in 1904, right, and a reproduction of the first Teddy Bear, introduced in 1902, at left. The Teddy Bear, with its link to Theodore Roosevelt, is easily the most popular presidential memento ever produced. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)
Teddy Bear Celebrates Centennial
WASHINGTON (AP) - The teddy bear, inspired by the helpless bear a president refused to shoot, turns 100 this fall, still fuzzy-eared, huggable and loved by millions of children around the world.
Theodore Roosevelt's teddy bear is easily the most popular presidential memento ever produced and the centennial celebrations have already begun.
Appearing on Friday at the Doll and Teddy Bear Expo here, Tweed Roosevelt, the 26th president's great grandson, said teddy bears have long been part of childhood for young members of the Roosevelt family.
Roosevelt, 60, is a Boston investment banker and a spokesman for the teddy bears produced by the Steiff Company, which has been making stuffed bears since 1903.
"I think that the teddy bear has come to represent all that's good about humans," Roosevelt said. "For a child it is a confidant that's entirely on the child's side. It's an honor to the Roosevelt family that we had a part of giving to the world this symbol of joy and solace."
The teddy bear's creation resulted from the accidental combination of a tethered bear in a Mississippi woods, news stories about the president's refusal to shoot it, and a cartoonist's eye for an arresting image.
As the end of 1902 approached, Roosevelt had completed a busy and successful first year in office and Republicans had breezed through the November elections. The president decided he deserved a break and a bear hunt seemed made to order.
Soon Roosevelt was clambering down from a private car on a railway siding in Mississippi in leather leggings, a blue flannel shirt, corduroy jacket and hobnail boots. He had a cartridge belt at his waist, a hunting knife on his hip and a favorite, custom-made rifle under his arm.
The president was clearly ready. But the bears were not.
As biographer Edmund Morris records in Theodore Rex, his account of the Roosevelt presidency, wherever an increasingly frustrated Roosevelt went in the deep woods the bears went elsewhere.
Finally, a pack of hunting dogs gave chase to a bear which lunged exhausted into a pond where a guide roped it and cracked it in the skull with a rifle butt.
The president was sent for. Here, finally, was a bear for him to shoot.
"He was both disappointed and upset, on reaching the pond, to find a stunned, bloody, mud-caked runt tied to a tree," Morris writes. "The bear was not much bigger than he. He refused to shoot. 'Put it out of its misery,' he said. Somebody dispatched it with a knife."
The hunt went on for three more days. Roosevelt never got a shot.
But back in Washington the newspaper stories of the president's sporting refusal to shoot a defenseless bear reached the desk of Clifford Berryman, then a cartoonist for The Washington Post.
Berryman sketched a small, bewildered, tethered bear, with the president turning away in disdain. The cartoon appeared on the front page of the Post on Nov. 16 over the caption, "Drawing the Line in Mississippi."
Readers took to the imagery at once, demanding more bear cartoons. Berryman obliged. Subsequent bears became "smaller, rounder and cuter." Soon Berryman was adding tiny big-eared bear cub mascots to every cartoon he drew.
Berryman, whose cartooning career was to extend into the Truman administration, described the cartoon beast as "a poor measly little cub with most of its fur rubbed off and ears like prickly pears."
"We have all been delighted with the little bear cartoons," Roosevelt wrote Berryman on Dec. 29, 1902.
The president's delight was widely shared. Soon people on both sides of the Atlantic saw commercial possibilities in the little bears.
In New York City, Rose Michtom, the wife of Brooklyn candy store owner Morris Michtom, made two stuffed toy bears. Her husband put them in his window at $1.50 each with a sign calling them "Teddy's Bears." Soon the stuffed bears were selling so briskly that the Michtoms, both Russian immigrants, established the Ideal Toy Company to keep up with demand.
Meanwhile, in Germany, toy manufacturer Margarete Steiff had added plush, stuffed, bear cubs to her line of stuffed elephants and other toy animals. Each had button eyes, long arms, movable joints and a distinctive button in an ear.
In 1903, a New York toy store ordered 3,000 Steiff bears. In 1907, the year teddy bear first appeared in a dictionary, the company sold 974,000. The teddy bear was on its way to becoming an essential of childhood. Steiff still sells more than 800,000 bears a year.
In 1904, the little bear became the mascot of Roosevelt's successful presidential campaign.
All of this had a touch of irony about it. The president disliked the nickname Teddy. Friends called him "Theodore."
But his fellow countrymen were far more informal. To them, the president was Teddy. And the little stuffed bear was "the teddy bear."
The title is misleading....I thought this was a Victoria Secret's day on the guild....
:-)
I am so bad...
Next, she'll buy them a keg and tell them as long as they stay there, it's ok. I wouldn't trust her judgement ever again.
I agree with pubmom, BWB - you are absolutely correct not to go along with such nonsense. No 16-year-old "knows" he or she is homosexual, I don't care what anyone says. I guess the indoctrination is working.
More than 300 television viewers complained after an on-screen gay kiss between two policemen in uniform. Thursday's episode of police series The Bill, showed Sergeant Gilmore and PC Luke Ashton in a passionate embrace. ...
Stephen Warwick, a spokesman for the Lesbian and Gay Policing Association (LAGPA), said he welcomed the storyline. "It's a big step for British television," he said. "I see it as a very positive move". full story at BBC.
Winona Ryder looking for a plea bargain (despite having that top-notch lawyer, Mark Geragos???), story here.
heh heh heh! You feel into my trap! mwahahaha! *evil laugh*
I hope the parent got the part when I said Jane being a lesbian was not the reason my son couldn't sleep over, a very simple rule. Once you're on your own, I can't tell you who to have over. But while you're living under my roof..etc..etc..etc
The little spaceships that could, NASA's twin Voyagers, celebrate their 25th year August 20, 2002 by speeding toward the edge of our solar system carrying messages from Mozart, Bach, and Chuck Berry. Voyager 1 was launched August 20, 1977 and was expected to take a quick four-year tour of Jupiter and Saturn, send back some data, and retire. Voyager 2 was launched September 5, 1977, with a similar mission, but a different route. Instead, the doughty robotic probes have kept going and going and going. This is an image montage of the Saturnian system taken by the Voyager probe spacecraft. (Reuters - Handout)
I just check ed c-span wbsite and didn't see any Michigan Republican State Convention.
Evreybody keep your eyes peeled on cspan!!
Everyone who has my email address. Please freep mail me. I will be changing my email address today. That way I can freep mail you the new address. Our provider was bought out by another company, so these changes must be made before they cut off our service all together. Gee I hate changing my email address.
Mr. T is home today, and I must get started on dinner. I'll be back in a while, weather permitting. Chicken Fajitas tonight with Mexican rice. See ya in a little bit.
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