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Feb. 8, 2019 - Work Worth Doing - Doug Burgum

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#2 - Theodore Roosevelt V: A North Dakota legacy

Ted Roosevelt V, conservation advocate and great-great-grandson of our nation’s 26th President, has recently turned his attention towards a project in North Dakota: the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. He joins us to discuss the legacy of TR in North Dakota and the future of this project.

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	North Dakota's history is full of legendary people, and today North Dakota is a place where anyone can be legendary.
	Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, once said, Far and away, the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
	This is a show about people doing just that, for the people of the great state of North Dakota.
	Here's Mark Staples, a member of my team, to tell you more about today's episode.
	Hi.
	Here on Work Worth Doing, I'll be joining in every now and then to give you a bit more context, background, and perspective on the conversations you'll hear throughout this series.
	Today we have a very special guest on the podcast.
	His name is a familiar one in North Dakota, Theodore Roosevelt.
	Theodore Roosevelt V, that is, the great-great-grandson of our nation's 26th president.
	Ted Roosevelt has had a successful career working with many of the biggest names in finance and capital management.
	He is a strong advocate for conservation, serving as vice chair on the board of directors of EcoAmerica.
	Recently, he and his wife Serena have been spending a lot of time as an integral part of a major project in North Dakota, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
	Today we're going to start by asking ourselves why North Dakota is the right place for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
	Discuss President Roosevelt's special relationship with our state and talk about what comes next for this historic project.
	Here's Doug Burgum and Ted Roosevelt.
	As you know, Work Worth Doing is named after the iconic Theodore Roosevelt quote.
	Far and away, the best prize life offers is a chance to work hard at Work Worth Doing.
	We're going to continue to visit with people and tell stories of people across our state that are doing work worth doing and draw attention to ways that we can further our mission to empower people, improve lives, and inspire success.
	And given that our show is named after this iconic Theodore Roosevelt, quote, how honored am I today to have as our guest on our podcast none other than Theodore Roosevelt V. Welcome, Ted.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you for having me.
	Well, great to have you here.
	We talk about Theodore Roosevelt and here I am in the presence of Theodore Roosevelt.
	That's got to be interesting walking through life with one of the most famous names in the world.
	Well, I mean, listen, the worst names to have, there's no question about that.
	And certainly there's a vision here, library and museum connected with a national park and your great, great grandfather's role in actually helping to create the, not just the national park system, but what's now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and conservation.
	Sometimes North Dakota's been called the Elkhorn Ranch to cradle a conservation.
	That's right.
	Well, listen, let's start with the president.
	He absolutely loved North Dakota.
	It's a place that he came...
	Unfortunately, after tragedy struck his wife, this is a man whose father, he lost his father at an early age, to lose his mother and his wife.
	He was really, It was really transformational for him in a lot of ways.
	And that's sort of in spite of the fact that he lost his entire cattle operation in the winter of 1887 in one of the most brutal winters.
	So it wasn't that it was some, you know, great success, you know, financially for him or anything.
	He really learned to love the place tremendously.
	And the quote that you hear so often is that if it So not only restored himself, but it actually, the experiences and the hardships that he went through actually forged him into the individual, transformed himself, and then went on to transform a nation.
	Yeah, that's absolutely right.
	There's no question that the values that he saw...
	When he grew up in New York, and he'd gone to Harvard, his parents were very wealthy, the term that they would use to describe him when he came out here was a dude.
	I mean, he was not a...
	And when he left, he took with him a lot of the values that he learned here in North Dakota.
	This was a sense of self-reliance, as well as a sense of community and the importance of integrity.
	And those undoubtedly followed him to the White House.
	And his career when he came out of North Dakota has been described as a rocket ship.
	He took off right out of here.
	And when he came here, it would have been 1883, this was the frontier.
	I mean, when we talk about ranching, this was pre-fencing.
	If you read his autobiography, when these were doing trail rides, these guys were riding their days on roundups and sleeping on the ground and the cook stove.
	I mean, this is the classic, Western, iconic cowboy life that he was living and all the hardships that went along with that.
	Yeah, and in fact, I was recently reading in his autobiography, you think about the first night that he was there.
	He writes in his own word that he got off the train and then walked across the street to the Pyramid Park Hotel.
	And there wasn't a room, but there was an upstairs that had 14 bunks in it.
	And he, you know, flopped down on one of those.
	And you think about the loss he'd experienced and then throwing himself headlong into that.
	And then the proposed location that you're describing is just steps away from where he's He spent his first night in Medora.
	He steps away.
	I mean, it's just a deep connection to his...
	And think of where he'd come from.
	No, I mean, it was no question.
	I mean, to your point, it was a sharp contrast to what he experienced today.
	clearly a prime moving moment, an important moment in its life.
	And we have a lot of people in North Dakota that love hunting, love fishing, love the out-of-doors, love the thing in And he had a fascination from a child around wildlife.
	Can you talk a little bit about that?
	Because that's the New York Museum of Natural History.
	His early efforts as a taxidermist when he was a kid, and then his influence in starting the Boone and Crockett Club, which many people in North Dakota are very familiar with.
	Yeah, so when he was a child, the sort of family folklore is he, and you said it, is that he used to do a lot of taxidermy and skinned a number of animals, and that's something that It's actually continued through my family, through the generations.
	My father made money skinning and selling muskrat pelts when he was a child.
	So it was something that was near and dear to him and near and dear to his children and his children's children.
	But he skinned animals and did a lot of taxidermy, and he had so many different animals in their house in New York City that the sort of joke was, We're good to go.
	What was later become conservation certainly started a very early child.
	It's a very early child.
	And even today at this amazing, one of the great natural history museums in the world in New York, there's dioramas of the Elkhorn Ranch.
	There's pronghorn antelope that likely Teddy himself shot that are mounts that are included in those dioramas.
	So he brought North Dakota literally back to New York.
	That's absolutely true.
	That's right.
	And then he went on and touched so many other aspects.
	You know, you've mentioned conservation, the cradle of conservation.
	We've talked about the Boone and Crockett Club.
	As governor, I've had the chance to find out that he was the one that proposed the National Governors Association.
	So he was a leader in convening and working with people across party lines, across the state, and a real believer in what America could become.
	And everything from envisioning the Panama Canal to really shaping the way our nation was viewed in the world.
	He really set America up for the American century, the 1900s.
	That's right.
	So a couple of small things to add to that, just in case you have football fans that are listening to your podcast.
	Plenty of those.
	I would imagine, as am I. If we can work in North Dakota State winning the championship.
	I saw that, congratulations!
	If we can get that into this podcast, we'll have more people listening.
	More people will listen to it.
	It's the 13th time or so.
	They've won a bunch, right?
	Seven of the last eight.
	Seven of the last eight.
	But Teddy Roosevelt was, in many ways, the founder of the NCAA. And it was because the football was causing so much damage at the turn of the century.
	It brought a bunch of people together and said, we need to change the rules of football, make it a little bit safer.
	And at the time, that became the sort of origins of the NCAA. Now the highest award that organization gives out every year is called the Tech and Honor.
	You mentioned earlier, he was constantly on the move.
	This was a man that never stopped moving.
	He was ranching in the middle of North Dakota, and like you said, he was writing books at night.
	And so here's somebody that was always doing something.
	And so the different areas that he impacted in American history, and it's one of the really fun things about being Teddy Roosevelt's great-great-grandson is that you keep learning more, just never stop.
	It's a real testament to his genius and his energy.
	If you've been following along over the past year, you've probably heard more about the TR Presidential Library Museum than ever before.
	However, building a library museum for Theodore Roosevelt is by no means a new idea.
	Ever since the Presidential Library System began in 1939, The National Archives and Records Administration has taken on the task of cataloging the papers of 13 U.S. presidents.
	However, no president before Herbert Hoover has a library administered by the National Archives.
	The others, like the Abraham Lincoln and George Washington Museums, are designed to be funded and supported by many different sources to ensure that the stories of these people can be properly told.
	Every official presidential library requires the support of the living president or their family.
	Since their inception, presidential libraries have taken on a much larger role in telling these essential American stories.
	Most people are drawn to visit presidential libraries not for their collections of documents, but for their incredible museums and artifacts, such as Air Force One at the Presidential Library for Ronald Reagan in Simi Valley, California.
	Museums like this draw crowds of tourists and history enthusiasts from all over the nation.
	With Theodore Roosevelt's ties to the badlands of North Dakota, a library and museum in his namesake National Park would provide a backdrop unlike anything else.
	That's what Ted Roosevelt and his family want to see.
	Well, we appreciate all the connections with your family to North Dakota, but let's talk about the future.
	Theodore Roosevelt Library and Museum, this is an idea that's been kicked around North Dakota for over 20 years.
	There's been great work digitizing at Dickinson State University over 50,000 objects of President Roosevelt, who is the most He's a prolific writer, more letters than Jefferson, more books than any other president, I think 42 books, of which three or four of those.
	He wrote amazingly while he was here cowboying it up in the Badlands without electricity, without a keyboard, without his computer's laptop and his thing.
	He's with a candle and a pen and paper at night when everybody else is asleep writing these books.
	The work ethic that he must have had, incredible.
	But now we have a chance to tell his story and tell it here in the Badlands.
	But tell us a little about the vision and why you're excited, why the Roosevelt family is endorsing this concept.
	Yeah, well, one, obviously, and we started a little bit ago, but the president himself felt very close to the state of North Dakota.
	I just came across it the other day, and I think it's kind of amazing, because it's from Douglas Brinkley's tome on Teddy Roosevelt called The Wilderness Warrior.
	In this quote, this is Douglas Brinkley, he's talking a little bit about the 1900 presidential campaign that Teddy Roosevelt was on.
	At this point, Teddy Roosevelt's been all over the country.
	He's been everywhere.
	But Douglas Brinkley takes a moment to kind of highlight a moment in this American tour that Brinkley writes, The most memorable moment of the American West tour occurred when Roosevelt visited Medora.
	Suddenly there was a proud luster to his gait.
	The badlands lay before him, the essence of eternity found in the fossils of ancient fish and odd-shaped buttes.
	He wanted nothing more than to disappear over the horizon with a fine horse, saddle, and bridle.
	And the reason I wanted to read that quote to you is when you think about locating the Presidential Library, I mean, this was a place where he found great calm, where he found healing and restoration.
	And the idea of putting his library at the doorstep, the literal doorstep, of the only national park named after a person, the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where he found so much solace and healing, it's such an attractive romantic image.
	In addition, it really honors the man's commitment to conservation.
	I have this vision, and I don't know if it'll sort of play out exactly, but conceptually, it really speaks to me as this idea of the fourth wall of the library, the back of the library, actually just being the national park.
	Encouraging people to go out and explore the same place where Teddy Roosevelt went and explored in North Dakota, up near the Elkhorn Ranch, which has been referred to as the Cradle of Conservation, because...
	Because it was where he really started to understand the concept of what the national parks could be for this country.
	And that's just a profound influence on our country.
	And so the idea of having the library here, to me it's very powerful.
	So, Ted, one of the things that's unique about presidential libraries today, if you have a living president, the family has to be part of the decision about making the official library.
	And we're talking about having the official, the one and only, Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
	And your family, which is extensive, Gets approached by other people around this idea.
	And just tell us a little bit about, you know, North Dakota and about sort of the demand, because with the interest in Teddy and his life and the impact it's still having on the world today, you know, where does North Dakota stand in this?
	Well, I mean, I think one of the problems with a great idea is other people want to get involved with a great idea.
	And as news has traveled that there might be a Teddy Roosevelt Library out here in North Dakota, I've been working together, both Maine and California, about housing the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
	and Governor Burgum, you and I have been working together for quite some time, and we continue to work together, and it's been a great relationship, but there are other states that have been interested, and that's been flattering, but it's certainly not something that we've pursued at this point.
	But I think it's really...
	I think we're really saying it's up to North Dakota.
	There's an opportunity now, and North Dakota needs to step up.
	Well, that's right.
	And the fact of the matter is that it's something that...
	I think you mentioned it earlier, as people think about when they hear, you know, hey, we're going to build a Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, the first response is, oh, my goodness, I can't believe there isn't one.
	And then it's sort of followed by often...
	I was thinking about the prospect of putting one together because he was such a dynamic and interesting personality.
	And what that's done is created a bit of buzz about having something like this and certainly a bunch of large organizations have extended offers of help.
	But there's no guarantee, unfortunately, that it happens in North Dakota.
	I think it's something that would be great to have here in North Dakota for all the reasons we've talked about, but it doesn't have to be in North Dakota, you know.
	We mentioned earlier that presidential libraries and museums, whether administered by the National Archives or by private foundations, receive funding from a variety of sources.
	This formula of private and public support is different for every facility.
	For example, the Lincoln Presidential Library in Illinois is operated by its very own state agency.
	The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum is backed by a private foundation with board members from all across North Dakota and the United States.
	In December, Governor Burgum delivered his budget address in which he proposed a $50 million challenge grant from the state to be set aside to match $100 million of private and federal funding for this project.
	Let's provide some context for that $50 million.
	In 2009, the North Dakota Legislative Assembly passed a resolution to place the question of creating the Legacy Fund on the 2010 general election ballot.
	North Dakota voters approved the measure, which created a perpetual source of state revenue from the finite natural resources of oil and natural gas.
	In 2018, monthly deposits into the Legacy Fund averaged around $58 million.
	The Legacy Fund is invested and managed by the North Dakota Retirement and Investment Office and currently has assets of around 5.6 billion dollars.
	Lawmakers have yet to access the principle of the fund, but the earnings from the fund were designated in 2017 to cover ongoing government expenses.
	Governor Burgum has proposed using $300 million of legacy fund earnings in the upcoming biennium to leverage a total of $1 billion in investments to support legacy projects like a school and construction revolving loan fund or a statewide traffic control network for unmanned aerial systems.
	The $50 million for the library is part of that proposal.
	For perspective, the Library Challenge Grant represents one-third of one percent of the proposed overall budget for the next biennium.
	Key supporters from across the nation have already stepped up to support this project, such as Melanie and Rob Walton, the National Park Foundation, and of course, Ted Roosevelt V and the Roosevelt family.
	Everywhere you go, when you say your name, then I'm sure it's a conversation starter to really, I mean, really, really Peter Roosevelt.
	But if you do that, then, and it gets to the talk about the library, just tell us a little bit about what you think the opportunity is for North Dakota and attracting national partners who look at this as a special one-time opportunity.
	Well, I think really the challenge thus far has actually not been finding partners, but holding them at bay perfectly.
	You know, organizations like the National Park Foundation, the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian, have all reached out and expressed interest in finding ways that they might be able to help augment the efforts here, either with intellectual capital or other resources.
	And, you know, we've been waiting to see what the state does, to be perfectly frank with you, and that's a question that's outstanding at this point.
	Once we know that the state's here and that we've got the support of the state, I have no doubt that we're going to see an uprising of support from a number of very large national organizations.
	Because frankly, we haven't been out advertising for support at this point.
	It's been coming, it's been incoming sort of as a result of the rumor mill more than anything else.
	And I think once we sort of plant a flag and say this is what's going to happen and paint the vision, we're going to see quite a bit more support for it.
	If a visitor was coming from around the country to North Dakota, tell us a little bit about what your vision of that experience would be, and what would they take away from learning more about your most famous relative?
	Yeah.
	Well, let me start by sort of answering a slightly different question and then getting to your question, which is to say, I saw that Matt Rushmore gets about two and a half million visitors every single year, and anybody that's been there knows It's not a pit stop en route to somewhere else.
	You have to kind of go out of your way to get there.
	And as spectacular as it is, it's four presidents on the side of the mountain.
	And I can only imagine it's four and a half hours south approximately from here.
	And I can only imagine that if you built a library in honor of one of the spaces on the side of the mountain, some of those people are going to be interested in coming up here.
	It's kind of a tourist opportunity for the state to build a library.
	So when you ask about people that are coming through, I think there's 750,000 people that are visiting Four faces on the side of the mountain.
	And just to the west of us, 4.1 million visitors go to Yellowstone Park, which TR also had a hand in helping create that as part of the park system.
	And so certainly there's an opportunity in Roosevelt Country here to get a triangle going where we can pull some of those millions of visitors that are south and west of us up to something.
	So I'm in complete agreement with you on that.
	Yeah, I think it's an amazing opportunity.
	Just from a traffic standpoint, I'd like people to understand the President a little bit better.
	I think he had an amazing life that's extremely dynamic.
	It's fascinating once you get into it.
	And one of the things that he stood for very strongly was You know, people pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, but also, you know, community around with people to support him, excuse me, to support them.
	And, you know, I think there are just so many kind of core American values that you can derive from the president's experience that marry well with decoding values that are really important for people to learn and see.
	The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum effort has been receiving increased attention lately, but this is an idea that has floated around North Dakota for decades.
	In that time, Dickinson State University has digitized more than 50,000 documents from Roosevelt's life.
	The foundation formed in 2014 to formally begin planning the library.
	The State Legislature and the City of Dickinson indicated their support for an earlier iteration of the project, and the current proposal has the support of Dickinson State President Tom Mitzel.
	But as this project attracted more attention, the possibilities have expanded.
	Melanie Walton, a Dickinson State University graduate, and her husband Rob Walton have stepped up to join the effort.
	Their involvement has been transformational and has helped grow the vision of this library.
	With the support of volunteers and donors across the state and nation, the stage is set for a truly legendary project.
	What's the one thing that you learned about your great-great-grandfather that, like a piece of family history?
	Yeah, well, I think the story that amazes me the most, and it's not...
	Unknown to historians, but I find really a testament to sort of the strength of the character and his commitment to his causes.
	When he was running for president in 1912, he was running as a bold move as a party that he had created, which turned out to be the most successful third-party effort, but ultimately did not get him the presidency in 1912. He was giving a speech And during the speech, he was shot.
	And the bullet lodged only three centimeters from his heart.
	And I think really anybody at this point would...
	I mean, you give a lot of speeches, and I would imagine if you were shot, you'd pause and maybe go to the hospital We're concerned about his health, but he was that adamant and that passionate about his beliefs and about doing right for the country.
	And to me, that is as strong a testament to the man and his commitment to his causes as there can be.
	It reminds me that when I'm...
	In my life, if you hit a roadblock and you're down and you're worrying about the next thing, you can only dig a little bit deeper if it's something that you really care deeply about.
	Yes, it's incredible.
	The stamina, the energy, the fortitude that he showed in that.
	The shirt that he was wearing at the time he was shot is actually here in North Dakota at the Visitor Center at the Theatre Roosevelt National Park.
	So I'm sure that'll have a A more complete story told about it around that incredible artifact that is already here in North Dakota, but that's amazing.
	So Ted, last year the First Lady and I were in New York for Governor's Association meeting.
	Through an introduction to the First Lady we had a chance to meet with the President of the Explorers Club.
	I don't know if you've ever had a chance to be there in New York.
	It's filled with memorabilia and of course post-presidential life your great-grandfather was one of the world's great explorers.
	Just like his pride in being a cowboy, he had a great pride in being an explorer.
	The president of the Explorers Club sent to me an exact replica of his application.
	And for the listeners, Explorers Club, 345 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, application for membership, full name, Theodore Roosevelt, and then permanent address, Oyster Bay, Long Island, and then It says, you know, you provide your qualifications, so expeditions, you know, the Roosevelt expedition to Brazil, the Rio Roosevelt, hunting trips to British East Africa, Rocky Mountains, etc., etc.
	This is great.
	I've never seen this before.
	And books, you know, you can't list the 42 books he's written, but the ones he's got listed.
	This is in his own handwriting, Winning the West, Hunting Trips of a Ranch Man.
	Through the Brazilian Wilderness, comma, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, under books.
	I mean, that's as an author.
	And then under maps, it says, you know, map of the Rio Roosevelt in the Geographical Journal, February 1915. And then finally at the bottom, positions.
	This is to apply to the Explorers Club.
	Various positions, including Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of the State of New York, Colonel of the Rough Riders, President of the United States.
	So this is like an afterthought.
	I mean, it chokes me up to think about that he's got all these other accomplishments and then sort of a PS, President of the United States at the tail of the thing.
	But even down here, proposed by and then seconded by one of the people that seconded his nomination, Robert E. Perry, The famous explorer from Antarctica.
	Of course, that is amazing.
	We'd love to have you take a look at that.
	It's inspiring to see and it's just another aspect of this incredible life that we'd have a chance to tell that story and tell a rich story which I think could inspire generations to come right here in North Dakota.
	Thank you for sharing this.
	I've never seen this before and it really is quite fun to see.
	I'm not surprised that There are a number of titles and things that he did that got left off this list, but I'm not surprised that Colonel of the Rough Riders is on the list because that was, you know, he was President of the United States and people didn't refer to him as President Roosevelt after he was President of the United States.
	They referred to him as Colonel because that is the title he was most proud of in his time with the Rough Riders, many of whom, you know, as you mentioned earlier, came from the state of North Dakota.
	So it's fun to see it in practice here in writing his positions that Yes,
	and certainly one of the ties back to North Dakota when he won his actions, wartime actions, and Cuba, the Spanish-American War, where he later awarded the Medal of Honor, but he was leading a group as Colonel of the Rough Riders,
	and many of those people were We're good to go.
	And she said, you know, he talked about them in nothing but glowing terms.
	You would have thought they were knights on horses out here in the way that he talked about them.
	He just really revered not just the land, but the people here.
	Yes, and I think that capturing that spirit of North Dakota today, which still lives on in the people across our state, is one of the great outcomes that could come from this From this library and museum, because it's not just Teddy's story of being healed by the land, but being healed by the people that he was around, and we know that those characteristics still live on in North Dakotans today.
	Yeah, and it's a great time to remind the country of some of the great values of North Dakota.
	Well, it is fantastic, and I just want to again say thank you for being in North Dakota.
	Thank you to yourself and your whole family for being willing to serve on this board to help advance this idea, because this is an idea that's not just important to North Dakota or Western North Dakota.
	This is really important because his ideals and his life and his legacy is as relevant today as it was when he lived his life, and it continued to shape the world in a positive way.
	On our next episode of Work Worth Doing, Governor Burgum brings you another story of people working hard at Work Worth Doing for the people of North Dakota.
	That's all for this week.

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