New England Diary

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TR great-grandson to discuss president's legacy

Official White House portrait of Theodore Roosevelt, by the famed painter John Singer Sargent, who spent most of his life in Europe but came from an old New England family.

To members and friends of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com):

Tweed Roosevelt, president of the Theodore Roosevelt Association and great-grandson of that president, will be our dinner speaker on Wednesday, Nov. 6. He’ll talk about how TR’s foreign policy, which was developed as the U.S. became truly a world power, affected subsequent presidents’ foreign policies.

In 1992, Mr. Roosevelt rafted down the 1,000-mile Rio Roosevelt in Brazil—a river previously explored by his great-grandfather in 1914 in the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition and then called the Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt. The former president almost died on that legendary and dangerous trip.

After graduation from Harvard, Mr. Roosevelt served for two years as a VISTA volunteer in Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant, and the Lower East Side of New York City and went on to NYC’s Human Resources Administration. He subsequently earned his MBA and then taught for two years at Columbia University. A long career in management consulting and finance culminated in his becoming Chairman of Roosevelt China Investments, which, among other businesses, owns and operates the House of Roosevelt on Shanghai’s Bund.

Over the years, Mr. Roosevelt has done much to further the memory and ideals of Theodore Roosevelt. He has lectured and taught about TR at numerous institutions and schools around the world, including Harvard, Marshall, and Santa Clara Universities, ranging from single lectures to a 20-hour course that involved as guest speakers most of the well-known historians of TR.

He has also lectured on a wide range of other subjects, including conservation and the environment, hunting, politics, literature, history, mathematics, Japanese-American relations, and exploration, and has retraced many of TR’s adventures in the American West, Africa, and the Amazon. He has appeared on numerous television documentaries and radio programs and was awarded the prestigious Telly Award for his public service announcement on presidential log cabins.

Schedule:

6:00 - 6:30 PM: Cocktails

6:30 - 7:30: Dinner (salad, entree, dessert/coffee)

7:30 - 8:30: Speaker Presentation

8:30 - 9:00: Q&A with Speaker.

For information on the PCFR, including on how to join, please see our Web site – thepcfr.org – or email pcfremail@gmail.com or call 401-523-3957