Youth

As a child, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was sickly, suffering from chronic severe asthma and near sightedness.  His father, Theodore Sr., saw to it that he got plenty of exercise, and thus began a lifelong love of robust outdoor activity.  Home schooled, he excelled in natural history, biology, history, geography and modern languages.  He struggled, however, with Latin, Greek, and mathematics.  The photo above shows him at about age 10 and below at 16.

 

Teddy, as he came to be called, entered Harvard at age 18, and he joined the rowing team, as shown below.  Unfortunately, this is the only shirtless photo of him known to exist.

Despite not particularly liking Harvard because of what he thought was a rigid and formalistic curriculum, Teddy did well there. Even before he graduated, he was a recognized naturalist and a published ornithologist.  He completed his B.A. degree Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in 1880, and briefly attended Columbia Law School before deciding to go into politics.  The picture below was made on a hunting trip to the North Woods of Maine the winter before he graduated from Harvard.  Shown, l-r, are William Sewell, Wilmot Dow, and Mr. Roosevelt.