Academic Advisor
University of Wisconsin-Parkside
Hometown: Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Calvin Watts is the academic advisor for social science majors at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. As an amateur historian, he studies how Theodore Roosevelt’s family relationships reveal the man behind his public personas.
Talks:
The Old Lion Perish for Lack of Prey: Theodore Roosevelt and the First World War
When the Great War engulfed Europe in 1914, former president Theodore Roosevelt firmly believed it was America’s duty to join the conflict before the guns fell silent. Never one to shy away from conflict, he became the loudest voice for U.S. intervention—and demanded the right to enlist himself, certain he would not return alive. Denied that chance by the greatest political foe he had ever known, Roosevelt’s four sons, one daughter, a son-in-law, and a daughter-in-law stepped forward to uphold the family’s legacy. But when tragedy struck, TR was forced to reckon with the personal cost of war—and the part he may have played in it.
Theodore Roosevelt and the Civil War
Only two-years-old when Fort Sumter was fired upon, Theodore Roosevelt would spend the rest of his life reckoning with, and trying to live up to, the legacy of the Civil War generation. Acutely aware of the sacrifices made by those who had served their country, and his father’s choice to not take up arms, TR would engage with personalities who had served on both sides al his life, and was always measuring himself against these individuals. When a global crisis on par with the Civil War finally came in 1914, he would send his sons to France to play the part he had always dreamed of. After years of expounding the glories of war, he would pay the ultimate price as a father, forever shattering his long held notions of duty and honor.