On Feb. 12, 1884, while serving in the state legislature in Albany, Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) received a telegram from New York City that his wife, Alice, who was living in his mother’s house, had delivered their first baby. He had already arranged to return home later that day when a second telegram brought news of the precarious state of Alice’s health. Rushing back to Manhattan, he found Alice semiconscious and dying from Bright’s disease and his mother, Mittie, stricken with typhoid fever. Both women died within hours of each other on Valentine’s Day.
Though devastated by this double catastrophe, Roosevelt hid his innermost feelings from others, sitting stone-faced during the funeral service while so many around him were weeping. His diary, however, reveals the true state of his heart and mind. Though normally effusive, on this occasion he could only write: “The light has gone out of my life.”
