Quentin Roosevelt I (November 19, 1897 – July 14, 1918) was the youngest son of President Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Roosevelt. Inspired by his father and siblings, he joined the United States Army Air Service where he became a pursuit pilot during World War I and shot down one German aircraft. He was killed in aerial combat over France on Bastille Day (July 14), 1918. He is the only child of a U.S. president to have been killed in action.
Quentin was born in Washington, D.C., on November 19, 1897, the youngest child of Theodore Roosevelt's household, which included half-sister Alice, sister Ethel, and brothers Ted (Theodore III), Kermit, and Archie.
He grew up in the White House, which his father entered as president in 1901. An outgoing and mischievous boy, he treated it as his playground. His behavior prompted his mother, Edith, to label him a "fine bad little boy". Among his many adventures with the "White House Gang" (a name assigned by T.R. to Quentin and his friends), he carved a baseball diamond on the White House lawn without permission, defaced official presidential portraits with spitballs, and threw snowballs from the roof at unsuspecting Secret Service guards. He once rode on top of the family elevator with his friend Charlie Taft, son of Secretary of War and future President William Howard Taft. On another occasion the Secret Service, alarmed by smoke behind the White House, found Quentin baking potatoes in a makeshift brick chimney.
Quentin was known for his quick wit. When a reporter asked the eight-year-old about his father in 1905, he replied, "Yes, I see him sometimes; but I know nothing of his family life."
When his brother Archie was sick in bed with measles, Quentin and his brother Kermit brought the pony Algonquin up to Archie's room in the White House elevator to cheer him up.
Quentin started his education at Force Elementary School and then attended the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia. Later he was a student at the Evans School for Boys and Groton School.
When at home he would buy a broken-down motorcycle or a ramshackle automobile and tinker with it until it ran. He entered Harvard College in the fall of 1915, where he pursued studies in mathematics and mechanics.
Quentin was posthumously awarded an A.B. (War Degree) by Harvard, Class of 1919.
Quentin was engaged to Flora Payne Whitney, a daughter of Harry Payne Whitney and the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. The match met reservations on both sides: Theodore Roosevelt disapproved of the Whitneys' inherited fortune and life of leisure, while the Whitneys had hoped Flora would marry a man of greater means than the modestly wealthy Roosevelts.
In a February 1917 letter, Quentin voiced his growing support for American entry into the war: "We are a pretty sordid lot, aren't we, to want to sit looking on while England and France fight our battles and pan gold into our pockets?"
While training as a pilot in France, Quentin and Flora hoped to marry before he went to the front. A wartime rule barring the sisters of servicemen from the war zone kept Flora in the United States, as her brother was also in the service. Theodore Roosevelt, who had grown fond of Flora, called the ruling "idiotic" and "wicked" in a letter of July 6, 1918, regretting that the couple was denied what he called their "white hours".
The two never married. Quentin was killed in action eight days later, on July 14, 1918. Answering a letter of condolence, Theodore described his son's fiancée as "a very beautiful girl, of very fine and high character".
All four of Theodore Roosevelt's sons received military training before the United States entered World War I, reflecting their father's advocacy of preparedness. The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 heightened concern about the nation's military readiness. The month before, Congress had authorized an Aviation Section in the Signal Corps, formally recognized in law by the act of July 18, 1914.
In 1915, Major General Leonard Wood, a friend of Theodore Roosevelt since their Rough Rider days, was the driving force behind a summer training camp at Plattsburg, New York, where college men and men of business paid their own way to learn military rudiments. Quentin and two of his brothers were among the volunteers. The National Defense Act of 1916 placed the movement on a firmer footing, endorsing the Plattsburg camps as an authorized army program and establishing a Reserve Officers' Training Corps in the colleges.
Theodore Roosevelt sought a combat command for himself as well. Friends in Congress introduced legislation that would have let the president raise up to four divisions of volunteers, one of them Roosevelt's, but Woodrow Wilson declined to authorize it. All four of his sons served as officers nonetheless. Theodore himself toured the country making speeches for the Liberty Loan program.
Quentin had majored in mechanical engineering at Harvard and spent two summers at the Plattsburg camp. In 1917 he left college to enlist in the army's aviation service, training at the Mineola airfield on Long Island. The field was later renamed Roosevelt Field in his honor and is today the site of the Roosevelt Field shopping mall.
Finally sent to France, Lieutenant Roosevelt first helped in setting up the large Air Service training base at Issoudun. He was a supply officer and then, in time, ran one of the training airfields. Eventually, he became a pilot in the 95th Aero Squadron, part of the 1st Pursuit Group. The unit was posted to Touquin, France and, on July 9, 1918, Saints, France. While flying from Saints, he was billeted about half a mile away in the nearby village of Mauperthuis. Roosevelt had one confirmed kill of a German aircraft during the German spring offensive, which he shot down on July 10, 1918. Four days later, in a massive aerial engagement at the commencement of the Second Battle of the Marne, he was himself shot down behind German lines.
Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, commander of the 94th Aero Squadron (also known as the "Hat-in-the-Ring" Squadron), in his memoirs described Roosevelt's character as a soldier and pilot in the following words: