As many undoubtedly know, Veterans Day began as Armistice Day. It was on this date in 1918 that the carnage at last came to an end during the Great War. Nearly ten million people were killed in the conflict, and the Roosevelt household was not immune to the suffering. Theodore and Edith’s youngest child, Quentin, was among those who lost their lives. The young lieutenant’s fighter plane went down on Bastille Day 1918 during the Second Battle of the Marne. He was twenty.

Theodore Roosevelt was always proud of his son, but in many ways he never recovered from his son’s death. Already weak from numerous ailments, the former president died just six months later. He too died young, a mere sixty. The history books do not put it quite this way, but in a very real sense he died of a broken heart.