Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

Quentin Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Theodore Roosevelt was a warrior to the end. At the age of 58 ,and as an ex president, he asked Woodrow Wilson for permission to lead a volunteer division to fight in France after America declared war on Germany in April 1917. Permission was denied. Roosevelt said that his four boys would fight in his place. The youngest boy, Quentin Roosevelt, joined the Army Air Corps and headed for France. Over the next year he would train in French Nieuport planes which even the French considered to be second rate and dangerous. Because of the extreme cold he caught pneumonia in November 1917 and was in the hospital for three weeks. In June 1918 he was made flight commander of the 95th Aero Squadron. On July 11, 1918 he shot down his first German plane. In a letter to his fiance Flora Payne Whitney, a granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, he said, “I think I got my first Boche,”. During the Second Battle of the Marne, July 14, 1918 his Nieuport was...

KATHERINE BURCH WARNER - B 1851 D- 1923  While Debbie was at a baby shower in Donelson today I had some time to kill. I decided to walk through Mt. Olivet cemetery. One of my favorite tombstones in the cemetery is Jesus holding the deceased children of Leslie and Katherine Burch Warner. I like the line on the bottom of the tombstone that reads, (THE GARDENER ASKED, WHO PLUCKED THESE FLOWERS? THE ANSWER WAS "THE MASTER" AND THE GARDENER HELD HIS PEACE.) Suffragist Katherine Burch Warner was born in Chattanooga in 1851, raised in Nashville, and educated at Vassar. The well-traveled Kate learned about politics through her father, John C. Burch, who fought under Nathan Bedford Forrest. He was editor and publisher of the Nashville American and secretary of the U.S. Senate. She married Nashvillian Leslie Warner in 1880; the couple had three children, but all had died by 1886. Her husband's weakening health led to early retirement, and the couple devoted themselve...