Just in time

From the Crime Beat: Dateline 1987. Person or persons unknown stole a loaned silver pocket watch from the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site in Buffalo, New York. Yes, the watch belonged to beloved Teddy Roosevelt, US president from 1901 - 1909. His sister and her husband gave him the watch before he was president and even before his noted victory at the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, his days as a wild game hunter in Africa and his exploration of the Amazon through South America.

I guess he didn't have bone spurs.

But 37 years after it was ripped off, it came back last week to the Roosevelt Site in Buffalo. It was found last year at a Florida auction house, and federal agents verified its provenance and returned it. It's a Waltham watch from Massachusetts, with a plain silver exterior and the engraving  “THEODORE ROOSEVELT” and “FROM D.R. & C.R.R.,” (that's Roosevelt’s brother-in-law and sister, Douglas Robinson Jr. and Corinne Roosevelt Robinson) on the inside.

Tweed Roosevelt and the returned watch

Even those words were not proof of its authenticity. After all, anyone could have anything inscribed on a watch. But, it's the real McCoy, and TR's great-grandson, the magnificently-named Tweed Roosevelt, is glad to have it back among the family heirlooms.

“This was feel-good news,” Tweed, 82, said last week. “For me, it kind of felt like almost as if a piece of TR’s spirit being returned to Sagamore Hill, like a little bit of him was coming back. And so I felt that was really cool.”

I think the only thing cooler than having a great-grandson named Tweed (who, it should be noted, was in the crowd at Woodstock in 1969!) would be to be one of the four presidents pictured on Mt Rushmore - and be the one with the cool pince-nez* glasses on!

 * Pince-nez (pronounced POHNCE-NAY) glasses are those specs that literally pinch one's nose to stay on one's face. It's directly from the French for "pinch nose".