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The Quarterly • Fall 2025
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ce le br ating fifty years of coeducation
Groton School • The Quarterly
Groton School
in the spring of 1917, editors of the Grotonian
STEPHEN B. CURTIS’ ’43 JOURNEY FROM GROTON BOY TO AMERICAN SOLDIER
solicited news and writing from Groton School alumni serving in World War I for the issue that normally would salute graduates. Quentin Roosevelt 1915, a former Grotonian editor and the youngest child of President Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Roosevelt and newly enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Service—sent a poem, “Reverie,” which appeared in the May 1917 issue. Just about a year later, on July 14, 1918—Bastille Day— Roosevelt was killed when his plane was shot out of the sky over France. He is the only child of a U.S. president to have died in combat. Poetry had long been a Roosevelt family touchstone. Quentin and some of his siblings were known to write poems for their parents at Christmas. This poem shows Quentin to be a dreamer of dreams as he embarks on his fatal mission. Mark Melchior, the McCormick Library director and Groton School archivist, uncovered the poem while searching on behalf of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library for materials to fill out a profile of Quentin Roosevelt for National History Day’s Silent Heroes website. The poem appears online as part of the published profile.
FOLLOW GROTON:
Fall 2025 • Volume LXXXVI, No. 2
Quentin’s poem was not the only material worthy of further consideration. Subsequently, Mr. Melchior shared it and other Grotonian materials from the World War I years with U.S. History classes that were studying the war. Students read firsthand reports from the front, accounts of how the Groton campus prepared for wartime activities, and even obituaries of graduates—and, in one case, a Groton teacher. The Groton History Department plans on using these materials again in the coming year.
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