On   Valentine's Day in 1884, Teddy Roosevelt's   mother  and wife died, both, died, on the same   day , in the same house.   " In his diary, he wrote a large X on the page and wrote, "the light has gone out of my life." In all his years, in all his writings, the following is the only written record of Teddy's feelings toward his first wife, Alice Hathaway Roosevelt. " She was beautiful in face and form, and lovelier still in spirit; As a flower she grew, and as a fair beautiful young flower she died. Her life had been always in the sunshine; there had never come to her a single sorrow; and none ever knew her who did not love and revere her for the bright, sunny temper and her saintly unselfishness. Fair, pure, and joyous as a maiden; loving, tender, and happy. As a young wife; when she had just become a mother, when her life seemed to be just begun, and when the years seemed so bright before her—then, by a strange and terrible fate, death came to her.

It was recently brought to this Blogger’s attention that if he stays alive a mite longer, he may well  be  the last living American to have shaken hands with Alexander Kerensky . Kerensky was a good guy, a Russian version of American President Jimmy Carter; he was Premier of the government which fell to the Bolsheviks. That might well be true, for this Blogger was at least fifteen years younger than any other participant at the seminar.   Kerensky could have saved the world from Communism; for as Premier, he had Lenin in his jail, at his mercy. But he did not disappear him, for Lenin was a family friend, who had been taught by Kerensky’s father.  Such is history.   This Blogger may also soon be the last living American to know men who participated in the Communist Red Terror of the Bolsheviks. This Blogger’s father knew many old Trotskyites; before they were Trotskyites, they were Bolsheviks. Stalinists   chased into exile, or the Gulag or onto their   knees for the bullet in the back