Colonel Roosevelt and the White House Gang

Arthur Hayne Mitchell is a writer, senior biodiversity, environmental and natural resources specialist, protected areas planner and manager, environmental policy specialist, conservation biologist and biological anthropologist with more than thirty years' experience, including twenty-five working outside the United States in fifteen countries, primarily in Southeast and South Asia as well as East Africa and the Caribbean. Art Mitchell, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Yale University, lives in Fairfax, Virginia.
Reginald Earle Looker volunteered to serve in France, prior to the official entry of America into WWI, as an ambulance driver with the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps (Norton-Harjes). During that time, he also worked as a freelance war correspondent for The Evening Post. After the war, Looker worked as an advertising executive, magazine editor, public relations consultant, ghost-writer and speech writer for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Looker was associate editor of Asia magazine and a contributing editor of Fortune magazine. In addition to The White House Gang, a 1929 'New York Times' bestseller, he wrote This Man Roosevelt; Colonel Roosevelt, Private Citizen; The American Way: Franklin Roosevelt in Action; Looking Forward and Government - Not Politics (both ghost-written with Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Revolt (with his second wife Antonina Hansell Looker). During WW II, Looker headed the Psychological Warfare division of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), which was transferred under the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of 1942. MIS was tasked with collecting, analyzing and disseminating intelligence. The OSS later became the CIA. He also served as a Lt. Colonel in World War II, Pacific Theater. Earle Looker died in 1976 at Toccoa, Stephens County, Georgia.

When Theodore Roosevelt became president at age forty-two upon the assassination of William McKinley, he was the youngest President to have ever served - then and now - and was father to six children, ranging in age from three to seventeen. During his term, watching the Roosevelt family became a national pastime. Each day, news of the First Family was consumed by newspaper readers. The best known Roosevelt child was, of course, the President himself. His pillow fights with his sons, sometimes while keeping the cabinet waiting, were notorious. One magazine described the phenomenon by saying people could no more ignore the Roosevelt stories "than a small boy can turn his head away from a circus parade followed by a steam calliope." Roosevelt's children, along with some of their cousins and friends, came to be called the White House Gang. Roosevelt, certainly the most famous Gang member, was singularly able to encourage the positive qualities of his and other boys while leading the United States into the 20th Century. But the Gang's real leader was Roosevelt's youngest child Quentin. They roller skated in the hallways, stilt-walked through high ceilinged rooms, spit-balled portraits and explored every possible space of the White House from roof to attic to basement. One of their favorite games was to stage "attacks" upon various government office buildings. "This book tells how Theodore Roosevelt handled his children, how he won their love and respect, and how he won them to his way of thinking. There ought to be an Amendment to the Constitution compelling every mother and father to read this book. It is a fascinating story, and if you read it and heed it, you will be a better parent. Your children will be happier, and you will be happier." ----Dale Carnegie, author of "How to Win Friends and Influence People", April 20, 1938