First Lady Edith Roosevelt and Her Husband Teddy

Edi and Teedie were childhood neighbors and close friends throughout their high school years. If so, how did Edith Carow become Theodore Roosevelt’s second wife?  Interesting!

The public tragedy of President McKinley’s assassination resulted in Theodore Roosevelt becoming the 26th President of the United States while Edith became First Lady.

Amid the president’s Whitehouse workspaces, Edith raised six children. Theodore directed the building of executive office space next to the residence. More than a century later we call this once “temporary” space the West Wing.

Edith guarded the family privacy and assumed her duties with characteristic dignity. This administration was the social center of the land. Edith was described as a gentle and high-bred hostess. She was not only cultured, but scholarly, and had a profound love of reading. Her personality was a perfect balance to that of her exuberant husband.

For the new ground floor entryway, Edith directed the hanging of likenesses of—“all the ladies…including myself.” Because Edith was also an admirer of Whitehouse china, she officially launched a china collection. She exhibited an enlarged collection of presidential china and brought to fruition First Lady Caroline Harrison’s dream of a display of every administration’s china for public view.

It is Carolyn’s pleasure to share with you the life of this quiet and refined First Lady, Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt.

Carolyn Tucker Myers is originally from Memphis, Tennessee. Her family moved to a suburb of Detroit, Michigan where her father worked with General Motors. After five years of snow and ice, he moved the family to Houston. In 1951, her parents opened a hardware store in Pasadena, where they both worked.

Carolyn graduated from Pasadena High School in 1955 and the University of Texas, Austin, in 1959, and married shortly thereafter. The couple were stationed in Morocco where her husband spent two years in the Air Force. They returned to Coleman in central West Texas where she taught elementary school for six years.

In 1977, she moved back to Pasadena with her only child, a son. She joined the family business where she worked for 34 years. After the death of her parents and 60 years later, Tucker Hardware was closed in 2011.

A previous member and international secretary of Epsilon Sigma Alpha Sorority, Carolyn also served as president of Soroptimist International of Pasadena, a service organization. She was recognized as a Woman of Excellence at the 2000 Federation of Houston Professional Women Gala. She feels honored to be recently accepted into the DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution, Lady Washington Houston chapter.

Carolyn became interested in presidential libraries when she attended the annual hardware market in Atlanta, Georgia with her mother. They toured the library of President James E. “Jimmy” Carter. Thus began her mother’s collection of presidential plates, which Carolyn now proudly possesses. The other presidential libraries she has visited include: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush and found each different and intriguing.