That's where the Teddy bear came from, IIRC.

:yep: It was to honor his creation of the National Parks system. From what I've heard he hated that too.

Well, he strengthened our navy and got the Panama canal built. Our ability to quickly shuffle ships between the Atlantic and Pacific fleets via the canal strengthened our hand in foreign relations immensely.

Question: do you have a problem w/immensely powerful private entities that only answer to their boards and stockholders?

As I understand it the origin of Teddy Bear comes from this Washington Post cartoon which depicts an incident that happened during a Presidential hunting trip:

http://www.blueribbonbears.com/image...s/trcarton.jpg

Apparently his handlers had caught a bear cub and tied it to a tree so TR could shoot it but he refused considering it to be unsportsmanlike. Some smart marketing guy came up with the idea of applying the name to a stuffed bear.