But the assassination attempt in 1912 had, with a shocking suddenness, changed all of that. Kermit, already living and working in Brazil at that time, had been hit perhaps hardest of all by the reality of his father’s mortality. “It was a bad time to be far away,” he admitted to Belle. “And the way in which I was told didn’t help matters. I guess the man must have been worrying how to tell me, and got mixed up. He’s a big up-from-the-soil sort of foreman; and looked rather embarrassed, and then said, ‘Well I guess that they’ve shot Roosevelt all right.’ . . . It was almost impossible to get
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