Quentin Roosevelt, age 20, one of Theodore and Edith Roosevelt's son, was killed in aerial combat over France.
Quentin was the youngest of the Roosevelt boys, all of whom were serving in World War One (Kermit was serving in the British Army). His death came as a terrible shock to his parents and his father never really recovered. T.R.'s decline into death himself accelerated rapidly after Quentin's death and his fiery nature evaporated.
2nd Lt. Roosevelt was buried with full military honors but they were not above making a postcard out of the photograph of his dead body and wrecked airplane, a site that was sufficiently grisly that the German populace, which remained fond of Roosevelt, was shocked.
Quentin was by all accounts highly intelligent and very well liked. He was engaged at the time of his death to the wealthy Flora Payne Whitney who was treated by the Roosevelt family in the immediate aftermath of his death as if she was one of the family. She would go on to marry a fellow member of Roosevelt's squadron in 1920, although the marriage would be brief (she remarried in 1927).
Quentin as a boy at Sagamore Hill.
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