Budner, Lawrence H.

Lawrence and Doris Budner’s interest in Theodore Roosevelt began in 1979 when Mr. Budner read The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the twenty-sixth President of the United States written by Edmund Morris. As the couple later recounted, the origins of their Roosevelt collection began when Mr. Budner purchased a first edition copy of T.R.’s autobiography during a trip to San Francisco.

Lawrence Hyman Budner, who worked as a bank executive at the First National Bank in Dallas, was born in 1930 and attended the University of Texas at Austin before transferring to Southern Methodist University, where he received a B.B.A. in banking and finance in 1951. After his retirement from banking, Budner earned a Master’s degree in history from S.M.U. in 1990. Upon receiving his B.B.A., Budner began working for the First National Bank, became an assistant cashier in 1957, vice president in 1962, and senior vice president and trust officer in 1970. Budner opted for early retirement in 1987 upon the merging of First National with Republic Bank of Texas, also located in Dallas. Budner was a member of Temple Emanu-El, in addition to being a founder and president of Temple Shalom, both in Dallas; he also served on the boards of organizations such as the Baylor Health Care System Foundation, the Dallas Jewish Coalition for the Homeless, and Hebrew Union College.

Budner’s M.A. thesis-not surprisingly, on Theodore Roosevelt-explored the ways in which T.R.’s experiences living in the American West in the 1880s influenced his later outlook upon government efforts to promote social uplift. "In this prodigiously researched study," as S.M.U. history professor Tom Knock has said, Budner "advanced a new and important interpretation of the meaning of that chapter in T.R.’s life for the White House years-and in a way that no other Roosevelt biographer had ever done before." Professor Knock continued, "Hal Williams [also of the SMU history department] and I served as his thesis advisers, and neither of us was in the least surprised when Lewis Gould, the distinguished historian at the University of Texas who served as Larry’s outside reader, said to him after his thesis defense, ‘We now consider you a professional historian.’"

Budner identified Roosevelt as the leading spokesman of the Progressive movement in the early years of the 20th century. He argued that T.R.’s time in the West was crucial in shaping his views about "the common man" and the importance of the Progressive movement, especially regarding conservation and women’s rights.

Budner’s wife of over forty years, Doris Albert Budner, was a native of San Antonio and a 1953 graduate of S.M.U. She was active in Dallas area civic organizations in addition to her Theodore Roosevelt-related interests and activities. She worked with the Dallas Jewish Coalition for the Homeless, the Dallas Association of Services to the Homeless, the All-Faith Coalition, and the Dallas Commission on Children and Youth.

Doris married Lawrence Budner in 1950, and the couple had three sons, Craig, Bruce, and Keith. She was recognized for her charitable activities, and received the J.C. Penney Golden Rule Award in 1989, the Foley’s/Dallas Morning News Savvy Award in 1995, and the National Association of Social Workers’ Public Citizen of the Year Award in 1999, as well as being twice recognized by the Dallas City Council.

Both were members of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, established by Congress to perpetuate the memory of Roosevelt "for the benefit of the people of the United States and the world." Mr. Budner served as president of the organization. In addition, the Budners took part in ceremonies for the Commissioning of the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, in 1986.

The Budners acquired everything related to Roosevelt that they could find: books, periodicals, pamphlets, teddy bears, ephemera, and photographs detailing Roosevelt’s life, presidency, and times. The Budners donated about 4,000 items of their Roosevelt collection to the S.M.U. DeGolyer Library in a series of annual gifts from the 1980s until 2007.

Doris Budner died on June 18, 2003, and Lawrence Budner died on November 11, 2008.

Lawrence and Doris Budner’s fascination focused on one of the most colorful figures in American history, albeit one whose presidency proved controversial both then and today. Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States in September 1901, following the assassination of President William McKinley. T.R. was elected to a full term in 1904, and the major themes of his presidency included the advancement of progressive reform at home and an assertive-even jingoistic-foreign policy, most notably in relations with Latin America.

Theodore Roosevelt was born October 27, 1858 in New York City to Theodore and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt. Theodore Sr. and his family enjoyed an affluent lifestyle, although this was more due to inherited wealth than it was to his business savvy. The vigorousness and vitality that his son displayed in later years were all traits he acquired with hard work; his childhood was marked by asthma and other health problems. Roosevelt’s intellectual interests included poetry and history (especially natural history), and he took up activities such as hiking, hunting, and boxing to improve his health-activities which he pursued his entire life.

Roosevelt attended Harvard, graduating in 1880. That same year, he married Alice Hathaway Lee and later attended Columbia Law School. Although he had entered college intending to become a natural scientist, his interests gradually turned to politics (his senior thesis was entitled, "Practicability of Giving Men and Women Equal Rights"), and he was elected as a Republican to the New York state assembly in 1881 at only 24 years of age, and was twice reelected.

Roosevelt’s close identification with the American West began with an 1880 hunting trip, but it grew unexpectedly deeper in 1884 upon the sudden death of both his wife and mother. Alice Roosevelt died shortly after giving birth to their first child in February 1884, only a few hours after T.R.’s mother died of typhoid fever. Deeply saddened, Roosevelt returned to his duties in the state assembly; later that year, he embarked on an extended trip to what was then the Dakota Territory. His adventures, which included hunting and operating two cattle ranches in the West, became the subject of a book, "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman," published in 1885.

He returned to New York in 1886, where he ran in (and subsequently lost) the city’s mayoral election. He renewed his friendship with Edith Carow, a childhood friend; they became engaged in 1885 and married the following year. The Roosevelt family included Alice Roosevelt by Theodore’s first wife, four sons, and another daughter.

Roosevelt’s loss of the 1886 New York mayor’s race was merely a temporary setback in his rising political career. Republican President Benjamin Harrison appointed Roosevelt to the Civil Service Commission as a reward for his work on behalf of the party in the 1888 presidential election. His reputation as a reformer grew, and his work in undermining the power of political parties to hand out government jobs, in favor of merit-based appointments, attracted favorable attention across party lines. Returning Democratic President Grover Cleveland decided to keep Roosevelt at the Commission in 1893.

At the same time, Roosevelt managed to maintain cordial enough relations with Republican Party bosses that his pursuit of higher office was not hindered by his criticism of the corrupt, machine-style political practices that were attracting increasing criticism by the late 1800s. While he opted not to make a second run for mayor of New York in 1894, Roosevelt nonetheless benefitted from the Republican who did capture the race for city hall, by being appointed a city police commissioner in 1895. As historian Lewis L. Gould described his activities on the commission, "Roosevelt stamped his personality on the city…he went with his face covered through Manhattan’s streets at night to find policemen sleeping on their beats or passing time in saloons. His teeth and pince-nez eyeglasses became public trademarks."

Roosevelt, having spent enough time in city and state politics by 1896, turned to national politics. His work on behalf of, and contacts with, national Republican leaders-as well as other party leaders’ interest in getting him out of their hair-both worked in his favor. Newly-elected Republican President William McKinley brought him to the Department of the Navy in Washington in 1897 as assistant secretary.

Roosevelt served as assistant secretary of the navy for only one year, but during that time he effectively ran the department, as the navy secretary was frequently out of town. He also advocated the buildup of the U.S. Navy, through the creation of a modern navy of steam-powered battleships to compete with European navies. Concurrently, Roosevelt supported overseas American expansion and welcomed a war with Spain in order to gain territory; he commented to one friend, "I wish to heaven we were more jingo about Cuba and Hawaii!"

War with Spain came in 1898, and although it was a brief war with more American casualties from disease than from enemy bullets, Roosevelt gained notoriety from his wartime exploits in Cuba with the famed Rough Rider regiment, following his resignation as assistant navy secretary and entry into the armed forces. Serving as a lieutenant colonel with 1,000 men under his command-newly-minted soldiers whose previous occupations ranged from cowboy to Ivy League-educated patricians-Roosevelt arrived in Cuba in June 1898. A minor battle with the Spanish two days later was followed by a daring charge on July 1 against enemy forces up Kettle Hill (erroneously reported later as San Juan Hill).

Although his celebrated wartime service was grounded at least as much in myth as it was in reality, he garnered much positive attention upon his return home, and the dividends from his newly-acquired status of war hero included the Republican gubernatorial nomination for 1898. Cultivating New York Republican party leaders by assuring them that he would not alienate them by striking out on a radically independent course, he won the election, although narrowly. During his two year tenure as governor, Roosevelt managed the delicate act of keeping party bosses at least mollified, while still working for conservation measures and regulation of big business. This included scaling back the influence of big business in government and the courts and utilizing publicity and the force of his personality in exposing the seedier side of the corporate world.

Republicans who were opposed to Roosevelt-style reform attempted to defuse him by giving him a new job in 1900. McKinley, running for a second term, needed a new vice president. Party officials, upset with Roosevelt’s willingness to sponsor reforms in New York, thought that electing Roosevelt vice president was the easiest way to remove him as a source of irritation. The vice presidency-hardly a prize for any ambitious politician-seemed a safe place for the New York governor, although some thought that his nomination posed a risk. In a phrase that would be ruefully quoted by some and humorously quoted by others long afterward, Republican political advisor and Senator Mark Hanna feared, "Don’t any of you realize that there’s only one life between that madman and the Presidency?"

The presidency became Roosevelt’s by an assassin’s bullet in September 1901, six months after becoming vice president. He was, at 42, the youngest man ever to become president. His time in office coincided with both the growing presence of the United States in world affairs and the beginnings of what has been called the "modern presidency."

Far from being a weak or passive chief executive who chose to yield the policymaking initiative to Congress, as had been the case for much of the 1800s, Roosevelt instead turned the White House into the center of power in the federal government. The expectation that the president should actively lead-and the equally consequential belief that the federal government should work to remedy the social and economic problems of society-began converging during his presidency. He actively pressed Congress to undertake progressive reform legislation and did not hesitate to utilize the power of the press to achieve his objectives, and to satisfy the widespread public interest in him and his family.

In domestic affairs, Roosevelt took up the cause of progressive reform. His progressivism was born, in part, of the pragmatic conviction that the excesses of capitalism imperiled capitalism itself, and that the government should step in to remedy at least the worst of industrialization’s effects upon American society. He was still a progressive, however, and believed that the solution to the increased power of big business was an increase in the powers of government to regulate. In 1903 Roosevelt demanded, and Congress passed, legislation establishing a Bureau of Corporations to expose and investigate unfair corporate practices. In a response to widespread complaints of excessive and discriminatory railroad rates, Roosevelt signed the Hepburn Act in 1905, which gave the federal Interstate Commerce Commission the power to set shipping rates.

Following public outcry-and his own personal disgust-at the revolting practices of the meatpacking industry publicized by such works as Upton Sinclair’s "The Jungle," the President passed the Meat Inspection Act to establish regulations for how meat could be processed and sold. The Pure Food and Drugs Act placed upon food and drug producers the responsibility of providing truthful information about their products.

Beyond the passage of progressive legislation, the Roosevelt administration also initiated antitrust litigation to break up excessively large companies. The creation of the Northern Securities Company in 1901 to control a large portion of the nation’s railroad lines led the government to file a lawsuit seeking to break up the organization. Use of the judicial system to break up corporate trusts resulted in over forty government-initiated lawsuits during the Roosevelt presidency.

Having spent so much time in the outdoors, Roosevelt was an ardent proponent of conservation efforts, and he established several wildlife refuges and turned over 100 million acres of land into national parks and forests. Other lands were declared off limits to private companies, and the federal government also initiated irrigation projects under the Newlands Act.

Roosevelt’s domestic activities were considered overbearing by some and insufficient by others, but his foreign policy was seen by many as imperialistic. Determined to project American power in the Western Hemisphere, Roosevelt actively intervened in the affairs of neighboring states. The Monroe Doctrine had declared the Americas closed off to new colonization by Europe, as well as to any attempt to subvert the independence of countries in the hemisphere. Roosevelt built his own declaration (the "Roosevelt Corollary") on top of that in 1904 by asserting that the United States retained the right to intervene-even militarily-within the Americas to ensure stability and protect American interests.

In a dispute between England, France, and Venezuela over unpaid Venezuelan debt, which threatened to spark military conflict, Roosevelt dispatched the navy to the Caribbean as a reminder to all of his intent to enforce his corollary. American troops were sent to Alaska to help ensure a favorable result of a disagreement with the British over the boundary between Alaska and Canada. The President kept out of inter-European affairs, and in Asia he scored a notable diplomatic success by negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth, ending the Russo-Japanese War. Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in ending that conflict.

What was arguably the most controversial foreign policy maneuver by the Roosevelt administration occurred in Columbia and Panama over the issue of the construction of a canal to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The president had initially concluded an arrangement with Columbia for American rights to construct a canal across Panama (at that time part of Columbia). Columbia balked at the deal, demanding a larger sum of money from the U.S. in return for a canal agreement. The president thereupon encouraged a Panamanian revolt against Columbia and sent an American gunboat to stop any move by Columbia to keep Panama under its control. With Panama effectively an independent nation, the United States offered limited diplomatic recognition, and in return signed a treaty with the new country providing for American construction of a canal, and American control over the Canal Zone on either side. The president remained unapologetic for the manner in which the U.S. had obtained rights to build the canal, and later boasted, "I took the Isthmus."

Despite Roosevelt’s aggressive style of governing in both domestic and foreign affairs-or because of them-he enjoyed a considerable amount of popularity with the American people and was overwhelmingly elected to a full term in 1904. In a decision he regretted years later if not immediately thereafter, he decided that he would not run in 1908. Although Roosevelt had become president due to the death of William McKinley, getting elected in 1908 would have broken the precedent set by George Washington of only serving two terms. That year, the president’s support for the Republican presidential nomination went to William Howard Taft. Taft, who had served in several government positions including governor of the Philippines, was also a friend of Roosevelt’s. Taft won the election, largely due to Roosevelt’s continuing popularity.

Roosevelt, confident that his policies would be safeguarded by his successor, left the presidency in 1909 and embarked on a hunting trip to Africa, later publishing an account of his adventures. Taft, meanwhile, quickly alienated progressives who had voted for him believing that he would promote reform the way Roosevelt had done. With Republican progressives threatening to bolt the party if Taft was re-nominated in 1912, and with the friendship between Taft and Roosevelt disintegrating due to political disagreements, the former president decided to make another presidential run in 1912.

Roosevelt’s attempt to win the 1912 Republican presidential nomination failed, due to Taft’s control of the party and the newly-formed Progressive (or "Bull Moose") Party nominated the former president as their candidate. Roosevelt fared better at the polls than Taft, but the split in Republican Party ranks between the two led to the narrow victory of Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

In his final years, Roosevelt remained highly visible, publishing his memoirs and traveling in South America. World War I began in August 1914, and Roosevelt became one of the leading voices of the "preparedness" movement, sharply criticizing President Wilson’s neutrality policy. Wilson declined an offer by Roosevelt to lead a military division to fight in France, but the war still exacted an unfortunate cost from the former president after American entry into the war, when his son Quentin was killed in France in 1918. In January 1919, at only sixty years of age, Roosevelt died in his sleep.

Sources:

Budner, Lawrence H. "The Incredible Theodore Roosevelt," in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings (Vol. 8, No. 4), October 1995, pgs. 7-13.

Exhibition catalogue, The Incredible Theodore Roosevelt: An Exhibition from the Collection of Doris A. and Lawrence H. Budner, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, 1988.

Gould, Lewis L. The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991.

Knock, Thomas J. "Lawrence Budner." Introductory remarks, Southern Methodist University Bridwell Library, 2004.

McGerr, Michael. "Theodore Roosevelt," in Alan Brinkley and David Dyer, The American Presidency: The Authoritative Reference . Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.

Newsletter for Dallas Hall Society, "DHS Members Give Presentation about Their Collection of Theodore Roosevelt Memorabilia," Southern Methodist University, 1999?

Simnacher, Joe. "Doris Albert Budner-Advocate for homeless kids, founder of Vogel Alcove," Dallas Morning News, June 13, 2003, pg. 5b.

Simnacher, Joe. "Lawrence Hyman ‘Larry’ Budner-Dallas banker became T. Roosevelt authority," Dallas Morning News, November 13, 2008, pg. 18b.

From the guide to the Doris A. and Lawrence H. Budner collection on Theodore Roosevelt A1998. 2200 and Vault A1998. 2200c., 1867-2006, 1900-1920, (DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University)