Bill Bleyer reads from “Sagamore Hill” at Suffolk County Historical Museum

BOOK & BOTTLE 

Sagamore Hill: Theodore Roosevelt’s Summer White House

Bill Bleyer

Thursday, Nov. 3, 2016 – 6 PM
Members Free; Non-Members $5. Includes book sale and signing, local wine & cheese, and admission to current exhibits.RSVP Requested: 631-727-2881 x100

With previously unpublished photographs and a detailed guide to the house and grounds, historian Bill Bleyer will recount bygone days at Sagamore Hill and reveal the story behind Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite place on earth. After returning to Oyster Bay following the death of both his beloved wife and his mother, Roosevelt and second wife Edith made the house a home for their growing and rambunctious family. What began as the perfect getaway from unhealthy New York City summers in his grandfather’s day became the summer White House during Roosevelt’s presidency. He hosted political guests like Henry Cabot Lodge and cultural luminaries like novelist Edith Wharton. Roosevelt spent his final years happily at Sagamore Hill, and after his death in 1919 the house was preserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bill Bleyer, a Long Island native and prize-winning staff writer for Newsday for thirty-three years before retiring in 2014, is co-author with Harrison Hunt of Long Island and the Civil War (2015). Bleyer has written extensively about history; he was one of four Newsday staff writers assigned to Long Island: Our Story, a daily history of Long Island that resulted in three books. A graduate of Hofstra University, where he has been an adjunct professor of journalism and economics, Bleyer earned a masters in urban studies at Queens College of the City University of New York.

Sagamore Hill: Theodore Roosevelt’s Summer White House is scheduled to be published by History Press in October 2016. This event will include a book sale and signing!