Teddy Roosevelt comes to Havre High School

"This guy is different - he's intense. He stopped everywhere - he stopped in Boulder, Montana."

Arch Ellwein, an "actor slash historian" who makes a living traveling and portraying historic characters, said this about the early 20th century president Theodore Roosevelt.

Ellwein stopped by Jessica Jones' Havre High School classroom Tuesday as the "bigger-than-life" Theodore Roosevelt in the Havre Hometown Humanities series of programs.

Ellwein, wearing worn, brown cowboy boots and sporting a Roosevelt-like mustache, said he usually started the presentation as himself because "Theodore is a little tough to take out of the box." He then divulged a few facts about the president.

Roosevelt had a wheezy voice that got higher as his excitement rose. And he was enthusiastic, a lot.

"He had the tendency to get pretty loud," Ellwein said.

He was so intense that some people broke into a sweat after talking to him. Roosevelt had a bad left eye and a "hitch in his get-along, but nobody knows it -because he is so enthusiastic," Ellwein said.

Roosevelt had a habit of stopping mid-sentence to clap his teeth together because he was asthmatic and trying to catch his breath. He was the most famous, the most entertaining personality of his time. He is the most photographed president ever - all this according to Ellwein.

Roosevelt wrote 35 books, hundreds of magazine articles and left 150,000 personal letters, Ellwein said enthusiastically.

An hour into the presentation, Ellwein put on a brown cowboy hat, slipped on a pair of beige leather gloves with tassles and snapped on a pair of pinch-nose glasses like the type Roosevelt had. He bowed his head down and Theodore Roosevelt raised his.

The first thing ecstatic Roosevelt did was navigate the room like an erratic squirrel, shaking hands with every person in the room.

Roosevelt's voice was high and his words shot out quickly. His steps were quick, slowing down only to change directions. He burst from one end of the small room to another, bending down to speak into the faces of those in the front row.

"Theodore, you have a fine mind, but you must build your body or you won't accomplish all that you can," were the words of Roosevelt's father to a young Theodore.

Ellwein went on to tell the story of how Roosevelt's father hired a boxing tutor to train his body and how from then on, Roosevelt would always strive to discipline his body.

Ellwein, as Roosevelt, talked about his love of the West.

"I had no idea how to measure a man rightly until I got out here," he said, referring to the cowboys he admired for leading a hard, but "well-lived," life.

It was during Roosevelt's time in the West that he met a lot of the men who made up the Rough Riders unit that fought in the Spanish-American War under Colonel Roosevelt.

Ellwein told many stories of Roosevelt; stories including boxing and wrestling matches in the White House with boxing champions and Japanese jujitsu instructors; Booker T. Washington's visit as the first black man to the White House; the story of how a trolley car killed a friend and injured the left side of Roosevelt's body and face, but not enough for Roosevelt to back out from his speaking engagement. There's the famous story of Roosevelt not allowing an incident where he was shot in the stomach with .37 caliber bullets to deter him from a speaking engagement.

Roosevelt was different.

Why is Theodore Roosevelt important today? Ellwein asked the class.

"Two-hundred and thirty million acres were preserved into the public trust while Roosevelt was president," Ellwein said.

Broken down, Roosevelt preserved 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reservations, four national game preserves, five national parks, 18 national monuments, 24 reclamation projects and seven conservation conferences and commissions.

Roosevelt is best-known for his conservation actions.

Ellwein took questions at the end. Somebody wanted to know who Roosevelt would vote for in today's presidential campaigns. Ellwein joked that Roosevelt would probably vote for the first person to invoke his name.