Dad Was A Rough Rider; A Letter From T.R. Proves It

By Bill Bleyer | Staff Writer

Ted Powers with medals of his father, Albert, a corporal (Newsday Photo/Bill Davis / )

The letter is fragile, almost disintegrating at its folds, and Helen Fraas of Westbury opens it gingerly.

``Sir, the bearer, Mr. Albert Powers, was a corporal in my regiment. He was wounded in our first fight while doing his duty . . . He was an excellent man . . . '' The document is signed ``Very respectfully, Theodore Roosevelt.''

Powers, Fraas' grandfather, was a Rough Rider. The letter of recommendation written by Roosevelt at the end of the Spanish-American War helped him get jobs as a postal worker, immigration inspector at Ellis Island and finally a watchman on the Williamsburg Bridge.

Powers was born in Ireland in 1868. He came to Philadelphia with his father and was apprenticed to a plumber there, said his son Ted - named after T.R. - who is 92 and a resident of a Staten Island nursing home. ``When he was 18 years old, he enlisted in the cavalry,'' Ted Powers said. He served for eight years, breaking horses and fighting in Indian wars, including the infamous engagement at Wounded Knee.

After leaving the Army and prospecting for gold in New Mexico, he walked 65 miles to enlist in the Rough Riders. During the charge up San Juan Hill, ``his left arm was shattered by a Spanish sniper,'' his son said.

The family has newspaper clips of Albert Powers visiting the White House. One clip quotes the president as saying, ``Why, I know him. He was in the Rough Riders.''

Albert Powers was buried at the national cemetery at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn after he died of a heart attack at 60.

Ted Powers said he got to meet his namesake, Theodore Roosevelt, but he was too young to remember it. ``I was on my father's horse and my father took me over to him during a parade and I shook hands with him.''