Early Roosevelt admirer to lead TR association

Terrence Brown recalls with fondness growing up in Jackson Heights and driving with his father out to Theodore Roosevelt's Sagamore Hill home.

"I couldn't get over seeing those big stuffed elk and buffalo heads," said Brown, who shared his father's interest in the past. And he loved visiting the 26th president's birthplace, on East 20th Street in Manhattan, where he said "I read every single word" in the displays.

Now Brown, 60, has been named an official keeper of TR's memory as the new executive director of the Oyster Bay-based Theodore Roosevelt Association. Brown, of Pleasantville in Westchester County, had led the Manhattan-based Society of Illustrators for 24 years.

Tweed Roosevelt of Boston, TR's great-grandson and president of the TRA board, said the 1,700-member association wanted someone with experience running a nonprofit who could focus on the basics -- something that had been ignored in the push to build a museum -- and could help restore the group's endowment, drained by museum planning costs. Plans for a museum were dropped last year because of the poor economy, and the group's president, who had been hired to build the facility, was laid off.

The new director doesn't need to be a historian because the board members can provide that expertise, Roosevelt said. "He's energetic, has lots of ideas, and I think he's going to help us very much with our short-term objectives, which is to rebuild and focus on membership, programs and relationships with other organizations with similar objectives and to improve our website," Roosevelt said.

"What the TRA needs to do now," Brown said, "is to get its programs running smoothly and growing, and provide more value for its members so we can grow the membership."

He added that "the organization is a national organization and needs to have a slightly higher profile." Accordingly, Brown plans to travel to TR-related events and awards programs around the country more frequently than his predecessors did. He also wants to expand such programs as Teddy Bear for Kids, which supplies stuffed bears to underprivileged children, the Theodore Roosevelt Police Awards for officers who return to work after major challenges, and the high school public speaking contest.

"I want to improve our communication to our members" beyond e-mails and a quarterly journal, he said. Brown wants the website to become more useful, particularly as a portal to Roosevelt information at other organizations, universities and agencies. He said the journal, which focuses exclusively on TR and the organization, is "very academic, so we're going to add . . . fun, such as some of the political cartoons about TR and a little more of the personal side."

As an adult, Brown said, he admires Roosevelt even more because "I've always liked people who state their mind. He did what was in his heart and soul."