By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger.
Around 1912 Teddy Roosevelt was a hero in Ocean Grove. He had visited the Grove in 1899 and 1905. “He epitomized the ideal of muscular Christianity….someone who became a skilled leader and protector of the nation.” * As President he spoke in the Great Auditorium, and he appeared on parade with his Rough Riders on the Ocean Pathway.
There was a major youth movement in the Grove back then including a militaristic version for boys called the Young Rough Riders. Boys in the Grove received militaristic training from the age of eight.
Regarding the photograph above, Troy Messenger *said, “A boy innocently playing soldier on the beach actually represented an important performance of gender identity within the perfectionism of Ocean Grove.”
Many of those boys went on to serve in the US Army during WW I.
* From Troy Messenger’s book “Holy Leisure: Recreation and Religion in God’s Square Mile.” University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
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Boys with toy guns are no longer politically correct on our beach. Click on the word Blogfinger below this sentence.
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