O’Toole gives commentary during ‘Roosevelt’ series

by Richard Lamb—Advance Editor

If you have been watching the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) special “The Roosevelts” you may have noticed a familiar face. Patricia O’Toole, a Rogers City High School graduate who made good, is one of the experts in the cutaway segments which break up the presentation of historical pictures in the Ken Burns effect which was perfected in the producer’s other documentary series.

Burns, who is famous for his multi-episode mini-series “Baseball,” “The Civil War,” “Jazz” and many others, brings one of America’s most powerful families to life in his longest documentary yet. The 14-hour series is on PBS this week at 8 p.m. and rebroadcast again at 10 p.m. through Saturday.

O’Toole’s first appearance came in the first segment of the show, which aired Sunday night. As a photo moves across the screen of Theodore Roosevelt (TR) riding a horse, which is hurdling a fence, the announcer, Peter Coyote, is telling about the energy level of young TR.

“His energy level is so abundant, I feel it might someday get the better of him in one way or another,” Coyote quotes TR’s father.

At that point, O’Toole gives her first commentary of the documentary.

“I think if he were a little boy today, he might be given Ritalin and grow up to be a salesman of some sort and never heard from again,” she said.

The viewer is then shown close-ups of TR’s clenched fists in several photos.

“Look at photographs of him whenever he is seated or has a hand on a desk or hand on his knee, it is always in a fist. There is all that coiled energy. It is not anger, it is just energy, coiled, waiting to be let loose,” she says.

That segment is used to set up the tale of great accomplishments yet to come for the young TR.

O’Toole is famous in literary circles for her original and captivating work “When Trumpets Call” (Simon and Shuster 2005) about the last decade of Roosevelt’s life.

In an Advance article reviewing “When Trumpets Call” in 2005, Advance writer Bill Valentine quoted noted biographer David Herbert Donald who commented on O’Toole’s work on TR.

“Here is Theodore Roosevelt with all his faults and with all his strengths—the devoted family man, the passionate game hunter, the astute po

litician, the frustrated warrior. This is a deeply moving account of the last years of a very great man,” Donald said of O’Toole’s book.

O’Toole graduated from Rogers City High School in 1964 and from the University of Michigan in 1968. She has worked as a freelance writer since 1976 and teaches at Columbia University in New York City. She teaches nonfiction workshops and has been awarded for her work including the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia.

Her book The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Her hometown honored her with a “day” after the Pulitzer nomination.