[MSN] Roosevelt's pistol found by DeLand history buff.

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Roosevelt's pistol found by DeLand history buff

Rebecca Mahoney | Sentinel Staff Writer 
Posted July 4, 2006 
 
 
DeLAND -- For 16 years, historians pondered the mysterious disappearance of
the Roosevelt revolver.

Salvaged from the destroyed battleship Maine, the elegant .38 Colt revolver
was carried by Theodore Roosevelt as the future president led his famous
charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. It was snatched from a
museum in Oyster Bay, N.Y., in 1990.
 
The gun, which had been stolen and recovered once before, never surfaced on
the black market; a reward never yielded any valid leads. One member of the
FBI team that hunted for the gun devoted much of his career to the search,
but it was as though the revolver simply vanished.

Now, for the first Independence Day in 16 years, this artifact of American
history again belongs to the people -- after it resurfaced in Central
Florida.

The FBI is still trying to unravel the bizarre twists in the gun's journey
back to Roosevelt's homestead.

Last summer, Andy Anderson of DeLand called the Sagamore Hill museum with a
wild tale: A friend of his had showed him an antique pistol she said her
husband had kept hidden in a closet for 16 years.

"I think I've seen Teddy's gun," Anderson told Amy Verone, chief of cultural
resources at New York's Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's home from 1885 until his
death in 1919. The house is a National Historic Site operated by the
National Park Service.

Now, Anderson, 59, is being hailed as a hero.

"T.R. was always talking about people being good citizens and doing things
for their community," Verone said. "As far as I'm concerned, this [Anderson]
is one of those guys."

Treasure in a closet

The strange saga of Teddy's gun begins with the USS Maine.

On Feb. 15, 1898, the battleship exploded in Havana Harbor, killing 270
sailors and Marines. A salvage crew led by Roosevelt's brother-in-law,
William Cowles, recovered from the wreckage a double-action revolver that
Cowles later gave Roosevelt.

Six months later, as Roosevelt and his Rough Riders stormed San Juan Hill in
Cuba, he carried that revolver as a memorial to the men whose lives were
lost on the Maine.

The victorious battle thrust Roosevelt into America's spotlight. He went on
to become governor of New York and, later, president of the United States.

After he died, the revolver became a cornerstone of Sagamore Hill's
permanent collection, a piece much admired by Roosevelt aficionados and gun
enthusiasts alike.

"This is a very significant piece of American history," said Philip
Schreier, senior curator of the National Firearms Museum in Virginia. "This
little revolver has a real story. It's a national treasure."

The gun had been stolen from Sagamore Hill in 1963 but was recovered later
that year in the woods behind the museum. Then, in April 1990, it
disappeared again, this time from an unlocked display case.

"It didn't make us look great when it disappeared," said Verone, who added
the museum now has state-of-the-art security. "For 15 years, the first
question a lot of people would ask was, 'Have you got Teddy's revolver back
yet?' "

The answer was always no.

Then, last summer, in a small Florida town a world away from Sagamore Hill,
Andy Anderson's friend casually mentioned that her husband had an old pistol
he kept hidden in his closet.

A history buff, Anderson asked to see it.

"She brought it over and put it on my kitchen table. . . . I took one look
at it and thought, 'Oh, this gun has to go home,' " he said.

'The real thing'

At first, Verone was dubious the gun Anderson had was actually the missing
Roosevelt revolver. But then Anderson began describing the engravings on the
gun's frame: "From the sunken battleship Maine" on one side, and "July 1st
1898, San Juan, carried and used by Col. Theodore Roosevelt" on the other.

"I thought, 'Aha! Maybe this is the real thing,' " Verone said.

Anderson was queried by the FBI's art-theft division, which later sent
agents from the FBI's Daytona Beach office to DeLand to collect the gun.

Anderson, a mechanical designer, moved to DeLand 14 years ago. His father
spent his career in the military, and Anderson grew up as an Army brat -- a
childhood that gave him an avid interest in World War II history and a
familiarity with guns. Though he has traveled all over the world, he has
never been to Sagamore Hill and did not know the significance of the
revolver when he first saw it.

Anderson said his friend told him her husband came home with the gun 16
years ago when the couple lived in New York. The Orlando Sentinel is not
naming the couple because no charges have been filed in the case.

An FBI spokeswoman would not name any suspects in the theft. But Mark
Mershon, assistant director-in-charge of the agency's New York office,
recently told Newsday, "We have a number of people identified and a fairly
good understanding of what took place."

Still, prosecution could be challenging, said Robert Goldman, a former U.S.
attorney in Philadelphia who worked on the case with the FBI for 15 years.

"The government would have to show that these individuals either stole the
gun or came into possession of it knowing it was a stolen object. That's
hard to do with a case this old," said Goldman, who had vowed to find the
gun before he retired as a prosecutor, which he did six months after
Anderson stepped forward.

The gun, which the FBI estimated to be valued at $250,000 to $500,000, has
dulled but is otherwise in fair condition, said Schreier, of the National
Firearms Museum, who verified that the gun is the missing Roosevelt
revolver.

Curators will clean the gun and seal it in wax to prevent any further
deterioration, he said.

Anderson was awarded $1,000 for his role in returning the gun. The National
Park Service is also investigating whether he's eligible for the $8,100
reward offered in 1990.

Anderson also was personally thanked by Tweed Roosevelt, Teddy's
great-grandson who lives in Boston.

"I'm reluctant to be characterized as a hero," Anderson said. "I just wanted
to do the right thing."

Freelance writer Mary Jo Lloyd contributed to this report. Rebecca Mahoney
can be reached at rmahoney at orlandosentinel.com or 386-851-7914.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/