A Winner!

I cannot recall ever winning anything, much less something of any value.  Imagine my surprise when I answered a trivia question on my company’s website and won a set of DVDs.  I regularly scan our internal Bank of America website to stay abreast of company and economic news, and I read a news item about our sponsoring the Ken Burns series, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History premiering on PBS September 14. The series “chronicles the lives of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, three members of the most prominent and influential family in American politics. It is the first time in a major documentary television series that their individual stories have been interwoven into a single narrative.”

 

Off to the side of the news item was a trivia question about the Roosevelts, and employees were invited to submit answers.  Four winners are randomly selected daily from those who answer the question correctly. I knew I had the right answer, but figured it was a long shot that I’d be one of the four. Surprise! The very next day I got an email notifying me I was a winner.

 

And, you ask, “What bit of trivia did you pull out of your brain to win?” The answer is, the Rough Riders. As in the game of Jeopardy, can you guess the question? It was, “What volunteer militia group did Teddy Roosevelt lead during the Spanish American War?”

 

I am pretty sure I have to give my husband credit for that answer popping into my head. He is a big history buff, and since he retired, the Military channel and the History channel are always showing at our house. If he’s not watching something about WWII, he’s watching stories about the old West. In keeping with that interest, he occasionally drags me…I mean takes me…to the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Georgia.  I refer to it as the Cowboy Museum, and I may have picked up the Rough Rider tidbit on one of our recent visits when I stumbled across someone dressed up as Teddy Roosevelt, giving a lecture.

 

Historical facts aren’t always easy to find in my brain’s filing system, and I must admit that several of my file drawers regularly get stuck.  Fortunately, I can always turn to my husband, who has ready access to his well organized history file cabinet with drawers dedicated to WWII, WWI, the Viet Nam War, the Wild West, you name it. He relies on me, though, to pull open the drawer for dinner plans, play tickets, and travel plans, as he seems to have misplaced the key to that one.  I’d say we have a winning combination.