Kermit Roosevelt Jr

Coordinated Operation Ajax, which aimed to orchestrate a coup against Iran’s prime minister and return the Shah of Iran to power in August 1953. His eldest son, Kermit Roosevelt III, was born in 1938 and practiced law with his father and is now retired and living in Washington. Mr. Roosevelt's best-known exploit was as director of the 1953 coup that overthrew the leader of Iran, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a nationalist who concerned Washington because he was supported by the Iranian Communists at the height of the cold war. The Central Intelligence Agency's secret history of the coup surfaced, providing a detailed account of the overthrow, which brought Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi to power. Mr. Roosevelt was a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was born in Buenos Aires, where his father, also named Kermit, was a banker and shipping line official, and he grew up in Oyster Bay, N.Y., near Theodore Roosevelt's Long Island home at Sagamore Hill. In 1937, Mr. Roosevelt graduated a year ahead of his class at Harvard and married Mary Lowe Gaddis. Mrs. Roosevelt, who lived in the retirement community with her husband, survives him, as do their three sons, another Kermit, of Washington; Jonathan, of Sudbury, Mass., and Mark, of Brookline, Mass.; a daughter, Anne Mason of Chevy Chase, Md.; a brother, Joseph Willard Roosevelt of Orient, N.Y.; and seven grandchildren. The younger Kermit Roosevelt noted today that the tradition of naming boys Kermit, without a differing middle name or a Jr. or a Roman numeral, could be confusing. He added that alternate Kermits were also known as Kim, and that was the case of his spy father.