It has long been a custom of mine to review comments submitted by readers of my weekly history column and do a final roundup piece at year's end on some of the more interesting items sent.

In one column, I had described how Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, many of them from New Mexico, became national heroes during the brief Spanish American War. T.R.'s success led him initially to the governorship of New York, then to the U.S. presidency.

Our territorial governor, Miguel A. Otero, I noted, acquired an unfavorable opinion of Roosevelt, who attended the first Rough Riders' Reunion held in Las Vegas, N.M., in 1899.

While in town, the future president swaggered, boasted and mugged for the cameramen. Based on Otero's observations, I remarked that Roosevelt's vanity did not prevent him from ascending to the office of president.

For that, a reader chided me, saying: "Although vanity may be a sin, I'll take Roosevelt's minor weakness over our crop of courage-less leaders. He was fearless and wouldn't have hidden from his constituents."

"Possibly one of the earliest Progressives, he believed in giving the average man a square deal. Yep, I'll take vanity any day."

Another man I wrote about this year, The University of New Mexico's third president, William George Tight (served 1901 to 1909), was also someone of courage, but in no way vain. I'd explained how he sparked an architectural rebirth at the university by introducing the Pueblo style of building, beginning with today's Hodgin Hall.

A horde of critics attacked him for imposing "primitive ideas" on New Mexico's citadel of learning. Timid regents forced his resignation.

I received a letter on this from Charles C. King, past director of the Ohio Biological Survey, but now a New Mexico resident.

He wrote that a week before my column appeared, he gave an address to the Native Plant Society of New Mexico, which in part dealt with President Tight's contribution to the architecture and botany of the UNM campus.

It reminded me that the school's head was not only a professional geologist, but also knew much about Pueblo archaeology as well as the science of plants. That latter interest led him to landscape the university grounds using as much native vegetation as possible.

Mr. King said that he was much more familiar with Dr. Tight's activities in Ohio and West Virginia than in New Mexico. And he added that in both East and West, the man was not honored appropriately for his extraordinary efforts, until after his death.

From Albuquerque, Jill Ritz wrote concerning my column on los inocentes (the innocent ones). That is the polite Spanish term used for the mentally handicapped.

"I especially liked that column," she said. "I love the gentle spirited way that the inocentes are treated in the stories you mentioned. It is such a contrast to how handicapped people are treated in the big cities of the modern world."

One of the inocentes I told about was a familiar figure in Santa Fe during the 1930s and 1940s. He would go out in the street downtown to direct traffic and would attend all funerals to partake of the meals served afterward.

I had never been able to pin down the name of this individual, but a reader, Ascensión G. Griego, supplied it for me. It was Alejandro Sánchez, known to all as "Alejandrito."

"I knew that inocente," Mr. Griego explained. "He lived on Alto Street where relatives Donelia and Alfredo Sánchez took care of him. They provided a one-bedroom house back of their house where Alejandrito slept."

"I remember that he used to direct traffic at the corner of San Francisco Street and Burro Alley."

In my column, I had revealed that tolerant city policemen made no attempt to interfere with the inocente's harmless efforts to be useful.

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.