Looking up at Mount Rushmore, I played out a fantasy I’ve heard several historians partake of.
Who would I put up there on that granite mountain? Who do I admire with an almost mythical hero-worship, forgetting they were still merely human beings, the word “merely” never entering into my pedestal images of them.
No, it would not be Judy, Merman, Barbara or Liza. But, first up would be an image already carved on that mountain.
I remember…images of Abraham Lincoln throughout my childhood, just like everyone else does. At times the face would be homely and sad, at others it would appear to be one of the most handsome I’d ever seen, an enigma I never quite figured out.
Standing in the room where he died, there was a family of four near me, the three kids acting up while the mother tried to get them to stand still so she could take a photo. Although I can be quiet as a wallflower sometimes, I hauled out the sanctimonious old fart in me and told them firmly, “Be quiet and show a little respect. This isn’t Disneyland, one of our greatest presidents died here.” You could have heard a pin drop after that, and the mother wasn’t sure if she should thank me for putting her kids in line or chastise me for chewing them out. Either way, the memory of this strong, conscientious man who put the greater good above his own personal life deserved more than kids screaming on this spot.
But, a few years later, I watched some other children, this time a great many more, numbering maybe a hundred, run around his presidential library in Springfield, Illinois the month after it first opened. Unlike other museums, there weren’t just display cases and signs telling you what to feel, there were interactive exhibits, holograms, wax figures and tasteful recreations assisting you along.
These children weren’t bored with the past, they were wide eyed at the living thing right in front of them as they walked through his log cabin, the White House and Fords Theater. Towards the end, as visitors filed through a mock up of the Illinois Statehouse interior, a coffin draped in black bunting lay in state while “Amazing Grace” played lightly over the loud speakers. Some may call that cheesy, but many of those children had tears in their eyes because they had gotten to know this man, who had long ago become just an icon to most people.
To me, he may have been an icon, but he was a warm, smiling one.
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