Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln

Holding up a plastic bag filled with pennies, five-year-old Greg asked me if we could go to the store to buy a wrestler. Where did our darling son get that money? He had found the coins I’d collected as a child, carefully nestled in their dark blue tri-folds, and proceeded to empty them out so he could spend them. Quite the resourceful child.

I was reminded of that story on Tuesday night, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, when attending the reception for the Kroc Center’s Elder in Residence program, now renamed the June Metcalf Elder in Residence award. The newest recipient of this honor is Mrs. Bernice Wachtel, an Abraham Lincoln aficionado and expert. A sampling from her wide collection of Lincoln memorabilia was on display at the reception, including cookie cutters, scrapbooks, and a Lincoln penny collection, just like the one Greg plundered all those years ago.

Grandma Bunny, as she is affectionately called, will be sharing her vast knowledge of Lincoln with the Kroc Center community over the next few months, demonstrating that life doesn’t end at 60, 70, or 80. Her energy and enthusiasm for Mr. Lincoln is contagious, and if you hear patriotic music booming from 527 East Liberty Street, you’ll know that Grandma Bunny is in the house!

Bunny isn’t the only Lincoln buff in Northeast Ohio, as photocopies of various portraits of the melancholy man line a wall in the office of Alexandra Nicholis Coon, the director of the Massillon Museum in Stark County. As a young art history student, she became intrigued with the work of presidential portrait painter William T. Mathews, a Navarre native. How many portraits of Lincoln did Mathews paint? Where did they go, and how did one end up at a garage sale? Coon’s detective work led to the recovery and restoration of some of Mathews’ work, conserving an additional thread of the Lincoln story for the future.

Why trace the art of a 19^th century portrait painter? Why collect 400+ books about a dead president? Why press 50-year-old pennies into a cardboard folder? We can certainly agree with author Bettina Drew when she tells us of the importance of the preservation of history: "The past reminds us of timeless human truths and allows for the perpetuation of cultural traditions that can be nourishing; it contains examples of mistakes to avoid, preserves the memory of alternatives ways of doing things, and is the basis for self-understanding..."

But in another statement, Drew warns of the danger of picking out “a little bit of history, as if history is a box out of which you can pull little pieces, and enjoy them on their own, with no connecting narrative.” Our young son completely missed any connecting narrative when he pulled those old pennies out of their slots. He didn’t know that the dull colored pennies from 1943 represented a change in composition due to the need for copper for the war effort, nor that President Theodore Roosevelt recommended that Lincoln’s image be added to the penny during the Lincoln Centennial Year in 1909. He had no idea what Abraham Lincoln meant to these United States. All he could see was the new wrestling figure he’d had his eye on for weeks.

Ms. Nicholis-Coon and Grandma Bunny get it. They understand the story behind the artifacts, they value the connections between people and ideas, and thus they honor the memory and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. On November 18, 1863, a man was asked to give an address to dedicate the battleground at Gettysburg. The honorable Edward Everett spoke for 2 hours, but his words are long forgotten. It was the brief words of the sad, mournful, almost haggard President that connect the narrative of his day to the world we live in. “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Thank you, Mrs. Wachtel, for connecting the narrative for us here in Ashland. Thank you, Mr. Lincoln, for the resolve that lives today. Happy birthday to you.