With Inspiration for All, Lincoln’s Legacy Lives

I’m from the land of Lincoln and deeply proud of it. I grew up 45 miles from Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home along Pigeon Creek in Spencer County, Indiana. He lived there from age 7 to age 21.

Lincoln gets in your blood if you’re from those parts. The week before my wife and I moved here from Louisville in 1979, I took a day off to drive back to that Lincoln Hoosier home, just to soak up the peace it always instilled.

The most beautiful spot on earth for me is the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital at night, with that mammoth and touching sculpture of Lincoln bathed in light watching over us all. I saw Jimmy Stewart head there for an evening visit in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and relished the chance to share in that same moving experience.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Friends who didn’t believe me--until they visited there at night themselves--responded as if Jimmy Stewart and I had discovered hidden treasure.

Wednesday is Lincoln’s birthday. It doesn’t sit well with me that we’ve shoved Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays together next Monday to give ourselves another excuse for a three-day weekend and a chance at more shopping sales. Here’s a friendly suggestion: Take a moment on Wednesday to tell your children what Lincoln has meant to us.

Today--Feb. 11--is the anniversary of one of Lincoln’s most moving speeches. He prophetically told supporters in Springfield, Ill., on this day in 1861, as he headed toward his first inauguration as president: “I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon George Washington.”

I’ve always found fascinating that Lincoln’s philosophy was born from his own interest in the Founding Fathers. “I have never had a feeling politically,” he once said, “that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

Nixon and Lincoln: The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda isn’t about to pass up the country’s most famous Republican.

Next Monday, on the official Presidents Day holiday, author and political humorist James Humes will present a show there he calls “Please Don’t Go to Gettysburg, Abe.” It’s a re-creation of the Gettysburg address and remembrances of that historic day. Humes has given the show before at anniversary ceremonies for the Gettysburg Address at the Lincoln Memorial.

Readers Sound Off: This month is the first anniversary of this column. I’d hoped to make it through without hearing those painful words: “I’m canceling my subscription because of you.” But alas, that’s a message I received last week.

The caller was a World War II veteran. His anger was over my statement in a recent column that the relocation of West Coast Japanese Americans during the war was a tragic episode in our nation’s history. He somehow saw it as a slight to those like himself, who fought in the Pacific.

That was never my intention, of course. My own father fought in the Pacific during that war. And it was my father who first taught me, when I was just a child, how unjust that relocation order was.

Another reader has taken issue, in a friendly way, with my mention of child rearing as a “job.” Steve Smith of Costa Mesa refers to parenting as more “joy or adventure.” I think we’re on the same side: I’ve never thought of “job” as having a negative connotation, perhaps because I’ve always enjoyed all the jobs I’ve had.

Most of my Monday was spent answering reader calls about Saturday’s column (where I suggested teaching my children right from wrong on specific issues is getting harder as I get older). Most felt the same way, but many accused me of simply avoiding responsibility. One reader may have hit upon the best answer, when he wrote to me that as “a child of the sixties . . . you suffer from the collective neuroses of your time.”

Prepared Reading? Saturday was the 87th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America. Devon Dougherty, spokesman for the Orange County chapter, sent me a piece by the late Jack Smith, the greatly admired Times columnist, who once listed the Boy Scout Handbook as one of the 10 books he would recommend for every presidential candidate. Because, Jack wrote, for all its focus on backpacking, first aid and hiking, “it’s a book about goodness.”

Wrap-Up: On Feb. 12, 1998, Cal State Fullerton history Professor Ronald Rietveld will present a paper on Abraham Lincoln during an annual Lincoln Symposium in Springfield, Ill. It will be held in the old Illinois House of Representatives, where Lincoln’s body lay in state after his assassination in 1865.

Rietveld, who has taught at Cal State Fullerton since 1969, got his start in Lincoln history early. When he was just 14 years old in 1952, he found the last known photograph taken of Lincoln, tucked inside a letter filed away in the archives at the Illinois State Historical Library.

Life magazine wrote a story about his discovery (the photo is now on exhibit in Chicago). Rietveld went on to concentrate on the Civil War in his academic life. He’s written numerous papers and book chapters on Lincoln, and is at work now on another Lincoln book. Like me, he’s a huge fan of the 16th president.

“The latest survey of American historians still lists Lincoln as our greatest president,” Rietveld said. “He’s been No. 1 ever since the first of those surveys was taken in 1962.”

On Monday, Rietveld spoke about Lincoln to students at Carr Intermediate School in Santa Ana. He told them: “Lincoln was a great believer in the youth and the importance of their success.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail tojerry.hicks@latimes.com