Springfield turns out to pay tribute to Lincoln through books, eulogy

In tribute to Abraham Lincoln, 16th president and Springfield's most famous resident, city landmarks hosted a series of events Saturday remembering his legacy and what he meant to the city and the nation.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum hosted the second annual Lincoln's4Lincoln Read-a-Thon and Book Drive, with people encouraged to donate books to Compass for Kids, a local non-profit that serves underprivileged children in Springfield. Elsewhere, the Illinois VFW hosted its annual eulogy at Lincoln's Tomb, with National Junior Vice Commander in Chief Al Lipphardt being this year's honored guest.

At ALPLM, leading community figures read books to children, many of which had themes that connected – directly or indirectly – to Lincoln. Corinne Claycomb, a site interpreter for ALPLM, said that they had a wide collection of new books and classic tales being read at the event.

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"We've got a wide range of new and classic storybooks that we're reading today," Claycomb said. "A lot of them have really important messages – The Year We Learned to Fly by Jacqueline Woodson is a great book, she's a great author (and) the illustrations are tremendous. This is really about having patience and finding inner strength.

Obviously, we have really fun ones because it's Lincoln's birthday. We've got 10 Rules of a Birthday Wish (by Beth Ferry), so it's just a nice little collection and we try to be representative of our community. We've got some bilingual books as well and a lot of fun books with a lot of fun messages."

The idea for the Read-a-Thon was Claycomb's idea, birthed during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when she had a concept for a remote story time marathon for children. It soon evolved into a larger, in-person event with community figures, including Carolyn Farrar, the president of the board of the Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum.

Farrar read Ruth and the Green Book by Alexander Ramsey Calvin, a book about a young girl traveling with her family dealing with racism and generosity in the early 1950s. While the book isn't directly linked to Lincoln, Farrar said that it shows his benevolence and how other people were willing to help even if it wasn't particularly popular.

"We looked at in two ways - as an African-American history lesson for young people, but people like to look at the benevolence of Lincoln and that's what this book is about," Farrar said. "(It's about) how people helped others and how certain injustices were handled, in a sense, by using the Green Book and the generosity of others. Lincoln looked at injustices in our country, so it has quite a tie to those different principles."

While the children were entertained through the joys of reading, a more solemn ceremony was being held at the spot where Lincoln was buried. The annual reading of the eulogy was hosted by the Illinois VFW, which was hosting its mid-winter conference in Springfield in the days leading up to Saturday.

Barb Wilson, public relations chairman for the Illinois VFW, said that the event pays tribute to Lincoln's leadership, allowing younger people – such as the 17 district champions of the VFW's Voice of Democracy contest and four state finalist of the Patriot's Pen contest – to learn more about his continued legacy.

"I know that the students (attending) learn a lot," Wilson said. "Unless they teach this in school, they probably don't know the history behind Abraham Lincoln."

Wilson learned plenty about Lincoln as a child growing up in Kentucky and she continued to learn more about him in her current role as a public affairs officer for the Illinois National Guard based out at – where else? – Camp Lincoln. There's not too much about him that gets past her, but she knows about the significance of what he did – leading the nation through the most troubled period in its history.

"Abraham Lincoln was an individual who was put into a situation that no other president had been before and has been since," Wilson said. "That was being the commander-in-chief during the Civil War. It's a historical event with half of our nation fighting – brother against brother, fathers against sons – and he was able to lead the nation through that Civil War and worked to bind the nation back together again."

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People could enjoy what they wished on Saturday, whether it was watching the VFW lay the annual wreath honoring Lincoln at the tomb, or watching a magician extol the virtues of reading to children at the ALPLM. Dave Durham brought his two grandchildren to the museum Saturday and watched as the children learned about a wide range of different virtues and stories from the presenters at the event.

"They're visiting from out of town, so we thought it would be a good chance for them to see the Lincoln exhibits," Durham said. "It's really fun, captures the kid's attention and it's very entertaining to see all of the different tricks this guy does. The library contains a lot of fun things you can learn about magic and rabbits, so it's a good experience."

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Springfield's favorite son honored through books, eulogy