Four score and $7.50

JOSEPH N. BELL

Abe Lincoln has been in the news for the past few weeks, and I’m

trying to decide whether I feel good about it. The Abraham Lincoln

Presidential Museum opened last month in Springfield, Ill., in a

blast of publicity and high-powered ceremonies that provided a

dramatic contrast to the modest Lincolniana provided to visitors of

his hometown for the past century.

The numbers, decor and stylistic approach of the new museum are as

overpowering as Lincoln’s public speeches were simple and

straightforward. At 40,000 square feet, it’s twice the size of any

other presidential museum. The library portion holds the world’s

largest collection of Lincoln documents and artifacts. The museum,

itself, offers smoke machines, vibrating seats and roaring cannons,

along with remarkably lifelike latex statues of the Lincoln family.

All of this cost $145 million and is probably a long-overdue tribute

to the man generally regarded as our greatest president.

And yet Springfield, Ill., straddling U.S. 66 -- our most famous

national highway before the interstates arrived -- always seemed to

be directly on the route to virtually everywhere I happened to be

driving during my years in the Midwest. And I always stopped and paid

my respects to Abe. Felt like home.

The elongated box of a house where Lincoln raised his family was

only a few blocks from his law office in downtown Springfield. It was

easy to picture him ducking to clear the front door in his stovepipe

hat and trading greetings and tall stories with his friends and

neighbors while he walked to his office.

The house and law office were musty relics of his years in

Springfield, left pretty much as they were when he lived there, and

accessible to the public. So was his tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery,

which I usually included in my visits. His whole family is buried

there except his oldest son, Robert, the only Lincoln offspring to

survive his youth, who chose to separate himself from his family in

death as he sometimes had in life.

Standing in the monument, where the headstones of the two sons

Lincoln buried in his lifetime and the one who died shortly after his

father was killed, I always had a powerful sense of the tragedy that

relentlessly followed this family -- even after their death. In 1876,

a plot almost succeeded to dig up Lincoln’s corpse and hold it for

ransom. And in 1901, it was moved to a temporary grave for 15 months

while the crumbling monument was torn down and rebuilt.

This time, at Robert’s insistence, Lincoln’s coffin was encased in

concrete after burial -- but not before the coffin was opened to

deal, forever, with the rumors that it was not his body. Twenty-two

witnesses passed by the open coffin and saw clearly that it was

Lincoln. The features, down to the mole on his cheek and melancholy

expression, were clearly preserved. That rite observed, Abraham

Lincoln was finally allowed to rest in peace.

All these visions played out in my head when I visited Abe. Now,

they have been technologized for me by a company named BRC

Imagination Arts of Burbank, whose designers regard the new museum,

according to one official speaking to a Los Angeles Times reporter,

not so much as a museum but “a personal encounter with Abraham

Lincoln.”

Phrases like that tend to scare me. The encounter will cost a

visitor $7.50. In my years of stopping by the old Lincoln haunts,

there was never a charge, a policy Robert Lincoln required when he

deeded his family home to the state of Illinois.

I haven’t seen the new Lincoln museum yet -- just pictures -- but

I will. I’m a presidential museum and library junkie. There are

presently 12 such entities, and I’ve explored seven of them (Hoover,

FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon and Carter). On my

still-to-see list, in addition to Lincoln, are Clinton, Kennedy, Ford

and Reagan.

Every museum is different, and each one speaks carefully about its

subject, which requires some reading between the lines for real

insights. Sometimes the museums run a tight line between honesty and

kindness. And sometimes they distort by omission -- as did the Nixon

museum in virtually ignoring the scandalous departure of

vice-president Spiro Agnew. Where the new Lincoln museum will fall on

this scale is difficult to judge from the early reports.

The Democrats, in general, are less reverential and offer more

humor and allow more criticism than the Republicans. Truman and

Roosevelt have long corridors of scathing newspaper cartoons as well

as highly revealing personal correspondence. By contrast, the only

cartoons in the Hoover museum came from the Chicago Tribune, which

strongly supported Hoover to the bitter end. Eisenhower is dealt with

at respectful attention, more like a general than a president

If you are thinking about visiting the new Lincoln Museum, you

might want to consider turning it into a presidential museum

excursion. From Kansas City or St. Louis, you are several driving

hours away from Eisenhower (Abilene, Kan.), Hoover (West Branch,

Iowa) and Truman (Independence, Mo.) as well as Springfield -- a

circuit that would give you a great mix of presidential and museum

styles.

Meanwhile, I’ll try to keep an open mind when I visit Abe

Lincoln’s new habitat. But first, I’ll do my best to make it seem

like going home again by paying my respects at the house -- which

isn’t a part of the new museum complex. That should bring back the

pictures formed in my imagination in those long-ago trips to

Springfield. Then I’ll be ready to test my pictures against the

“personal encounter” with Lincoln awaiting me at the new museum.

However that plays out, I find it comforting to know that I can

always fall back on the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln’s handwriting

and with his editing that will be on display. No amount of creative

presentation can have an impact on the magnificent simplicity of that

message.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.