Forty-five years have passed since I last touched Abraham Lincoln’s nose. Not the real nose, of course, but the one on the bust that guards the entrance to Lincoln’s tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield. His proboscis has been rubbed for luck so many times it has turned a burnished gold in contrast to the bust’s duller patina.
On this late spring day, lawn mowers and bird song fill the air space throughout the 360-acre cemetery. Elderly women attend to graves with whisk brooms, grass clippers and silk flowers. The “Prairie Poet,” Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, rests here and so do United Mine Workers President John Llewellyn Lewis and Ulysses Grant’s daughter, Nellie.
I watch a group of Illinois junior high kids tumble out of a school bus and hurry toward Lincoln’s tomb despite their teachers’ warnings to walk, not run. Their clothes are ill-fitting as their bodies gallop and grow by the minute. They try for a hip style that shouts of individuality. Instead, they look alike with the same glasses, braces, experimental hair, and the initial piercing and pimples. Each one rubs, slaps, and pats the nose before entering the tomb.
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I give the school kids a few minutes’ head start, and then I follow them into the tomb. A miniature Lincoln commands the rotunda. He is in the same sitting pose as the one at the Washington, D.C., monument. Lincoln’s left hand is in a relaxed pose. The stern-faced president is wearing boots and a long coat, and snaking out of his vest pocket is a watch fob.
When I was a kid I adored Lincoln. I read Bruce Catton’s books, and Carl Sandburg’s “Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years.” I still have a gift-store, “parchment” copy of the Gettysburg Address, and I memorized the farewell speech Lincoln gave at Springfield’s Great Western Depot on February 11, 1861. “My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feelings of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything.”
The majesty of the tomb eventually quiets the kids. All that strutting, gum chewing, teasing and attitude diminishes with each passing statue — Lincoln the Soldier, Lincoln the Ranger, Lincoln the Circuit Rider, Lincoln the Debater. They are silent by the time they stand in front of the actual tomb with its half circle of flags and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s words, “Now he belongs to the ages.”
The students leave the monument and board the bus headed to Lincoln’s home, the depot and the state capital. What they will carry away from this day’s field trip is beyond my comprehension. This is America in 2016, a place with little reverence for politicians. Today, the heroes of the young are more likely to be wearing gold chains instead of top hats, and the thoughtful, oratory eloquence of the prairie has been supplanted by an urban hip-hop staccato more often screamed from car stereos than spoken from the back of a train.
Still, I want to believe that a flake of respect just might ride off in the hands of each kid who visits the tomb. A few minutes away from the roar of cynicism in the presence of genuine greatness can’t hurt our children. Perhaps some seed of idealism will sprout in these young, fertile minds. If not another Lincoln, perhaps a fully-engaged citizen who will create a new vision to fit the times, someone who will repeat Lincoln’s words. “Let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.” Let us hope, indeed.
Stephen J. Lyons is the author of four books of essays and journalism. His most recent book is “Going Driftless: Life Lessons from the Heartland for Unraveling Times.”