Lincoln School Gets Visit From Its Very Own Namesake

students learned some very important lessons today from the school’s very own namesake, Abraham Lincoln.

Standing at  6’4” tall “President Lincoln” told the students a story about his life which contained valuable facts about the history of our nation as he spoke about the Civil War and how the abolishment of slavery came about all through the point of view of the President.  Through inspiring tales he showed them how important it is to read and that they can be anything they want to be.

Today’s presentation, entitled the “The Living Abe Workshop” is put on by Mobile Ed Production, a company that provides educational and entertaining programming through live educational assembly shows and hands-on workshop. “President Lincoln” is actor Joe Kilpatrick from Michigan who travels to the east coast three months a year to put on these workshops for students.

 “President Lincoln is an example that you can be whatever you want to be,” he told students.

The actor told of Lincoln's upbringing in Kentucky showing the students just how different our society was back then. Children worked on their families farm and didn’t always get to go to school.

His family of a mom and dad and older sister Sara was considered small as many families in the early 1800s had many children so there would be more hands to take care of the land. Many people did not read or write during those times, including Lincoln’s parents, but children in his generation decided they wanted more for themselves. Lincoln wanted to go to school but his parents did not see the need for it and therefore he spent less than a year’s worth of time in a classroom throughout his childhood.

Once the President taught himself how to read, there was not a book he could not get his hands on fast enough. He told the students that reading and learning is where ideas come from and that all the things we have today started out as an idea. Ideas are developed through our imaginations which are developed by reading.

As he continued on with tales about how President Lincoln worked hard to become a lawyer which then launched a political career that would eventually lead him to become President of the United States, he gave the students some history on the abolition of slavery.

He relayed a tale of how Lincoln witnessed a slave auction where he saw how morally wrong it was for one human being to treat another human being so harshly. On that day he vowed he would find a way to put an end to slavery.

His tales continued right up to the end of the Civil War, which he told the students was the largest blood shed the county had ever witnessed with the loss of 600,000 soldiers, and then the end of President Lincoln’s life when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.

“If it hadn’t been for him we may be a bunch of different countries today,” he told the students.