Abraham Lincoln's birthday

There I stood in the fourth grade, my brownie camera loaded with film. Clicking pictures with excitement. Our class took a long bus ride to Springfield Illinois to the museum and state house. The brownie camera photos etched in my mind, the paper versions long lost to childish neglect. Pictures of us each holding what we bought at the museum store.
Looking at all the Lincoln memorobilia. We always had a life-sized bust of Lincoln at school. I used to run my hands over his face and head. I liked the way the smooth stone felt.
Every classroom in Illinois had Washington, Lincoln and Kennedy pictures up on the wall. I would just stand and stare up at them. Wonderment would be a good word, or Awe. Now he is 200 years old. Born in a remote cabin. Hard work, persistence and some luck I suppose brought him to be one of the all time great presidents and icon for little schoolgirls like myself.
Much older now, I also think his war changed my life in subtle or not so subtle ripples. My mother telling of my great great great grandfather who died in the battle of Shiloh, one of the bloodiest battles of the civil war. I wondered how he died. From a lead ball, infected wound, or dysentery? He likely spoke broken English and bohemian. His wife had a hard time getting widow's pension because they had changed his name to Green from Myrtengren. Eventually, Mom said, she got $5 a month for her and her 4 children. Mom still carried the pain of memories passed down about a war that left a new immigrant widow to fend for her and her 4 children. Part of me wondered how the pain could pass through the generations to my Mom. That is how war is. The pain is so severe and deep that it trickles down until later generations may wonder what was the big deal? Mothers tell children of the sorrow. loss and pain, hoping the children will make peace when they see war coming. With tears mothers send their sons and daughters to wars praying someday it will come to an end and that someone will remember their sacrifice. Men know war can be an inevitable struggle to right what can be terribly wrong.
But the war makes all suffer and the memory is important so as to prevent future war if we can.
I am sure that Lincoln, too, suffered through the war with ambivalent feelings of a man sending thousands to die for a cause he believed was worth the destruction.
Mom, I hope I got all the details right.