Sunday, October 19, 2008 12:44 AM CDT
Love of what they do keeps Lincoln Log Cabin volunteers on site
By Bonnie Clark, Features Writer
bclark@jg-tc.com
It’s been a tough year for volunteers at Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site. But, because they love their work, they keep putting in hours and making plans as much as an uncertain future will allow.
The 86-acre living history farm is one of 24 Illinois parks scheduled to close at the end of November as part of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s plan to balance a more than $2 billion budget deficit.
“It hasn’t been a good year for us,” said volunteer interpreter Lance Beever of Mattoon, who portrays Thomas Lincoln, owner of the farm and father of the 16th president.
“It’s been an emotional roller coaster for us. Before our interpretive season started in April the governor cut our budget in half.”
Beever said when the volunteers found out about the governor’s plan to close the sites, they didn’t sit by idly.
“When we found out what was going to happen, we started a petition drive and we sent over 3,000 signatures to the governor,” he said, “and we also had a letter-writing campaign.
“It’s frustrating that next year is the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and the governor’s already cut funding for the celebrations. I don’t know how that’s going to work out. We’re supposed to be the Land of Lincoln.
“The people out here, especially the interpreters, are closer than family,” Beever said, “because we are joined by a common cause. We are trying to portray history.”
Beever, now in his third season as an interpreter, was a paid seasonal worker at the site until the seasonal workers were laid off. He, along with most of the other seasonal workers, continues to work on a volunteer basis.
His longtime interest in history makes him a natural as an interpreter, and he likes the idea that he is able to share history, “relate some things they may not know” to visitors at the site.
For him, getting into character may be as quick as getting out of his car at the historical site.
“It takes you back, especially when you come out here and the early morning haze is just starting to burn off,” he said, “it’s like you’re just stepping back in time.”
Beever said spending time at the site has changed the way he feels about life in general, and has definitely made him appreciate today’s easier lifestyle.
“It makes you appreciate what you have. They had a hard life, but in a lot of ways, it was better than what we have today — not all the pressures, all the junk coming in from phone calls and everything else.
“If you wanted to eat, you had to plant your crops and make sure your livestock was fed so you had something to put on your table. It’s made me appreciate where I’ve come from.”
Beever said he likes the quiet of the site, and finds he is annoyed by a ringing telephone when he is home in the evening. He and his wife, Susan, also a volunteer interpreter, do watch some TV, he said, but often turn it off in favor of music.
“We’ll put on a CD of traditional music or Celtic music, or something like that,” he said, “and sit and read. I do leather work and my wife does cross stitch.”
One of the biggest disappointments for the volunteers this year was having to cancel what would have been the 35th annual Harvest Frolic, which was scheduled Oct. 4 and 5.
“We would normally run 2,000 people a day or more, but they originally set our closing date as Oct. 1, so we couldn’t do it.
“By the time they gave us an extension, it was too late to contact the vendors and artisans and get them back. It was frustrating for us.”
Retired educator Hal Malehorn, 78, of Charleston just completed his 24th season as an interpreter at the site, providing valuable history lessons in brief, humorous banter with visitors.
“It’s kind of ironic to say that our second biggest industry, as I’ve been told, is tourism and then close down some of these sites — parks and things like that,” he said. “I’m still hopeful this will be resolved before the year begins.”
Malehorn said he combined his interest in history with comedy to come up with the persona of Alfred Balch, the local schoolmaster. His comedic timing and Upland Southern dialect have always attracted attention.
“I pour it on extra because I play a silly person,” he said. “So I kind of exaggerate it.
“The character I’ve developed after all these years is quite a useless fellow.”
Useless he is not, however, when it comes to sharing history with visitors from an 1845 perspective.
“I’ve meet an awful lot of people who proclaim they are from states that I know full well don’t exist yet,” he said.
“The comedic aspect of my character brings laughter, but at the same time, I try to involve people in the history of the time.
“The first thing I ask them is where they’re from because that gives me an intro to deal with something about their state or city. For example, I ask the people who come from Connecticut and Rhode Island, ‘How in tarnation can you people afford two capitals when we can’t even afford one?’ because in 1845, there were joint capitals that alternated. I try to interject things that are true to the period.”
He asks people from Ohio if they “‘was a fightin’ in the Toledo War?’
“Of course, the upshot of it was there was almost bloodshed over a parcel of ground at the west end of Lake Erie close to Toledo in the 1830s, and it got to the point where Congress said, ‘We’re going to have to do something about this.’ So they settled it by giving the parcel of disputed territory to Ohio and as a sop, they decided to give to the Michiganders that useless piece of ground that we now call the Upper Peninsula.
“You folks got shuck off didn’ ya,” he teases his Ohio visitors.
Malehorn does his homework so he also knows something about what is going on in the homes of visitors from other countries.
“I make it a point to find out things that were happening in Germany in 1845 (on the verge of the German revolution of 1848), or Japan or France.”
Malehorn, retired in 1997 from the Department of Education at Eastern Illinois University, said he never taught a day of history in his life, but was the son of a history teacher father, who fostered his interest.
“And Lincoln has been my hero since I was a little kid,” he said. “I tell people I read every book in our little public library in northwestern New Mexico where I grew up.
“I’d walk into town to the little library and read every book they had on Lincoln. I read both of them.”
Malehorn has shared his love of history with thousands of visitors at the historical site.
“I’ve had a lot of fun the last 24 years,” he said, “and I’m good for a few more, I think. We have a great bunch of people — the Volunteer Pioneers. That keeps me coming back.
“And, I’m always aware that Abraham Lincoln walked here.”
Contact Bonnie Clark at bclark@jg-tc.com or 348-5727.
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