In 1970 I became choral director at the high school in Sandusky, Ohio. Beards were popular then, and I thought I would start one over Christmas break. As it filled in, people said they saw a Lincolnesque profile there.

That’s when it occurred to me that I might be able to do a presentation on Lincoln, something like Hal Holbrook’s one-man show Mark Twain Tonight . So I began doing research, my first steps on an excursion that has brought my wife, Joanne, and me to make our home in Gettysburg. I think I’ve played Lincoln eightyfive hundred times over the past twenty-one years.

Recently we purchased a cemetery lot and headstone within seventy-five yards of the spot where the President made his “few appropriate remarks” in November 1863. How is that for fulfilling the promise of a “final resting place”?