The Vermilion County Museum is celebrating Abraham Lincoln’s 208th birthday with an open house party on Sunday. Admission will be free to both the Vermilion County Museum and the Fithian Home next door. Sue Richter, the Museum Director, says students at area schools have made 639 birthday cards which are now on display at the museum. She notes there are local families with ties to Lincoln. ‘’There are students still in the school system in the county whose relatives had dealings with Lincoln – which is kind of phenomenal when you think about it. If their families have been here a long time – which a lot of them have – they’ve dealt with Lincoln or one of his friends from the time or a relative. So it’s kind of unique to think of it that way,’’ says Richter.
Richter notes many of the students wrote messages to Lincoln on their birthday cards. ‘’And it really is well thought out. Some say a lot – some don’t say a whole lot, but they take the time to wish him well which I think is kind of cool. And so many of them say they wish he was still here. I don’t know how that would work out in today’s political world – but it does give you pause for thought,’’ added Richter.
[Grand Prize winner Maylea English, a fourth-grade student at Liberty School in Danville, used money with Lincoln’s picture to make a cake.]
Sunday’s Open House runs from 1:30 until 4:00 p.m.
[Ellie Cooper, a fifth-grade student at Armstrong-Ellis, designed this first-place card of a log cabin.] There will be an award presentation during Sunday’s open house.
[It took two days for Museum staff members to hang the cards that are on display this week at the county museum. In this photo museum employee Erin Bocton hangs some of the cards.]
