President Lincoln Visits Nolan Elementary School

  • Monday, April 6, 2015
The country’s 16th president delighted students at Nolan Elementary School recently as he wove stories of his childhood and life along with words of wisdom that still apply today. 

Dennis Boggs from the Nashville area has presented “Mr. Lincoln” to a variety of audiences all across the United States. He never tires of sharing his knowledge about Abraham Lincoln. 

“Each audience is different, and while I basically present the same information, I tweak it a little each 
time,” he said.
Mr. Boggs loves working with children. 

“His ability to hold children’s attention is incredible,” noted second-grade teacher Kelly Cook. 

A favorite moment during Boggs’ presentations to younger children is when he selects a boy to illustrate how Lincoln enticed his younger step-brother to play in a mud puddle, then held the boy so he could walk muddy footprints up his mother’s whitewashed walls and ceilings. 

Peels of laughter ran out when Mr. Boggs demonstrated this with third-grader Will Robinson and 4th-grader Tommy Giannasi. 

Although Mrs. Lincoln thought it creative, she also punished the boys by making them wash the walls 
and ceiling, which was not an easy task, even for tall Abe.

“The next time you have a real good idea,” Mr. Boggs said, “you need to think it through all the way to the the famous 1858 debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were used to teach students about bullying since Douglas taunted Lincoln during and between those seven debates.

“He did such an excellent job of tying in history with everyday messages,” said Meg Self, another second-grade teacher.

Mr. Boggs even used today’s popular activity of playing video games to make a point. “If you make a mistake or don’t get the score you want (in a game), there’s a button you can push to erase and start over,” he observed. “But boys and girls, if you hurt someone, there’s no button to push. 

“You can hurt more people in more different ways with what you say and do,” Mr. Boggs said. “So, be very, very careful about what you say and do to people.”

Third-grade teacher Diane Huseman appreciated Boggs’ message of “Live a life that makes a difference. And, he was just such an engaging speaker.” 

The debates between Lincoln and Douglas, who were vying for a Senate seat in Illinois, tackled the issue of the survival of the union and the institution of slavery. 

Lincoln first encountered slavery when he was a young man traveling with his family to New Orleans. There, he saw black families separated, even from their children, and men beaten and whipped leaving scars on their backs. 

“I promised myself that one day, if I could, I was going to stop that,” Mr. Boggs said, in his role as Lincoln.

So, when he returned to Illinois, Lincoln started studying the law to become a lawyer and got involved in politics so he could reverse a law that make it possible for people to own and sell “people of color.”

Mr. Boggs detailed how difficult it was for Lincoln to study and learn, first as a child and later as an adult. Most people owned few books back when Lincoln was a child.

“So, we learned lessons by saying them out loud,” said Mr. Boggs as Lincoln. “That’s why they called them ‘blabbering schools’.”

Lincoln’s dad needed him to work on the family farm, so Young Abe wasn’t able to attend school for 
much more than a year total. His step mother encouraged him to read and write at night by the fire or candle.

“My best friend was anyone who could get me a new book,” Lincoln wrote of his childhood. Mr.Boggs told students to never give up, stating Lincoln took and failed a test to become a lawyer three times before he found a tutor to help him succeed. 

Mr. Boggs told a young Nolan student that Lincoln earned the nickname “Honest Abe” early in life because “he would go way, way out of his way to tell the truth” even if it got him in trouble.

And, Mr. Boggs added, Lincoln learned early that “If I make a promise, I need to keep that promise.”

Lincoln did keep his promise to try and end slavery in the United States but mourned that it took a Civil War and the loss of many lives to finally achieve that. He and his wife had relatives who fought and died on both sides of that war. Unfortunately, due to a fatal wound from a gun shot by a man angry with him over his stance against slavery, Lincoln never saw it completely end.

Mr. Boggs has a knack for entertaining while educating his audiences, and students hung on every word. While they occasionally laughed and interacted during portions of each presentation, the school gymnasium was silent as Boggs recited by memory the famous Gettysburg Address to older students.

Although he was the country’s president in November 1863, Lincoln was not the featured speaker at the official dedication ceremony for the National Cemetery of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, on the site of one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the Civil War. However, his 272-word address is remembered as one of the most important speeches in American history.

"It was just 10 sentences long and only 18 words have more than three syllables," Mr. Boggs noted.

“People are going to remember you not for how much you say,” he told students, “but what you say.”

Mr. Boggs ended each program by encouraging students to READ and told them to ask their parents to read to them and then for them to read to their parents.

“Read every book on every subject you can,” he said. “Then, go out there in that world and do something to help your fellow man."

“I am the voice of the past,” Boggs said. “You are the voice of tomorrow. And, in your delicate hands, I leave you the future.”
Student Scene
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