Page 8 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • February 15, 2012 Ridgewood ‘Abraham Lincoln’ pays visit to Schoolhouse Museum by John Koster Ridgewood residents recently spoke with “Abraham Lincoln” in the person of expert impersonator Robert Costello. Both Ridgewood and Lincoln were favorably impressed. “With such great enthusiasm, I have to wonder how I came to lose New Jersey both in 1860 and 1864,” Lincoln said, drawing a wave of applause. Costello offered an extremely convincing impersonation to a packed audience, including a dozen children who sat on the carpet just in front of the library auditorium stage, and seemed to be fascinated by the kindly, dignified sixfoot-four-inch man in black. Costello’s craggy, weathered face, large hands, and bright, sad blue eyes evoked the plausible reality of Abraham Lincoln for the kids. “We didn’t have a pencil and paper,” President Lincoln told the sympathetic children. “We were poor. I had to take a piece of charcoal out of the fireplace and practice on the back of a shovel.” Lincoln said he adored his mother, who died when he was a child, and also adored his stepmother, but did not much like his father, who discouraged him from reading because he considered “book learning” a waste of time. His escape from home led him to take a flatboat loaded with hogs to New Orleans. “One thing I saw in New Orleans was an auction block where we sold our hogs, and the next day people were sold there, and I said to myself –this isn’t right….As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master,’” Lincoln told his audience. The adults were won over by Lincoln’s self-deprecatory wit, his homespun anecdotes, and the stories that came alive once more. He offered a layered and extremely sympathetic portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln, his troubled and sometime troublesome wife, who helped build Lincoln’s self-confidence when he was a prairie lawyer. Mr. Lincoln (continued on page 10) ‘President Lincoln’ with Willard School Librarian Linda Di Orio at the Ridgewood Schoolhouse Museum. Sarah Sequinot with ‘President Lincoln’ at the Ridgewood Schoolhouse Museum.