The Death of President Abraham Lincoln

Last Photo Taken Of Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln had much to be cheerful about on this April 14^th Good Friday, just two days before Easter. He had been re-elected as President of the United States in November of 1864, and had given his Second Inaugural address just six weeks before on March 4^th.

Lincoln's Inauguration

Lincoln had not been sure of his re-election. He was despised by many, due to the strife and death that had occurred during the Civil War; a war which had raged for four long years.

Then on Sunday, April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. The War of the Rebellion was over!

Lincoln Speaking

Two days later, on Tuesday, April 11, President Lincoln gave his speech on Reconstruction in which he said that “the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union.” He went on to stress that it was not only possible to bring them back “into proper practical relation”, but “easier, to do this, without deciding, or even considering, whether these states have even been out of the Union, than with it.” Lincoln would attempt to restore peace quickly. The South would be treated as a Prodigal Son.

Mary Todd Lincoln

Meanwhile, Lincoln’s wife Mary had decided that they should take some time for themselves. She had arranged for them to see a new play, “Our American Cousin”, which was being performed at Ford’s Theatre. She issued an invitation to General Grant and his wife to attend with them, but the Grants’ declined the invitation. Mary then invited Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris who accepted.

Presidential Box, Ford's Theatre

The two couples arrived at the theatre, running a bit late. The play had already started, but the performance was halted as the President and Mrs. Lincoln took their seats in the Presidential Box. The orchestra played “Hail To The Chief” and the audience gave the President an enthusiastic standing ovation. Mrs. Lincoln, holding the President’s hand, leaned into him and said, “What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" The president simply smiled and replied, "She won't think anything about it." Those would be the President’s last words.

John Wilkes Booth

Lincoln and Mary seemed to enjoy the play. Members of the audience saw them nod and smile during the first two acts. At 10:25 p.m., during the third and final act, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor, stopped at the door of the Presidential Box and presented his card to an usher. The door was opened, and Booth entered into the anteroom of the theatre box. Once in, he wedged the door shut with a wooden stick and waited until the upcoming “laugh line” was delivered by one of the characters on stage to make his move.

As the audience laughed and clapped, Booth stepped into the Presidential Box and shot Lincoln at point-blank range. Major Rathbone attempted to stop Booth, but was knifed as Booth fought to escape. Booth then vaulted over the box railing onto the stage and pretended to be part of the show, raising the bloody knife above his head and spewing Latin as he ran off into the wings. It wasn’t until the laughter died down that the screams of Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Harris could be heard, and Rathbone’s cry of “Stop that man!” spurred audience members to give chase.

Charles Leale

Attending the play that night was Charles Leale, a young Army surgeon. He quickly made his way to the Presidential Box and offered what assistance he could. He later reported that the President seemed to be paralyzed and was barely breathing.

Major Rathbone

Leale quickly assessed the situation. Major Rathbone was loosing blood from a deep gash made in his chest and upper left arm. President Lincoln had a bullet hole in the back of his head next to his left ear. Leale attempted to remove the bullet, but instead dislodged a clot of blood; the bullet had gone too far into the President’s skull to be removed. Leale then made the difficult proclamation, “His wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover.”

Petersen's Boarding House

Lincoln was carefully carried into the rainy night, across the street to a boarding house owned by German tailor, William Petersen. Numerous doctors were in attendance during the President’s final hours, including Lincoln’s personal physician, Robert K. Stone.

While a distraught Mary Lincoln sobbed in the boarding house parlor, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton took control of the situation and began making decisions for the country as the President’s life ebbed away. Dr. Leale stayed with the President, and held his hand so that Lincoln would know “in his blindness, that he had a friend.”

President Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 on the morning of Saturday, April 15, 1865; the first President to be assassinated. He was 56 years old. As those who witnessed his final breath knelt in prayer, Stanton said, "Now he belongs to the ages.”

 

The 16^th President of the United States was dead.

~ Joy

Remembering An Architectural Legend: Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright

He was considered the greatest architect of the 20^th century with his organic American Modernistic style.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born on June 8, 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin. Wright’s mother, Anna was a teacher. She purchased a set of Froebel educational blocks for Frank at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Wright was entranced with the geometrically shaped blocks and spent hours building forms with the cubes, spheres and triangle-shaped blocks; blocks he said influenced his approach to design.

Joseph Sillsbee

Chicago architect Joseph Silsbee hired Wright as a draftsman in 1887. Wright described Silsbee’s work as “gracefully picturesque.”  But when he learned that the firm of Adler and Sullivan was hiring, Wright applied and was taken on as an official apprentice of the firm.

Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan became a mentor to Wright, and he quickly learned how to design public and commercial buildings in the Prairie-style, following the famous Sullivan motto, “form follows function.”

Wright’s only problem at the firm was his constant debt. He wanted the finer things in life, even if he couldn’t afford them. Sullivan was constantly loaning Wright money but he never seemed to get “caught up.”

Catherine Tobin Wright

Wright married Catherine “Kitty” Tobin in 1889, and Sullivan loaned him enough money to build a house in the suburb of Oak Park. (Sullivan also gave Wright a five-year employment contract.) But money was still tight.

In order to make more money, Wright began to take on independent commissions without the firm’s knowledge. He continued to design his “bootleg” Prairie houses until 1893 when Sullivan recognized one them as something Wright had designed. The two suffered a major rift because of this breach of contract, and did not speak again for over 12 years.

Wright's Arts and Crafts Interior

Wright left the company and decided to start his own firm. He shared space with three other young architects, all of them designing in the Arts and Crafts style. Between 1894 and 1910, Wright’s firm trained several of the main Prairie School architects.

Oak Park House of FLW

Robie House in Chicago

By 1901, Wright had built 50 structures, many of them homes located in Oak Park, Illinois. Wright’s “Prairie Houses” were becoming popular with their low, horizontal base topped with sloping roofs, and long windows that let in nature. Wright’s interiors encompassed wide-open spaces emulating nature with a nod toward Japanese architecture. Wright’s work spread to include houses and buildings in New York State, Pennsylvania, and throughout the Midwest.

Mamah Cheney

In 1903 as he was designing a house for a neighbor, Wright became involved with the neighbor’s wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Kitty Wright was sure that this infatuation would fade, so she refused to grant Wright a divorce.

Taliesin

Six years later, in 1909, Wright and Mamah moved to Europe together, deserting their spouses and children back in Chicago. Wright returned to the U.S. in the autumn of 1910 and purchased land in Spring Green, Wisconsin, adjacent to land owned by his mother’s family. There he built a home for Mamah, which he called Taliesin, “Truth Against the World” in Welsh.

Taliesin Murders

But disaster struck in August, 1914 when a disgruntled servant murdered Mamah, her two children, and four others at the home before setting fire to it. Wright was away at the time.

Olga Hinzeburg

Eight years later, Kitty Wright granted Frank a divorce, and in 1924, Wright began another wild affair with Olga Hinzeburg. They moved together back to a newly built Taliesin. After more marriage ups and downs, and another fire at Taliesin, Olga and Wright were married in 1928, and Taliesin III was built from the ashes of the second house.

Fallingwater

Taliesin West

During the 1920s, Wright designed his textile concrete block houses in California. And during the 1930s, he honed his organic style creating three of his well-known masterpieces; Graycliff near Buffalo, New York; Fallingwater near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Taliesin West, the Wright complex near Scottsdale, Arizona.

Usonian House

Guggenheim Museum

Wright continued to blaze new design trails well into his 70s and 80s with his Usonian Houses of the late 1930s and '40s, along with major buildings such as the Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan.

Wright's First Grave

Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 9, 1959 after intestinal surgery in Phoenix, Arizona. He was 91 years old. Wright was buried in the Lloyd-Jones family cemetery in Spring Green, Wisconsin. But his burial was to be as complex as his life had been.

Wright and Olga

Twenty-five years after his death, his wife Olga requested that Wright’s remains be dug up and cremated along with her and her daughter’s. This was done, and the cremains were interred in the memorial garden at Taliesin West.

~ Joy

Coffin Therapy: Giving Death a Test Drive

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, along comes yet another bizarre idea concerning death. This one originated in the Ukraine a few years ago, and was the brainchild of Truskavets coffin maker, Stepan Piryanyk.

Stepan Piryanyk

Piryanyk decided that to combat the fear of being buried with “coffin therapy.” (He claims that each coffin has its own aura.) For $25, he’s offered people a chance to hop into a coffin and experience a glimmer of death.

For their money, the customer receives fifteen minutes of lie-down time in a silk-lined coffin. There’s a soundtrack of a babbling brook playing, and it’s the guest’s choice to close the lid – or not. Piryanyk sees it as a way to “get used to the afterlife.”

Several people who tried coffin therapy reported that it was relaxing.

Piryanyk came up with the idea after he and his brother built a coffin couch for their grandmother so she could “slowly get used to eternity.”

 

A mental health clinic in China offers “death experience therapy.” The experience lasts from 4 to 5 hours (!) and costs around $320. While the patient is lying in the coffin covered in a shroud, family members read epitaphs and share memories.

The clinic reported that after the event is over, patients write down how they felt while lying in the coffin. Many are so relieved and happy to be alive that they vow to alter the way they live, promising to live life more in the moment.

 

Yet another report from China has psychological counseling patients lying down in a coffin in order to relieve their stress. Supposedly after spending a few minutes covered with a blanket, with the lid shut, they emerge from the coffin feeling “reborn."  Over 1,000 patients have experienced the therapy.

 

In Seoul, South Korea a “well-dying” course is offered for those who have decided not to “take life for granted.”  Customers put on a traditional yellow hemp robe and lie down in a wooden coffin in order to experience their worst fear – dying. Once the lid is put in place, people reported that their attitudes toward life changed; they suddenly realized what was truly important to them and emerged more appreciative of those near and dear to them.

 

A healing center in South Korea offers students the chance to understand the “death experience" by taking a class in it. The students don white robes, then listen to lectures as they sit at a desk next to their coffin. They then compose a farewell letter to their loved ones before posing in the coffin for a funeral portrait. They are then instructed to lie down in their individual coffins and await the “Korean angel of death” who walks by each casket and closes the lid, symbolizing that the student has died. The students spend about 10 minutes in their coffins, left alone to deal with “the nothingness of the afterlife.”

 

When the students “awake,” many have reported feeling liberated from their concerns, and refreshed.

 

In another weird turn of events, a Taiwanese professor reportedly buries his students (alive) in a coffin in the floor of his classroom. This is supposed to make them become more appreciative of their lives; more focused on “living every second.”

 

I have not found where any “death therapy” is offered in the U.S., but if it were, would you pay to try it? With the lid open, or closed? (And seriously, these reports are NOT part of an April Fool's joke. Life, at times, is just this weird ...)

~ Joy

The Legacy of the Daffodils

 

The first time I saw the daffodils blooming by the side of the road was well over 25 years ago. My mother-in-law and I were heading home after a day of shopping when she suddenly veered off the main highway to show me something I’d never seen before.

We traveled about a mile down a one-lane gravel road before turning to the south. And there, in full abundance, was a riot of sunny yellow daffodils, blooming along both sides of the road, as far as the eye could see. She didn’t know the story of who had planted them or why, but she’d come across them years ago and thought I’d enjoy seeing them.

I hadn’t been back that way for years, but I did think of those amazing roadways every spring. Then, last week, as I noticed the bulbs beginning to bloom in my garden, I decided to see if those dancing daffodils were still there, and there was only one way to find out.


Armed with my camera, I headed off, hoping I’d remember where to turn. In fact, I did recognize one of the routes, and there at the intersection of two country roads were the daffys; bright yellow, swaying and bobbing in the breeze, a happy harbinger of spring.

Once again a riot of yellow blooms spread along the road, ending down by a house to the south, but heading off toward a church and more roads to the north. Beautiful and uplifting!

I did some digging and finally discovered the story behind the daffodils from Jo Gardner. Jo’s parents, Ed and Lois Whittaker decided back in the 1940s that they wanted to make the countryside look pretty during these wet, muddy spring months, so they began a two-person campaign to beautify their country neighborhood. They began planting daffodil bulbs.

Each year, they planted more bulbs, and each year the back country roadways heralded in spring with the uplifting glow of yellow daffodils.

Jo said that her dad, Ed would take a spade and make a hole, then her mom would drop in the bulb, and Ed would step on it to cover it up.

Jo isn’t sure where all of the bulbs came from. People began donating them, some bulbs were divided, and sometimes the plants just spread themselves across the countryside.

Pleasant Ridge Church

Once the Whittaker’s had planted their roadside, they branched off to the north and south, lining the roads that led to the Pleasant Ridge Church. Word spread of the spectacular flowers and people drove the roads to see the beauty.

Jo doesn’t know why daffodils were her parent’s flower of choice, but folklore may shed some light on that.

In Victorian times, flowers had meanings – there were actual flower dictionaries with the meaning explained.

According to one description, the bright yellow daffy indicated love, regard and respect. It was also a symbol of hope, joy and new beginnings; the perfect flower for spring, which brings us a new beginning each year.

The daffodil is also a symbol of rebirth, and associated with the spring festivals of Lent and Easter. While we in the U.S. call them Easter Lilies, in Germany they are known as Easter Bells, and in England as the Lenten Lily.

Jo said that her father planted the last of the daffodils in 1989, at the age of 94.

The Whittaker’s life-long dedication to making their ”little corner of the world” more beautiful is a lesson for all of us. Regardless of how busy we are, there’s always time to brighten a little piece of our world, and that, in turn, may give joy to others.

Thanks to the Whittaker’s, the feelings of happiness and joy bubble forth over 70 years later at the sight of those golden daffodils dancing in the prairie breeze each spring, along the gravel roads of Lawrence County, Illinois.

What a beautiful legacy to be remembered for!

~ Joy

"Daffodils" (1804)

I wander’d lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

~ William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)