On a mid-August day in 1979, David and I found ourselves in Abraham Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield, Illinois.

Entering, we heard the voice of Raymond Massey reading, “There is not much of this because there is not much of me.” It was an excerpt from a short autobiography Lincoln wrote for the Bloomington Pantagraph in 1861 when he was running for the presidency.

Waiting out in our car that afternoon was the great granddaughter of Jesse W. Fell, publisher of the Pantagraph and friend of Lincoln. Elizabeth Stevenson Ives, my friend “Buffie,” had insisted we visit the tomb, but begged off going in since she had been there several times before.

Sitting on a table near my fireplace is a studio photograph of a rather imperious looking woman signed, “To Sylvia with love from Buffie.”

She was called........

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