WILL Headlines, News, & Notes
By the People: A Lincoln Portrait
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Out of the mouths of central Illinoisans comes a series of moving tributes to Lincoln using the power of his own words. Thirteen video shorts are airing on WILL-TV. Click on the link below to watch them.
Iraq War veteran Garrett Anderson reprises Lincoln’s Speech to the Ohio 166th Regiment. Champaign high school student Honesty Smith presents Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. And a montage of 14 ordinary central Illinois residents presents a moving tribute to Abraham Lincoln and his Gettysburg Address.
A new series of 13 video shorts, now airing on WILL-TV, commemorates the Lincoln Bicentennial by presenting the faces and voices of volunteer readers as they speak some of Lincoln’s most memorable words.
WILL-TV worked with the University of Illinois Conferences and Institutes, a division of the U of I’s Office of Continuing Education, on the project, By the People: A Lincoln Portrait.
WILL-TV’s Steve Drake, who produced and edited the pieces along with editor Tristan Riddell, said the readers weren’t chosen because they were the best orators, but because they were regular people from the community, not politicians or dignitaries. Each of the participants brought their own set of experiences to the reading. “Lincoln’s words are so powerful and inspiring that the people reading them can’t help but be moved,” Drake said. “That’s evident in the videos.”
One of the readers of the Gettysburg Address was Mohammad Al-Heeti, a Champaign-Urbana business owner who has lived in the community since coming from Iraq 26 years ago to attend the U of I. He said he participated to give back to the community that has welcomed him and to “give an example that we came for a certain reason and now we’re a part of this society and this community.”
“I admire (President Lincoln) because he worked for the whole nation, not for a party or group. He didn’t care if they were black or white or they were this ethnic group or that ethnic group,” Al-Heeti said.
Peg Wherry, who coordinated the project, said she discovered when combing through Lincoln’s speeches to find appropriate material that he was an organized, logical writer. Editing Lincoln was a bit intimidating, but she had to fit speeches into 90-second spots. “He arranged his words so tightly that it’s hard to grab a little bit without doing violence to the whole thing,” she said.
Jim Onderdonk, head of Conferences and Institutes, said he wanted the project to echo the words of the Gettysburg Address, “by the people,” by using the people of Illinois to read the speeches. “I’m not a native Illinoisan but I have met so many people here who have an abiding affection for Lincoln,” he said. “So I’d rather have those kinds of people do the reading.”
