It's Not Abe. Honest

By John Cloud

You could be a Washington or a Jefferson or, impudently, a Robert E. Lee. You could gain some weight, acquire pince-nez and an air of temerity and be Theodore Roosevelt. You could buy a long cigarette holder and do F.D.R.

But it might be lonely work, unless you're a Lincoln. Of all the Founding Fathers and ex-Presidents, only Abraham Lincoln has his own national association of impressionists. They are called, appropriately, the Association of Lincoln Presenters (A.L.P.), and since 1990 the group has attracted more than 160 Lincolns, from Alaska to Florida. There's even one in Spain. You can find other groups of historical impersonators--they go by names like Living Legends, the California outfit that can send your school or Rotary Club this one guy who can go from portraying Thomas Jefferson and Harry Truman to, unaccountably, Golda Meir. (Peter Small is his name, and he says his portrayal of the epicene Israeli is meant with respect.) But the association of Lincolns is unique, a claque devoted to a single historical figure.

The Lincolns of the A.L.P. are no mere Civil War re-enactors. They approach their work with a mixture of sacerdotal adoration, historical rigor and commercial self-interest (some impersonate Lincoln for a living, and virtually all charge several hundred dollars per gig to portray him at parades, nursing homes and museums). For the best Lincolns, bringing him to life means hours of prep; those docents in Maryland may not ask you back if you can't perform a speech Lincoln gave in the state. And then there are the costuming challenges--carefully shaving your upper lip, coloring the gray from your whiskers, suffering the assumptions of those who mistake you for a lost Amishman.

But as much as any professional historian or Lincoln scholar, the pretend Lincolns show us why the 16th President remains such a colossus in the American imagination. These men are a little freaky, but through their eyes--often set in a hard stare to mimic those dreary 19th century portraits--you get a pretty good view of his legacy.

You don't have to look like Lincoln to be a Lincoln presenter--there are fat ones and short ones and white-haired ones--but of course it helps. In what must have been a dispiriting compliment, many of the A.L.P. Lincolns were told from a young age that they resembled the ungainly President. Some had already grown the distinctive beard--typically out of a deeply misguided sense of fashion, although at the 11th annual A.L.P. convention in April, I did meet one Robert Rotgers, 69, who grew his beard in the mid-'60s "for theological reasons"--he was an Anabaptist seminarian at the time.

What kind of man would dress up like Abraham Lincoln all the time? It turns out they share only a few similarities--to a man, the Lincolns at the convention, which was held at a Marriott outside Detroit, were white; most turned 60 some time ago. Nearly all were grandfatherly hams who liked to flash their pocket watches or hand out shiny pennies and say, "Would you like a picture of me?"

The Lincolns' differences were more striking. The real Abe was psychologically complicated and politically inconstant, which means both Democrats and Republicans can comfortably impersonate him. When I asked A.L.P.er David Kreutz, a 63-year-old retired auto employee from Depew, N.Y., and a member of the state's liberal Working Families Party, to define Lincoln's greatness, he said, "I think his outstanding feature was to make such inroads from a poor family. He knew hardship." But ask conservative Republican Chester Damron, 71, the same question, and the Seventh-Day Adventist minister from Michigan says, "I respect his honesty and integrity. That's the bedrock on which you can build a character and your relationships, with God and with man." James Boatright, a trainman who worked for 43 years along Illinois tracks and even parked in the same lot every workday, gave this answer: "When [Lincoln] struck a policy, he stayed with it until it was done." It turns out that wearing a Lincoln suit can be just another way of looking like yourself.

One of the Lincolns, Jim Sayre of Lawrenceburg, Ky., put it best: "A lot of people try to make him be what they want him to be." But the remarkable thing about Lincoln is that he is still remaking people himself. Take Jimmie Ray Rubin of Prosperity, W.Va. The 12th of 14 children, Rubin was born 73 years ago in a coal camp in nearby Lillybrook. He worked at a Laundromat and a newspaper to put himself through local colleges and eventually became a social worker. A veteran, Rubin also became commander of his American Legion post and a vets' advocate in Charleston, the state capital.

But Rubin was never much of a reader, and upon his retirement, in 1995, he spent a lot of time on his five La-Z-Boys with ESPN. Fortuitously, in 1997 a presenter from Ohio--Ralph Borror, who runs abraham-lincoln.net--did a Lincoln event at a mall near Rubin's house. Rubin, who has Lincoln's protuberant nose, his scraggly eyebrows, his height (Rubin is 6 ft. 3 in.; Lincoln was 6 ft. 4 in.) and his beard--grown years ago--was surprised, and a bit envious, that someone over at the mall would pay a man to come down from Ohio to do Lincoln. For years, people had been saying to Rubin, "Did anyone ever tell you you look like ..." So he approached Borror and asked what it took to become a Lincoln. "Within a year," Borror says with a rueful smile, "he had taken all the events I used to do in West Virginia."

To his wife Edna's astonishment, Rubin bought a shelfful of Lincoln books and flipped from ESPN to the History Channel. He also went online and met Lincolns around the country, who helped him learn the trade secrets (you can pay $300 for a beaver top hat like Lincoln's, but a hand-me-down from the local theater troupe will do; always have a snappy response to kids' favorite question: "Aren't you dead?"; a little piece of pencil eraser affixed above the right corner of your mouth can serve as Lincoln's prominent mole; if you're not quite as tall as Lincoln, you might say, "Few men could measure up").

Rubin's Lincoln is now famous in West Virginia. Recently the House of Delegates even asked him to portray Lincoln before the entire chamber (Lincoln signed the bill creating the state in 1862, so West Virginians love the guy). Before the event, Rubin-qua-Lincoln roamed the Capitol grounds, and at least a dozen passersby asked for a snapshot with him. He told me, with glee, that this happens all the time. "I've walked into a bank," he said, "and all transactions cease."

Inside, Rubin and "Mary Lincoln"--his friend Joyce Browning, one of about 40 Marys in the A.L.P.--were received by various dignitaries, including secretary of state Betty Ireland, who asked, "Abraham, what's all this I hear about you sleeping with men for four years?"--a reference to a recent book arguing, contentiously, that Lincoln was gay. Rubin, a sweet but totally cornball guy, responded, "I'm just gonna concentrate on two words, and that's how I started the Gettysburg Address: 'Four score.' I scored four times--I had four sons. And each time I felt gay--I felt really happy." He would repeat that response throughout the day--to a state archivist, to a woman from the Governor's office, to a state senator.

Late in the day, Rubin and Browning did their Lincoln bit in the House of Delegates. To put it charitably, Rubin does not have Lincoln's gift for brevity--he can deliver the Gettysburg Address in 1 min. 50 sec., but he held the podium in Charleston for a solid half an hour. One delegate, Brady Paxton, browsed the Fox Sports website; another, Sharon Spencer, leaned across the aisle in her red kimono jumpsuit to ask, "How long is this?" But the power of Lincoln is such that when Rubin finally did get to the Gettysburg Address, everyone perked up. And Abe and Mary left to a standing ovation.

For a Web exclusive about professors who loathe Lincoln, visit time.com/lincoln