Feb. 11 (Pradeep) — President Barack Obama paid tribute to his political hero, Abraham Lincoln, at a celebration for the reopening of the theater where Lincoln was assassinated. 
“Despite all that divided us — North and South, black and white — he had an unyielding belief that we were, at heart, one nation, and one people,” Obama said tonight at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. “And because of Abraham Lincoln, and all who carried on his work in the generations since, that is what we remain today.”
Obama, the nation’s first black commander-in-chief, often invokes the name and symbols of the slain president who ended slavery and brought the U.S. through the Civil War. Both men rose from the Illinois state legislature to the highest office in the land and both built reputations as skilled political orators. 
The reopening of Ford’s Theatre after an 18-month refurbishment coincides with a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. Obama, 47, who took the oath of office on Lincoln’s bible, will travel to Springfield, Illinois, tomorrow to mark the bicentennial.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, joined politicians and Ford’s Theatre donors tonight to watch a series of songs, readings and speeches performed by celebrities such as Ben Vereen and Kelsey Grammer. Via videotape, the four living past presidents — George W. Bush, Bill Clinton,George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter — recited Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address, each reading separate parts that were stitched together for the audience.
Lincoln Medal
The gala event included the presentation of the Lincoln Medal given each year to someone whose work, accomplishments and attributes “exemplify the lasting legacy and mettle of character embodied by the most beloved president in our nation’s history,” Ford’s Theatre said. This year, the recipients were filmmaker George Lucas and actor Sidney Poitier.
The Obamas watched from the front row alongside luminaries such as Poitier and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. None of the nation’s leaders have sat in the presidential box since John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln there during a performance of “Our American Cousin” on the evening of April 14, 1865.
In the aftermath of the assassination, the government bought the theater, which dates to 1861, from Ford for $100,000 and gave it to the War Department for use as storage space and an Army Medical Museum.
Interior Collapse
At one point, the interior collapsed, so now only the exterior walls are original. In the 1960s, the theater was rededicated as a memorial to Lincoln, and the National Park Service used historic photographs and contemporary accounts to reconstruct the box and the theater as it looked that night. Almost a million visitors pass through every year.
The theater has just 658 seats, done up in red upholstery. Lincoln’s box sits just above stage left. On the balustrade is one of the few surviving artifacts from that time, an engraving of George Washington.
The renovation was part of a larger $50 million fundraising effort known as the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Campaign that’s also supporting the building of a new education center. The campaign benefited from a $5 million donation from ExxonMobil Corp. and $2.5 million from the State of Qatar, the theater said.
Other donors included AT&T Inc., BP America Inc., General Dynamics Corp., Toyota Motor Corp., AMR Corp.’s American Airlines and Lockheed Martin Corp., according to Ford’s Theatre.
To contact the reporters on the story: Pradeep in India at doterror0@gmail.com.
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