The Lincoln Highway National Museum & Archives 102 Old Lincoln Way West Galion, Ohio 44833 (202) 536-5329

The Eternal Light Radio Show
"The Lincoln Highway"
February 12, 1951

The Eternal Light Radio Show
was produced by The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York
and ran on NBC free of charge as a public service
on Sunday afternoon for over 20 years.

The Lincoln Highway Show ran at 12:30 and
was produced as a Lincoln Birthday Special
in 1951 from The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg.

A total of 14 poems were selected from the hundreds available
and arranged by Radio Producer, Peter Lyons
to create this unique 30 minute anthology.

In addition to the many Sandburg poems,
"My Sweetheart's the Mule in the Mine" and "Great grand-dad"
two classic folksongs were used to tie it all together.

Balladier:Tom Glazer.
Lincoln: Bill Adams.
Orchestral Composer: Morris Memorski.
Conductor: Milton Katims.
Cantor: Robert Segal.
Director: Edward King.
Announcer: Mel Brand.

Dr. Allen Nevins, a Pulitzer Prize winning author
and American History Professor at Columbia University
rounds out the show with a short commentary on Mr. Lincoln.

"These are critical days, once more the nation,
its sons already dying in a far off war is gerding itself to meet
the possibility of a mightier conflict.

We here much of the tremendous material strength the country can mobilize,
the overwhelming weight of industrial production it can use to crush Soviet aggression,
that is important, but it is more important to take thought on Lincoln's Birthday
of our Spiritual Resources, of the task of mobilizing the moral strength of Democracy
which Lincoln invoked at Gettysburg and which history has proven
incomparably greater than that of any autocracy.

Lincoln died as the Civil war ended,
since then we've repeatedly had to mark his birthday while war raged.

In seven different years since 1865 if my count be correct,
February 12th has been celebrated while cannon rumbled in the background.

The nation's sons have always fought in a good cause,
but this year they are fighting under new circumstances,
for a larger cause than ever,
they are fighting not for the United States alone, but for the United Nations,
not for national security only, but for world freedom.

In his famous conkling letter just after Gettysburg and Vicksburg,
Lincoln expressed in one sentence the grandeur of the object
for which the Civil War Soldiers had died.

Thanks to all for the great republic,
for the principal that lives by
and keeps alive for man's vast future.
Thanks to all.

He looked down the coming ages,
to the spread of our Ideals of Equality, Justice and Freedom.

To those Ideals the United Nations has now dedicated.
In those ideals it finds a strength greater than in miles
of airplane factories and cities of munitions plants.

To our boys in embattled along side those of Britain,
France, and other Nations in Korea,
Lincoln voice echoes down more fittingly than ever

Thanks to all for man's vast future,
Thanks to all."