THE FASCINATING STORY OF A LIFE
MASK MADE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
BEFORE HIS NOMINATION FOR
THE PRESIDENCY, AND HOW IT
CAME TO NORTH CAROLINA.
Short has been fascinated with Lincoln since
the 1970s, when he held another mask of
Lincoln’s face. That mask is commonly referred to
as a death mask because it was taken a couple of
months before his assassination.
“When I put that death mask in my hand, I
was a boy of 24,” Short says. “As the years pro-gressed,
I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It just
kept haunting me and haunting me.”
Short’s affinity for Lincoln was affirmed on
a visit to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington,
D.C., in the late 1980s. As he walked around the
huge statue of the titan of American history and
read quotes from the man who shepherded the
Union through the Civil War, Short was overcome
by emotion.
“I got in the monument and sat on the floor
crying because it was so moving,” Short says. I
couldn’t believe myself. I was an adult man, hav-ing
There have been many depictions of President
Abraham Lincoln, but John Short’s terra cotta
mask was modeled on an 1860 life mask of
Lincoln’s whiskerless face, shortly before Lincoln’s
presidential nomination.
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com
to sit on the floor.”
ALLISON POTTER
25
WBM