Five young adults in matching blue-and-burgundy polo
shirts sit in a row at a long blond-wood table in the sunny Governor’s Conference Room at the
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
At first glance, they could be students from
University of Illinois at Springfield or Lincoln Land Community College,
but as soon as they open their mouths to speak the unmistakable lilt of
Irish accents comes dancing out and confirms to anyone listening that they
didn’t grow up just around the block.
They’re from Northern Ireland, all studying
history at Queens University Belfast, and have signed on as summer interns
at the library and museum. In addition to learning about all things
Lincoln, they’ve discovered that Springfield’s got character.
“It looks like the towns you see in the
films,” says Andrew Tipping, a 21-year-old who hopes to work in a
museum. “The ground layout, the little shops and stuff — it
looks like the stereotypical American town.”
Not that that’s a bad thing, Tipping adds
before mentioning that he’s also learned that Springfield is home to
the horseshoe sandwich. Joanne Gallagher, a 20-year-old first-timer to the
United States, gets a laugh from her friends when she mentions that
Illinois drivers don’t like to signal and also says she didn’t
expect the hot, humid weather (the interns say it’s mostly cool and
rainy in Northern Ireland).
Lynsey Gillespie, a 20-year-old who’s visiting
Springfield for the second time, and Patrick Rooney, a 20-year-old
who’s spent some time checking out the capital city’s golf
scene, say the interns were amazed by the community’s warm welcome.
They’ve been invited to pool parties, to church, and to other
get-togethers and have even been taken to St. Louis and Chicago by their
new friends.
“The friendliness of the people has been a big
surprise,” Rooney says. “I’ve been to San Francisco and
Las Vegas, and it’s just a completely different atmosphere here. It
really lives up to the reputation of the Midwest.”
For seven hours a day, five days a week, the interns
work in the library/museum complex as part of their university’s
pilot work-study program. Daniel McCarthy, the fifth and youngest intern at
19 years old, is assembling an oral-history project focused on
African-Americans growing up in Springfield. Tipping works with the museum
foundation, learning about memberships and fundraising. Gallagher is
constructing an oral-history project on the Korean War for the Internet.
Gillespie interacts with different departments in a library-services
position, and Rooney cleans up political cartoons from the early 20th
century and readies them for exhibition.
Their professor, Catherine Clinton, an American who
taught at Harvard University before moving on to Queens University Belfast,
says the program was designed so that the students could work in a field of
education, history, and conservation in a U.S. environment.
Clinton and a longtime friend, library and museum
director Rick Beard, decided that it would be beneficial not only for her
students to receive the same type of opportunities offered to American
students but also for them to act as ambassadors for Queens University
Belfast and for Northern Ireland — historically known for periods of
violence between the Nationalists and Unionists until the Good Friday
agreement was signed and democracy established in 1998.
“They were welcomed in Springfield, and I
wanted them to have that feeling and to also let other people know that
Belfast is a very special place,” Clinton says. “They can be
proud of their role in carrying on the democratic traditions that hold the
U.S. together and that hold Northern Ireland together today.”
The interns will continue their work in the
library/museum complex until the beginning of August, and Clinton, who has
spent a large amount of time in Springfield working on a biography of Mary
Todd Lincoln, hopes to return to the capital city for the commemoration of
her death on July 16, 2009.
Contact Amanda Robert at arobert@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2008.
