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From: "Desoto Joe" <>
Subject: [MO-CW] Like Lincoln, portrayer has roots in Illinois
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 01:28:31 -0600

This story was published in Travel & Leisure on Sunday, December 16, 2001.

Like Lincoln, portrayer has roots in Illinois

By Ron Cobb


Illinois native James A. Getty is not Abraham Lincoln. But he's about the
closest thing we've got.

Getty has been portraying Lincoln for 24 years, all because he decided to
grow a beard, just for the heck of it, about 30 years ago when he was a
teacher of vocal music in Sandusky, Ohio. When the beard grew in and he
shaved the mustache part of it, people started telling him he looked like
Abe Lincoln.

At the time, Getty was absorbed in his music. "I knew nothing about Lincoln,
nothing about the Civil War, nothing about American history," he says.

His music career had included two summers in the chorus of the Muny Opera in
St. Louis in 1950 and '51 while he was a student at Illinois Wesleyan
College in Bloomington. It was in college that Getty, who grew up in Colfax,
Ill., met his wife of 50 years, Joanne, a native of Kansas, Ill.

In the early '70s, a bearded Getty began moonlighting as Lincoln on stage,
boosted by the success of Hal Holbrook's theatrical portrayals of Mark
Twain. In 1977, with the endorsement of Joanne, Getty plunged full time into
the land of Lincoln. They relocated to Gettysburg because of the potential
audience represented by the crowds of tourists who come to town every year.

Getty began with theater performances, never imagining that he would someday
be in such demand that he now makes 220 to 250 appearances a year from coast
to coast. He can be seen regularly in Gettysburg at the Battle Theater, in
addition to his corporate and school appearances.

Getty lives just a block or two from the site where Lincoln gave the
Gettysburg Address, in a town founded by James A. Gettys - no relation,
Getty says, although he believes he and Gettys came from the same county in
Ireland.

Although Getty is no spitting image of Lincoln, he adopts the persona in
convincing fashion. For cosmetic purposes, he darkens his hair somewhat and
adds the Lincoln mole to his right cheek during performances, but he says
that even when he's out of character he draws comparisons to Lincoln.

"I get that all the time in airports," he says, "even if I'm wearing my Cubs
hat and sunglasses. It's because of the beard, and I've got big ears like
Lincoln's."

For 24 years, Getty has been two people, all the while thankful for how
"fortunate I've been to fall into something like this."

Only in America.


Desoto Joe/The Record Man

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