KET - KET presents high-definition Lincoln special, part of TeleFund 2008

KET presents high-definition Lincoln special, part of TeleFund 2008

For Release: 2008-02-12 12:17:00

As Kentucky and the rest of the nation embark on a two-year celebration of Abraham Lincoln, a new KET production explores the life and career of Kentucky’s most famous native son. Lincoln: ‘I, too, am a Kentuckian.’ is a Kentucky Life special hosted by Dave Shuffett. The program examines the many Kentucky people and places that profoundly influenced America’s sixteenth president.

Airing Saturday, March 1 at 8/7 p.m. CT on KET1 and KET HD; Sunday, March 2 at 1 p.m./noon CT on KET1; and Sunday, March 9 at 6/5 p.m. CT on KET2, the program kicks off KET’s TeleFund 2008. It is KET’s first long-form documentary produced entirely in high definition.

Born near what is now Hodgenville, Ky., Lincoln retained lifelong connections with the Commonwealth. The Lincoln family left Kentucky when he was just seven years old, but some of the most influential people in his adult life were Kentuckians, including his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and his best friend, Joshua Speed, along with many of his business partners.

The program visits the Jefferson County site where, in 1786, Lincoln’s grandfather was killed by American Indians; Lincoln’s birthplace and boyhood home near Hodgenville; the Mary Todd Lincoln House in Lexington; and Farmington, the Louisville home of Joshua Speed.

Viewers also journey to the Lincoln family’s Indiana homestead and Springfield, Ill., where his law career flourished. Then, the program travels to Washington, D.C., where President Lincoln dedicated the final four years of his life to keeping the Union intact. That monumental effort included the delicate diplomatic task of keeping Kentucky in the Union. As tensions flared into civil war, the president wrote that “to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.”

Commentary is provided by several local and national Lincoln experts, including presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin; Douglas Wilson, director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, Galesburg, Ill.; John Kleber, editor of the Kentucky Encyclopedia and professor emeritus of history at Morehead State University; and Alicestyne Adams, director of the Underground Railroad Research Institute at Georgetown College.

Finally, Lincoln: ‘I, too, am a Kentuckian.’ looks at the ways Lincoln was commemorated in the years after his assassination, especially in his native state.

Lincoln: ‘I, too, am a Kentuckian.’ is a KET production, made possible in part by a grant from the Kentucky Historical Society and the Kentucky Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. The program is produced and directed by Joy Flynn and Marsha Hellard. More information about KET programming and education services, as well as how to support KET, can be found at www.ket.org.

Interviewees:

• Alicestyne Adams, Kentucky Underground Railroad Research Institute, Georgetown College

• Bryon Andreasen, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

• Jean Harvey Baker, professor of history, Goucher College and author of Mary Todd Lincoln, A Biography

• Sandy Brue, chief interpreter at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace

• Anne Butler, professor, Kentucky State University and director of the Center of Excellence for the Study of Kentucky African Americans

• Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian and author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

• Ed Hamilton, Louisville sculptor whose latest work is a statue of Lincoln that will be located at Louisville’s Waterfront Park

• Harold Holzer, Lincoln scholar and author of Lincoln at Cooper Union

• Senator Dan Kelly, Springfield, Ky.

• John Kleber, Kentucky historian and professor emeritus of history at Morehead State University

• James Klotter, state historian of Kentucky

• Anne Marshall, professor of history, Mississippi State University

• Tommy Turner, Larue County judge executive and member of the national Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission

• Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln scholar, author and co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, Galesburg, Ill.

Contact: Amanda Stroud

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