Gala Celebration for re-opening of Ford's Theater

At a gala re-opening ceremony at Ford's Theater last night, Violinist Joshua Bell played a traditional spiritual on a violin that hasn't been heard since the night Lincoln was shot in 1865; former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush took turns reading segments of the Gettysburg Address (via video,) and actors Audra McDonald, James Earl Jones, Richard Thomas, Ben Vereen, Jeffrey Wright, opera singer Jessye Norman and journalist Katie Couric all offered tributes to President Abraham Lincoln.

Oh -- and President Obama, who was in attendance, made a few appropriate remarks of his own.

"For despite all that divided us — North and South, black and white — he had an unyielding belief that we were, at heart, one nation, and one people," Obama said. "And because of Abraham Lincoln, and all who've carried on his work in the generations since, that is what we remain today."

I'm hoping that a video will be available at some point, because I'd love to see this!

I visited Ford's Theater years ago, during my very first visit to Washington, D.C. My recollections are that I was pretty much alone inside (or accompanied by only a handful of other visitors,) and that the inside of the theater was dark and rather ominous. I remember looking up at the presidential box where President Lincoln was assassinated so many years ago, and feeling a slight chill. After years of reading about that night (I read Carl Sandburg's Lincoln biography when I was around ten,) it was amazing to be standing right below the presidential box and to be able to see with my own eyes the location where it all happened: where the president was shot, and where John Wilkes Booth had leaped down to the stage.

Ford's Theater has been undergoing much-needed renovations and will reopen to the public today for Lincoln Bicentennial celebrations that will continue for the remainder of this week.