Gurnee student got close-up look at Illinois history
It would have been easy for David Spriegel of Gurnee to slack off the latter parts of his internship at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.
After all, his discovery of two never-before-found Lincoln documents in the first week of his internship — listing in Lincoln’s handwriting parcels of Illinois land involved in a court case — brought Spriegel a sort of short-term fame that few history-loving interns realize.
But Spriegel, who’s now back at school at St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minn., said his time with the library after his Lincoln discovery was filled with careful sifting through stacks and boxes of former Illinois Sen. Paul Simon’s papers.
“I really appreciated the chance to be involved with a big, long-term project,” the Warren Township High School graduate said.
And it wasn’t just a couple letters.
Included among the papers was a letter from Simon to the leader of Iran during the Iran hostage crisis. Simon wanted to send greetings, but also convey how tense the situation was from the U.S.
“That gave a new perspective,” Spriegel said.
Spriegel’s successes in Springfield followed him back to college, where he’s a senior. He was invited to a faculty gathering and shared his experiences with his internship, and the Lincoln documents in particular.
“It was a nice chance to relax and talk to them,” he said.
Spriegel hopes to continue his education in library sciences, and he said his internship work going through other people’s letters gave him a greater concern over today’s email-driven society.
Records of communication between people are now deleted with a click of a mouse, whereas letters sent were more easily kept. Researchers use those letters to tell the tales of history and, without them, some important perspective could be lost.
That wasn’t a problem for people like Lincoln and Simon, though, Spriegel said.
And after spending all summer sifting through piles of documents, he should know.
“It’s just staggering, the amount of paperwork these guys produce,” Spriegel said.