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.A friend and I even spent our springbreak junior year camping out at Lincoln and Civil War sites, includingGettysburg.Just as Lincoln absented himself from active politics between the end ofhis term in Congress and the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, I heldmy Lincoln collecting in abeyance while I served as a U.S.Army officer inGermany and Vietnam between 1962 and 1967.It was during this hiatus thatI married my Southern-born wife, Virginia Elizabeth Miller.Lincoln may nothave held elective office between 1849 and 1854, but he retained his keen inter-est in politics.In the same sense, while I was outside the United States anddid minimal collecting, my interest in Lincoln remained undiminished.the lawyer-collectorOn my return from military service abroad in 1967, two things occurredsimultaneously: I resumed my Lincoln collecting in earnest, and I began law161 Frank J.Williamsschool at Boston University.As my law practice commenced, I found myselfmaking presentations of my own to the Lincoln Group of Boston.The topicof my first talk to this group was Lincoln s visit to Rhode Island after hisCooper Union speech in February 1860.For that presentation I used slides,which remains a trademark of my public presentations.Of course, many ofthe slides were made from the paintings, prints, and other artifacts containedin my growing collection.I have always enlisted Virginia s extraordinaryteacher skills to help organize and prepare these slides for my presentations.When the visuals go right, it s because of her talents.When they don t, it sbecause I ve pressed the wrong button!Within a few years of beginning my law practice, I was elected presidentof the Lincoln Group of Boston just as America celebrated its bicentennial.I served in that position for a dozen years, until 1988.Subsequently, I waselected president of the Abraham Lincoln Association in Springfield, Illi-nois the first president from outside the state and then founding chair-man of the Lincoln Forum.In each of these leadership positions, I tried, asI still do, to promote the legacy of America s sixteenth president by workingto expand not only organizational membership but also activities that reachout to others similarly motivated.During those years of promoting Lincoln s legacy while I was a lawyer-col-lector, I sometimes heard comments that it was impossible to hold a con-ference on Lincoln without Frank Williams. I occasionally pondered whatwas meant by that.One academician who did not yet know me concludedthat I must be an extremely old lawyer given how many Lincoln confer-ences I had attended.I do not deny that I am an active Lincoln conferenceparticipant (or, by now, an old lawyer!).Among these events, two deservespecial mention, since they epitomize my goal of reaching out to others whoare interested in Lincoln.The first was an international conference on Abraham Lincoln, virtuallythe first such conference to be held abroad, at least to my knowledge.It tookplace in Taipei, Taiwan, on November 12 15, 1989, in conjunction with Lin-coln s 180th birthday observance.The proceedings of that conference appearin The Universal Lincoln, a volume appropriately titled for such a landmarkevent.I was particularly pleased that my conference paper, Individuality andUniversality, became my first paper on Lincoln to be published.2The satisfaction that I derived from that experience was repeated whenI endorsed and participated in the first Lincoln conference to be held in aDeep South state.Hosted by Louisiana State University in Shreveport inthe fall of 1992, it generated additional venues in which the Lincoln legacycould be showcased.From it came my opportunity to serve as codirectorof the first Lincoln Summer Teachers Institute in the nation, held at LSU in162 The Compleat LincolnatorShreveport in 1993.It inspired the publication of three volumes in additionto several articles.3 In addition, the conference led to the establishment ofthe International Lincoln Center at LSU in Shreveport.It yielded also thetriennial presidential conference series, with its signature use of Lincoln asthe touchstone for judging other presidents, an approach I fully support.4the judge as collector and scholarMy transition from practicing attorney to presiding judge coincided with mytransition from a Lincoln enthusiast to more scholarly efforts.In late 1995,I became an associate justice on the Superior Court of the State of RhodeIsland.I served in that capacity until 2001, when I became the chief justiceof the state s supreme court.By the time my first formal articles appeared in print in the early 1990s, Ihad already written for many years the annual surveys on Lincoln activitiesaround the country.I took on the assignment in 1977 and continue it on aquarterly and annual basis for Lincoln publications.5 In 2000, I was appointedby the Senate to the U.S.Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.Atpresent, I serve on the executive committee of that commission
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