History is alive and well at Seaford Library

Want to learn more about American history? Go to the Seaford Library, where Director Frank McKenna, an avid student of history, leads an American history and biography book discussion group.

“History is fascinating,” McKenna said. “It’s about cause and effect; it informs the future.”

The group, which currently has eight members, began last fall with a discussion of “American Lion: Andrew Jackson,” by Jon Meacham, followed this spring and summer with books on the Great Triumvirate — Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, McKenna said. The Great Triumvirate refers to these three American statesmen who dominated the United States Senate in the 1830s and 1840s. They symbolized the opposing viewpoints of the American people, especially on matters of slavery. It was a time of rising political pressure in the United States and played a significant role in what lay ahead — the Civil War.

McKenna has been studying Abraham Lincoln for more than 10 years as a member of the Lincoln Group of New York. “I thought it would be interesting to present pre-Civil War subjects and see the world Lincoln was coming into,” McKenna said.

The Lincoln Group of New York, founded in 1978, fosters scholarship on the life and times of the nation’s 16th president, and includes scholars as well as enthusiastic amateurs like McKenna, who help stimulate research and preserve historical records and other items of historic interest.

“It’s been a very rewarding experience to study Lincoln,” McKenna said, adding that he has read dozens of books on Lincoln as a member of the Lincoln Group’s Award of Achievement Committee, where he and two other members are charged with the task of reviewing every new Lincoln publication, documentary and project in the country for the year and then selecting the contribution that has done the most to encourage the study and appreciation of the legendary president. For 2014, the committee, including McKenna, selected Harold Holzer’s book “Lincoln and the Power of the Press.”

Richard Sloan, of Massapequa, a founding member of the Lincoln Group and a member of the executive committee, is another one of those amateurs who has developed considerable knowledge of Lincoln with a specialization in his assassination and New York City funeral. “I have an ongoing fascination with Lincoln,” Sloan said. “This group has made me more knowledgeable about many aspects of his life in addition to my area of interest.”

McKenna’s involvement with the Lincoln Group dates back to his tenure as Wantagh library director. He met Milton Seltzer, of Wantagh, a member of the Lincoln Group of New York, who did a display of Lincoln memorabilia at the Wantagh Library each February.

“In those 33 years, he never repeated himself,” McKenna said of Seltzer. “He invited me to go to a meeting of the Lincoln Group and I met Richard there. I was hooked.

“I’ve met fascinating people,” McKenna added. “I learned what it means to be a leader, about his humanity and integrity; how he suffered from depression and the loss of Anne Rutledge and the death of several of his children. It’s also interesting to consider the tragedy of his death and what it would have meant if he lived. Things would be different for our country.”

McKenna said that few people know that Lincoln “wrote poetry and was the only President to hold a patent. What I’ve learned is that the more you know, the less you know,” he said.

Fact may sometimes be stranger than fiction. Sloan noted that when Rob Lincoln, the president’s son, was in his 20s, he was waiting for a train and slipped off the platform into the gap. “Someone came to his rescue … and saved his life,” Sloan said. “That man was the actor Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth.”

McKenna said there are “16,000 books on Lincoln and more coming out all the time. At the Seaford Library we have about 25 books, but we are always adding more books to our collection and more history books as well.”

“McKenna’s involvement with the prestigious Lincoln Group of New York is extremely beneficial for the Seaford Library,” said Peter Ruffner, president of the library’s board of trustees. “His formidable American history interest and diversity exhibits itself in his hands-on leadership of our book discussion programs.

This fall, McKenna will continue his book discussions with “John Marshall: The Chief Justice Who Saved the Nation,” by Harlow Giles Unger, in October. “As I was reading Webster, who is an expert on constitutional law, I decided we should look at chief justices for our next cycle of books,” McKenna explained. “We will discuss John Jay, Roger Taney and a fourth, and we will continue other cycles in the pre-Civil War period.”

The book discussion group meets on Monday afternoons. “Down the road, we hope to also include author interaction, maybe Skype,” McKenna said. “And we’d also like to include films that feature historical figures. We will stay with American history for a long time. There’s a lot to cover.”

Information about the Lincoln Group of New York can be found at www.lincolngroupny.org.