Pony Express
Old Oregon Trail
George Washington
Abraham Lincoln
Winter Quarters
Angel Moroni
Hawaii Temple
Jesus Christ
Joseph Smith
Brigham Young
US Capitol Building
Three Witnesses
The Family
Prominent People
War Memorials
Hood Ornaments
Garden Statuary
Children
Animals

Comments are welcome

Books on the Sculptor Avard Fairbanks by Eugene F. Fairbanks:

"A Sculptor's Testimony in Bronze and Stone"

"A Sculpture Garden of Fantasy"

This web site is non-commercial in nature, and was not created for the purposes of selling art. Viewers interested in purchasing art may visit FairbanksArt.com for information regarding the sale of art.

Medical Physics and Radiation Oncology

Abraham Lincoln, Colossal Bronze
Fresno County Office of Education, 2001

By Avard T. Fairbanks, PhD
Colossal Bronze
Fresno County Office of Education, Fresno, California
Presented by the Central California Chapter of the Association of the US Army

About the Monument
This Colossal Abraham Lincoln was dedicated February 23, 2001 in Fresno, California. The sculpture was presented by the Central California of the Association of the United States Army, donated by Dr. and Mrs. David N.F. Fairbanks, and unveiled by Major General Ron Markarian, Dr. Jefferson Fairbanks, and Dr. Peter Mehas, Fresno County Superintendant of Schools.

About the Central California Chapter of the US Army
WE ARE A "TORCHBEARER FOR AMERICA'S ARMY" IN THE CENTRAL PART OF OUR STATE. FOUNDED IN 1982, THE CHAPTER "HELD-ON" TO STAY ACTIVE ON THE AUSA ROLLS UNTIL ABOUT 4 YEARS AGO, WHEN OUR MEMBERSHIP STARTED TO TAKE OFF. WE HAVE BEEN A "STAR CHAPTER" FOR NEARLY 50Ê MONTHS---WHICH MEANS WE HAVE ACHIEVED OUR MEMBERSHIP GOAL EVERY MONTH THROUGHOUT THIS PERIOD. OUR STRENGTH NOW STANDS AT ABOUT 280 MEMBERS MAKING US "THE BIGGEST LITTLE CHAPTER IN THE WEST". WITHIN OUR MEMBERSHIP ARE 17 CORPORATE MEMBERS. WE HAVE NO ACTIVE US ARMY INSTALLATION IN THE AREA, SO OUR RANKS ARE COMPOSED PRIMARILY OF NATIONAL GUARD, ARMY RESERVE, THE ARMY RECRUITING COMMUNITY, RETIREES, STATE MILITARY RESERVISTS, ARMY ROTC FACULTY & CADETS, HMONG-AMERICANS WHO SERVED IN CIA SPECIAL GUERRILLA UNITS IN LAOS AND NOW RESIDE IN OUR COMMUNITY, AND THE MANY,Ê MANY PATRIOTIC CITIZENS OF THE GREATER FRESNO AREA.Website: Central California Chapter of the Association of the US Army

About the Fresno County Office of Education
Holding firm to our belief that "all children can learn and that all children are entitled to a quality education," the Fresno County Office of Education continues to pursue its mission to serve as a catalyst for student success. Each of the 180,000+ students in our 34 school districts deserve a challenging instructional program that will prepare them to enter the workforce and/or go on to post-secondary education. This instruction program should be based on core curriculum, which emphasizes mastery of basic skills, critical and higher order thinking, communication and decision-making skills, and language proficiency. Website: Fresno County Office of Education

About Abraham Lincoln (from whitehouse.gov)
Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."

Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life:

"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all."

Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."

He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.

Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.

The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... "

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

- biography courtesy of whitehouse.gov