With Lincoln's help, Ken Burns tells America's stories

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BY L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / Lincoln Journal Star

Ken Burns is in evangelist mode.

Not in any organized manner. It’s too early for that kind of promotion. The show that the famous filmmaker is enthusiastically selling doesn’t air until fall 2009.

But after a decade of work, Burns is eager to talk about “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” a six-episode, 12-hour PBS series that will prominently feature the photographs and writings of Edward and Margaret Gehrke of Lincoln.

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Documentarian Ken Burns is making a series about America's national parks using much information from the Nebraska State Historical Society. (Photo by Jason Savage, courtesy of Florentine Films)

“We made them the spotlight characters in one of the episodes of our film,” Burns said. “They’re as moving as John Muir. They’re as important in my mind as Teddy Roosevelt. They were so-called ordinary folks from Lincoln, Nebraska.”

Muir was the earliest advocate of conservation of the U.S. wilderness, and his activism helped save the areas now known as Yosemite and Sequoia national parks from development. Roosevelt got the park system going. Putting the Gehrkes in their league is high praise.

The Lincoln couple’s contribution to history was not by design. They were early road-trippers who took a camera along when they began driving around America in the early part of the 20th century.

“What they were doing is very early on going on motor adventures,” said John Carter, a historian at the Nebraska State Historical Society. “I think they started in 1913-14. They just got in their Buick and headed off on adventures. They managed to get to most if not all the national parks as they were being birthed in the 20th century.”

The Gehrke collection came to the historical society in 1977. Burns found out about the photos and diaries before he began the park project, and an assistant spent a week in Lincoln looking at the photos and reading Margaret’s diaries. They became key parts of the fourth of its six episodes.

Burns will bring four of the Gehrkes’ clips from the film to show Thursday night when he talks at the Rococo Theatre for a historical society fundraiser.

“We’ll see quite a bit of those folks,” Carter said. “It’s not just the photographs. It’s Maggie’s unbelievable writing. You read the stuff and you fall in love with her. She’s an unbelievable writer. Her eloquence is moving and she was writing for herself. It’s pretty amazing.”

The other reason Burns is coming to Lincoln is that, over his three decades of filmmaking, Burns has often drawn on the NSHS archives and developed a friendship with Carter.

“The world of archives is divided into two sets,” Burns said. “There are those who have their collections and they’re neat and they don’t want anybody to touch them. Then there are people like John Carter, who has the collection and wants to get it out to have people see it. Those are the collections we work with. He’s become a good friend over the years, and we’ve used the collection on most every film we’ve done.”

For Carter, working with Burns and his team is natural and smart.

“Working with folks like Ken Burns means that millions of people have access to them,” Carter said. “One episode of Ken’s film is going to expose them to more people than will come here in 50 years.”

Burns’ broad knowledge of all sorts of American history comes through in conversation: a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson here, a reference to Joe Montana there.

Montana came up when Burns was talking about how he chooses the subject matter for his films and why he feels they have made such a connection with Americans.

“After the spectacular success of the World War II story (“The War”), we thought, ‘What could top it?’ This tops it. It’s like ‘Baseball’. I love football and I love basketball. But all those stories are ‘Joe Montana hit Dwight Clark with the winning touchdown pass’ or ‘Michael Jordan hit the winning shot.’ With baseball, the stories start ‘My dad took me…’

“That’s how it is with the story of the national parks. There’s this geographic story and political story. But what is as important is who’s holding your hand when you see that view of the Grand Canyon.”

Emerson came into the conversation when Burns talked about how he chooses his topics. Emerson had used the term “inly” to describe something that came from deep inside, done with thoroughness.

The common thread to his films, Burns said, is based on a question:

“Who are we?” he said. “Who are these strange and complicated people who call themselves Americans? Sometimes they delve into race, in ‘Baseball,’ ‘The Civil War,’ ‘Mark Twain.’ … Sometimes they go into space, the great physicality of the U.S., like the American West. The ultimate combination of that is the national parks. For the first time in human history, land was set apart for everybody. That’s a true American story.”

Burns sees his films as ways to give people a richer view of American history than just the standard political/military view taught in schools. By emphasizing ordinary people and tying their stories to the larger events, Burns tells his American stories in a way that makes viewers say, “I didn’t know that.”

“That’s what I’m here for. That’s why I was born,” he said. “My job is to teach people those things, to bring them those things. They have an abbreviated knowledge of, say, the Civil War, and you tell them, ‘Here are some stories you ought to know.’ People love the stories, and it makes you feel better as an American.”

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.