When Lewis Hankins dons his white swimsuit to take the stage as Mark Twain, he has a long-time routine. Before greeting his viewers, Lewis says a easy prayer.
“I say, ‘David, this is for you. Daddy has never forgotten you.”
How Lewis got here to be on stage as his favourite writer appears to be an act of future. The retired Kentucky state policeman grew up studying Twain’s works. He delved deeply into the life born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who selected the pen identify of Mark Twain to change into referred to as the daddy of American Literature.
Before lengthy, Lewis’ siblings – who have been academics – persuaded him to speak to their lessons in regards to the writer. “Then I started dressing up as Mark Twain whenever I would be invited to talk about him,” he says. “One thing just led to another.”
Lewis grew to become so immersed “that I sometimes think I know Samuel Clements better than I know myself,” he says with a smile. “We are kindred spirits.”
But it was a tragedy in his personal life that made him really feel even nearer to the famed writer. Lewis’ younger son David was recognized with leukemia.
“We tried to keep it from him that he was dying,” Lewis says. “How do you tell a child that he is dying?”
But sooner or later, David introduced up the topic himself. “He asked me if I would forget him if he died.”
Taken aback, Lewis answered his son’s query with one in every of his personal. “I asked him if he would forget me if I died.”
When the boy answered that he would always remember his father – it doesn’t matter what occurred, Lewis replied that he felt precisely the identical about his son.
The oldest of Lewis’ three sons, eight-year-old David died in 1971.
Finding solace in Twain’s writings
Devastated past perception, Lewis discovered solace in Twain’s writings. In personal life, Twain had suffered overwhelming sorrows. The lack of his solely son in infancy. Daughter Susy died from spinal meningitis. Daughter Joan drowned in her bathtub because of an epileptic seizure. The loss of life of his spouse who was his fixed companion preyed closely upon Twain’s thoughts.
Lewis Hankins speaks within the first particular person as Mark Twain.
“He wrote that, ‘I know now what the soldier feels like when a bullet crashes through his heart,’” Lewis says. “What impressed me was that he could use simple words to express his grief. He captured my emotions exactly.”
In January 1989, Lewis stepped aboard a Delta Queen Company riverboat in his three-piece Mark Twain white swimsuit and spent the following 19 years entertaining and educating passengers.
8 Night – Memphis to St. Louis – American Queen
Then the unthinkable occurred. The three sister boats – the Delta Queen, the Mississippi Queen and the American Queen – have been abruptly gone from the river.
“I missed it so much,” Lewis says. “When I heard that the American Queen was going to be back on the river, I wept. It represents a period of America history that once was and is so important.”
On our American Queen cruise, Lewis stepped on the stage within the Grand Saloon to talk from his coronary heart – with out notes. Simple props embrace a lectern, wing again chair and desk with a bottle of bourbon whiskey.
A easy stage setting embrace a bottle of bourbon and Mark Twain books.
In his mid 80s with a mass of white hair framing his face and a wavy white moustache, Lewis appears strikingly like Mark Twain. When he opens his mouth and speaks within the first particular person as Twain, the result’s riveting.
Sharing Twain’s phrases
For nearly an hour, Lewis recites traces from Twain’s writing, brings loud laughs and ends his program with the writer’s phrases about his impending loss of life.
“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835,” Lewis solemnly recited Twain’s phrases. “It is coming once more subsequent 12 months and I count on to exit with it. It would be the biggest disappointment of my life if I don’t exit with Halley’s Comet.
The Almighty has stated, little doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks. They came in together. They must go out together.’”
Twain’s prediction was correct He died of coronary heart failure on April 21, 1910, sooner or later after the comet’s closest method to Earth.
“In 1910,” Lewis concluded, “I took man’s most valuable possession, which is his last breath.”
‘Mark Twain’ visits with American Queen passenger Logan Peters.
Photos by Jackie Sheckler Finch
Ed. Notes: See cruises right here:
American Queen Voyages Cruises
8 Night – Memphis to St. Louis – American Queen (cruisecompete.com)
See cruises right here> CruiseCompete and its member journey advisors present many curated cruise and land offers, affords and facilities on over 50 cruise traces with over 500 cruise ships crusing all all over the world. Browse Cruise Ships and Cruise Lines