During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln told General O. O. Howard that after the war ended, he hoped Howard would do something for the people of this area. Years later, as Howard traveled through the Cumberland Gap region, he recalled that exchange and found like-minded pioneers who believed education was the key to improving life for underserved and isolated communities. In commemoration of Lincoln's birthday, Howard and his associates secured a Tennessee charter for Lincoln Memorial University on February 12, 1897. Although the university has changed over time, its mission has remained to provide educational opportunities that transform the lives of underserved and isolated communities in Appalachia and beyond. Pete DeBusk, a son of Appalachia born in Lee County, Virginia, and raised in coal mining towns across the region, enrolled there and found in Howard's vision a path out of poverty that later led him to help elevate the university and the Cumberland Gap region. As chairman of the Board of Trustees, he responded to changes in higher education by helping develop professional schools including the LMU-DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine, LMU-Duncan School of Law, LMU-School of Medical Sciences, and LMU-College of Veterinary Medicine. With a future patterned on the Ivy League model, the university's legacy is presented as generations of LMU-trained physicians, lawyers, educators, business leaders, and medical personnel serving communities around the world. Seeing medicine, jurisprudence, and engineering as the three pillars of a great university, Pete sought to complete that vision by building a school of engineering, both strengthening the institution and fulfilling Lincoln's wish to do something for the people of this area.