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Early in the nineties, two companions might almost daily be seen on
Lincoln’s downtown streets. Written and unwritten history traces their
footsteps more minutely—into Don Cameron’s. Curious as to the sort of
fame which perpetuated the name of Don Cameron we investigated and found
that he was a restaurant keeper. The secret of his popularity and
enduring memory seems to have been that he furnished a good meal for 25
cents.
Among the rising young men of Lincoln who found a good 25 cent meal
important were these two companions. The shorter, darker of the two, who
resembled a bundle of scantily padded charged wires, was Charles G.
Dawes. The taller, fairer more reserved young man was John J. Pershing,
then commandant at the university. In the restaurant, where they sat at
a table with other young men who in the future would be Lincoln’s
prominent citizens, they discussed many things, Dawes with animated
forearms, Pershing more sedate but square-jawed and purposeful.
It was not until 1905, after he was gone from Lincoln, that Pershing
married. A dozen years later his wife and three oldest children died in
a California hotel fire. It was then that he established a home in
Lincoln for his sister, Miss May Pershing, and his youngest child,
Warren. This is still known as the Pershing home, and to it General
Pershing has often returned for periods of visiting and rest. For the
most part, this last great leader of the American Expeditionary forces
of 1918 lives at Walter Reed hospital in Washington.