When you were a little kid, a wide-eyed cherub, and you walked carefully up the hallowed steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, and glanced upon the “Great Emancipator” seated in stone, in perpetuity, you most likely wanted to do one thing and one thing only: run up and limbo under the security rope while the guards weren’t looking, climb Abe’s solid stems and nestle into his lap made of old Georgian marble (the rest of the memorial is made of marble from Colorado) and tell him your deepest, darkest secrets like he’s some imperial, folky stoic Santa Claus — or America’s crystalline limestoned therapist. After all, if he could mend the Union’s complicated schism, surely he can mend your simple mind, right?

Oh, you never thought about that? Sorry. Forget it …

Anyway, speaking of the Lincoln Memorial, it’s now inline to get a much-needed upgrade, courtesy of a wealthy patriotic who over and over again has put his money where his mouth is.

We’re talking about philanthropist David Rubenstein, who just pledged a whopping $18 million to fix Abe’s shrine that sits front and center in DC and sees 7 million visitors annually — more than any other monument in our nation’s capital.

Rubenstein, who founded The Carlyle Group, has already given millions to fix the Washington Monument, the Iwo Jima Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

This from the Chicago Tribune:

The National Park Service announced the gift Monday. The money will be used to fix the memorial’s roof, clean the marble and improve accessibility by adding a second elevator. The park service also plans to create 15,000 square feet of visitor space tucked beneath the memorial for exhibits.

Rubenstein said his admiration for Lincoln drew him to this project.

“Lincoln deserves to have his memorial in tip-top shape,” he said in a phone interview.

Park Service Director John Jarvis said the memorial, dedicated in 1922, is structurally sound but does need some repair work.

“It’s pretty stout, and I think really has held up quite well for a structure of its age,” Jarvis said. “But you can’t build a 100-year roof.”

The memorial is built on pilings, and the park service is going to explore ways for visitors to see the foundations that anchor the memorial to the bedrock. The unseen superstructure is marked with graffiti from the workers who built the memorial over a seven-year period, including caricatures of former President William Howard Taft and memorial architect Henry Bacon.

In a way, it’s kind of strange that icons like the memorial rely on rich private Americans to keep them from crumbling, particularly after the devastation that the 2011 earthquake caused. This month the Pentagon announced that it was given over half a trillion dollars to spend in one year. None of that dough could have gone to fixing monuments that honor the brave men and women who enabled the DoD to have such a piggybank?

Okay then.