Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2008 / Fr. Williams' political button collection hits 25,000
Fr. Williams' political button collection hits 25,000
by Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published October 31, 2008
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Kristin Lukowski | The Michigan Catholic
Fr. Bob Williams loves politics, as his collection of 25,000 political campaign buttons attests. He's been buying, selling and trading them for 38 years. | Hazel Park Fr. Bob Williams has a lot of reasons to love election season about 25,000 of them, in fact.
Fr. Williams, pastor of St. Justin Parish in Hazel Park and a judge with the archdiocesan Metropolitan Tribunal, has been collecting political campaign buttons for 38 years, amassing 25,000 in the process. Starting at age 17, picking up a button here and there from various campaigns, he now buys, sells and trades them as he picks up duplicates and finds ones he has yet to add to his collection.
With Americans going to the polls on Tuesday and many of them sick of hearing political ads wherever they turn Fr. Williams, a self-professed political junkie, revels in the nonstop coverage. "I love politics," he said. "It mushroomed from there."
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Kristin Lukowski | The Michigan Catholic
Fr. Bob Williams shows off a collection of buttons and memorabilia from the campaigns of William Jennings Bryan, who was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president three times |
Although some collectors focus on one particular person, or one political party, Fr. Williams collects from both parties, all elections, winners and losers, although he does focus on governors, senators and members of Congress. Now, he buys, sells and trades them, depending on what he finds and what he has duplicates of. He's a member of the American Political Items Collectors, and goes to trade shows and conventions when he can.
He gets buttons from people he knows who find them when cleaning out the basement or attic, but he does a lot of his buying and selling on eBay, the online auction site. He's seen some buttons online for thousands of dollars, and many for hundreds, but among his more expensive buttons is a $350 "Mayberry for Governor" pin, promoting the Democrat who lost the bid for Michigan's top spot in 1900. He said he'd known it existed but hadn't seen it before he found it online, and snapped it up when he did.
"Sometimes it's hard to find what you're looking for," he said.
He finds that a lot of people who get involved in collecting political buttons are involved in campaigns, history professors, political science teachers, and a lot of history buffs, he said. Fr. Williams himself has worked on campaigns "way back," he said, and has managed two while in college, he managed the campaign for a candidate who was running for mayor, and as a priest for a candidate for a University of Michigan Board of Regents spot. Both lost.
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Kristin Lukowski | The Michigan Catholic
Fr. Bob Williams' extensive collection of political buttons are mementos of elections from as far back as 1890, with many from the 1960's, like this selection. |
Fr. Williams' entire collection has been scanned, stored digitally on his computer, and then catalogued it took a whole year, he said and as he gets new buttons, those get scanned in batches, too. This makes it easier for him to show off his collection at trade shows, rather than taking along stacks of photocopies of his thousands of pins. He said he doesn't have a favorite, but said he was "in seventh heaven" after he won an online auction just last weekend for a Henry Ford for U.S. Senate pin. An entire room is dedicated to his collection, where buttons are sorted in drawers by state or by political office. The older buttons are in display cases, and he has a few odds and ends, too, such as a Florida election box hanging chad not included and a pillow with the democratic donkey stitched on it.
He has buttons from as early as 1890, when they were first made out of metal, and for local names such as Hazen Pingree, mayor of Detroit from 1889-97, and Albert Cobo, mayor of Detroit from 1950-57. And although some purists argue that today's pins mostly sold by vendors, not given away by the candidate aren't the same, Fr. Williams said he figures that if it was used in a campaign, it's fair game.
"Now, campaigns are so expensive, they're run mostly through the media," he said.
He said he loves his collection if nothing else, for his own enjoyment and his own personal museum, and said his nieces and nephews will probably sell it when he's gone. But for now, he enjoys the different styles of buttons and continues to look for rare finds.
"Lots of people think I'm nuts," he said, although he pointed out that many other people collect strange things, too. "Everyone has their own."
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