Buttons galore

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GRACE — Pauline Lowe recalled being a 9-year-old in 1940 when she would tune in the radio and hear President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“In my childhood, my parents had great respect for President Roosevelt,” she said. “As a child, I would even sit by the radio with my parents and listen to his ‘Message to the Nation.’”

During those childhood years, Lowe said she began developing a curious interest in politics. Roosevelt was running for his third term in 1940, and Lowe had collected one of his campaign buttons during that election year.

The Roosevelt pin would eventually become a catalyst for a nearly lifelong collection of other campaign buttons. Lowe has a button for every U.S. president since Roosevelt, minus Gerald Ford.

Lowe even has a button of Illinois U.S. Senator Barack Obama.

But, she isn’t a psychic.

Lowe said she usually goes to each presidential candidate’s campaign headquarters during the elections to collect a campaign button. Therefore, she also has a collection of the losing candidates.

And although she has campaign buttons for nearly every president since Roosevelt, Lowe said collecting the items can at times become difficult.

Lowe, 77, cited her poor eyesight, and said she has not been able to make as many drives to the campaign headquarters during recent elections.

The Grace resident has yet to collect a campaign button for Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain. She recalled that getting one for President George W. Bush was an equally difficult task because she couldn’t make as many trips to Utah, which had the nearest Bush campaign headquarters.

Fortunately, Lowe said a friend who worked for the Bush Campaign in Oregon sent her the president’s campaign button during the 2000 elections.

Lowe also recalled some of the reasons why she never collected a Ford campaign button. She said it may have been credited to the fact that Ford was a vice president, and immediately succeeded Richard Nixon, who resigned after Watergate.

“With the transition, I don’t know what happened there,” she said. “If you remember Nixon, he had all that trouble. But I do have (Harry) Truman.”

Lowe has shown interest in eventually acquiring a Ford campaign button, but contends that it would be a rare, and probably expensive find, given the number of years that have passed since his presidency.

“I may have to pay more (for Ford) while the others were quite free,” she said.

Lowe’s luck, though, might change soon as she expects to add McCain to her more than half-century-old collection.

“I’m going to Utah next week,” she said.

Lowe said that while collecting campaign buttons started as nothing more than a small childhood interest, the hobby has produced a collection she intends to pass down from generation to generation.

“I was quite taken with it,” she said. “It’s a nice thing to leave for my grandchildren. It makes it a little more meaningful.”

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