By Lenore Vickrey
David Azbell’s fascination with the world of political campaigns started about 40 years ago when the then 16-year-old discovered a box of buttons his dad kept in a storage room in their Montgomery home. Not buttons you’d fasten a coat or shirt with, but the round metal types emblazoned with the names of political candidates and slogans.
“If I were 21, I’d vote for WALLACE” blares one.
“Re-elect OUR CONGRESSMAN TOM BEVILL,” says another.
“Albert Lee SMITH Our Way. At Last.” And on and on.
“I was always fascinated by history,” he says, “and political buttons are history that you can hold in your hand. Each one tells a story, about winners and losers, about issues that were important. You can even look at the graphics and tell what the era was like at the time they were made. I got fascinated by that and I started looking into these campaigns. The political buttons I found were kind of like Wikipedia is today,” when you look for one thing and spot something else intriguing, and before you know it you find yourself down one rabbit hole after another.
“That’s the way political buttons were to me,” he says. “They were my gateway drug that led to posters, 3-D items, personal items owned by politicians and … well, now it’s a bit out of control.”
Azbell – for more than 30 years a political advisor to dozens of Alabama politicians and campaigns, speechwriter for governors, and communications advisor for the House Republican Caucus – has been adding to that original set of political buttons for more than four decades. His collection of memorabilia got so large that it outgrew the man cave at his house, and five years ago he moved it to his office in downtown Montgomery. Last fall he moved it again to a larger space, a 1910-era house just a few blocks from the State Capitol.
A walk through his latest location is like strolling through a museum of what Azbell has dubbed “the wild, weird and wonderful world of Alabama politics,” from posters, mailers, handbills, furniture, flags, clothing, letters and photographs, to mugs, medallions, bumper stickers, newspaper clippings, magazine covers, scripts from the 1997 award-winning TV movie, “George Wallace,” 45-records, albums, fans, hats and ballcaps. That moniker is also the description of his Facebook page, “The Art of Alabama Politics,” where he posts daily photos and snippets from the collection.
“Yes, there are dark spots in our history. But there are humorous moments, sad moments, bright moments,” he says. “Our political history is like anybody’s life. It runs the gamut. I try to tell the whole story, the good, the bad and the ugly. But I try to focus on the humorous and colorful.”
Every item has a story
Not all of his collection is on display, he notes, pointing to a storage room full of even more items. Some date back to the 19th century. And every item has its own story, and Azbell is only too happy to recount them.
His collection, he says, “is believed to be the largest private collection of Alabama campaign memorabilia around.” It’s so large now that he doesn’t even buy items like he used to. “People just give me stuff,” he says. “They’ll leave a box on my front porch.
“I started collecting because like I said, each piece tells a story. But now, after 40 years, I’m to the point where I enjoy sharing the stories that the pieces tell as much as I enjoy acquiring the pieces.”
Among the historical items he has acquired are a member’s desk from the old Alabama House of Representatives, used from 1945-1986 (the desks were sold to help fund the Capitol renovations); state Sen. Hank Sanders’ old desk with his phone and a space for an ashtray (all desks included the hollowed-out spaces); a Florida voting booth with “hanging chads” and an original Gore v. Bush ballot from the 2000 presidential race; a White House beige desk phone with push buttons from the 1980s; and flags that flew over the state Capitol during the state funeral (which Azbell directed) for Gov. George Wallace in 1998.
Azbell was close to the family of Gov. Wallace, and was his spokesperson in his later years when the former governor could not hear and was bedridden. Azbell’s father, Joe, a longtime journalist in Montgomery, was Wallace’s director of communications for his 1972 presidential campaign. Because of their close ties, when George Wallace Jr. relocated to a new home in Birmingham several years ago, he offered Azbell several boxes of his parents’ belongings that had been stored in his basement. Some of those items are now on display, like the pass to the 1983 season of University of Alabama football practices, signed by then Coach Ray Perkins, and Wallace’s personal datebooks he kept while running for governor.
Some of the most historically important documents, however, are not on display, but are kept in a separate desk drawer. They include Wallace’s discharge papers from World War II (his commanding officer was Gen. Curtis Lemay, who would become his vice-presidential running mate); his qualifying papers to run for the Alabama House of Representatives; a letter from Jesse Jackson to the family upon Wallace’s death; medical records kept by nurses at the bedside of Gov. Lurleen Wallace; and a copy of a letter written by Wallace to Arthur Bremer, the man who shot him in 1972 and left him paralyzed. In the letter, Wallace says he forgives Bremer, then serving time in a Maryland penitentiary, and pleads with him to seek a personal relationship with Jesus. “I’d give anything to know what his reaction was,” says Azbell.
Campaign gimmicks
And then there are the improbable campaign items that someone, somewhere thought were a good idea. “Here’s a piece that shocks everybody,” he says, holding up a pair of large yellow nylon women’s underpants featuring Wallace’s face and “Wallace ’68” on the front. The undergarments (also available in blue and pink) were sold to raise money for Wallace’s third-party presidential bid. Not to be outdone, in 2006 when Gov. Bob Riley was running for re-election, some entrepreneur sold Bob Riley for Governor white cotton thongs. Azbell keeps them side by side in a display drawer.
Alabamians of a certain age might remember when former Gov. “Big Jim” Folsom campaigned with a corn shuck mop and suds bucket, promising to clean up corruption. “If you were a woman and you attended a Folsom rally in 1946, you got a bar of soap with Big Jim’s name on it,” he says, displaying the brown bar of lye soap he got about 25 years ago. The Republican Party in 1996 distributed mini-cans of scouring powder while pledging to “clean up politics.” A matchbook seeking support to draft Wallace for governor from the 1960s also included, on the back, information to apply for membership in the Ku Klux Klan.
Dothan businessman Charles Woods, a veteran who was terribly burned in World War II, had a congressional campaign item that seems tragically ironic now: hot pad holders. “I told you each piece tells a story,” Azbell says a bit ruefully, “and sometimes the stories are in poor taste.”
Campaign slogans had their own special appeal and sometimes had mixed, and even odd, messages. Bettye Frink’s message when she ran for the Alabama State School Board in 1970 was proclaimed on a palm card: “Freedom of choice is a MUST. Total integration will DESTROY our schools!” while a few lines later, “LOVE and TRUST is far better than HATRED.”
In 1932, Miles Algood was a congressman representing two different districts in the Gadsden area. Azbell has his campaign card, which he framed, and notes that it names several reasons why you should vote for Algood:
He is a gentleman.
He has experience.
He is worthy.
He is a working man’s friend.
He has made his own way.
He’s a one-armed man.
“Now Algood lost an arm in World War I,” Azbell notes, “so why they didn’t just say he’s a wounded war hero I don’t know, but ‘vote for Miles Algood because he is one-armed man!’”
The Pope and Elvis
Azbell even has a few items that aren’t necessarily political but have Alabama connections. On a 1984 trade mission to Europe, Gov. Wallace met with Pope John Paul II who presented him with a papal medal at the Vatican. The sterling silver medal is on display in Azbell’s collection.
In March 1974, Elvis Presley played a concert at Montgomery’s Garrett Coliseum, and the night before, he stayed at the old Downtowner Hotel on Madison Avenue. The hotel desk clerk, seeing a money-making opportunity, went up to the singer’s room, took the bed sheet down to the hotel manager and paid him $6 for the sheet. She then cut it into squares and sold them for $10 a square in classified ads in tabloid publications.
“Now how do I know this is in fact the bedsheet that Elvis slept on?” Azbell asks. “She somehow convinced Bill Baxley, the Alabama attorney general, to attest that this was Elvis’ bedsheet.” Baxley’s signature is indeed on the back of the card bearing the sheet square, one of which resides in the Azbell collection next to a photo of Elvis in his trademark white jumpsuit while meeting Gov. Wallace.
Among the thousands of pieces of memorabilia housed in Azbell’s collection, one is his favorite. “It’s a ticket to a George Wallace fundraiser on May 15, 1972,” he says, holding the ticket which is preserved in a protective covering. “That was the date of the shooting in Laurel, Maryland. This ticket was (to) the next event on his schedule. It was unused because it was canceled. I don’t know of another ticket to this event that exists today.”
A labor of love
Although some might liken Azbell’s collection to a hoarder’s paradise, he sees it differently. “All of this is a labor of love to preserve stories that I think have been lost,” he says.
To help prove his point, he tells of a recent visit to his collection by several college students who were interns at the governor’s office. He asked the students if they knew of “Big Jim” Folsom, or what happened to Gov. Wallace in May of 1972. They just stared at him. “Ask anybody under 40, or even 50 years old, and they’re going to look at you slack-jawed,” he says with a sigh.
He believes Alabama is a state where it’s important to know political history “because we repeat it over and over again, like the courts taking over the prison system. We’ve been there. It pays to know political history, but folks just don’t appreciate it.
“I did this because after 40 years of effort I wanted to show it off,” he says. “I was deeply concerned that a lot of our history is being lost or being forgotten. I wanted to preserve it and share it with others.”ν
To book a tour, send Azbell a message through his “Art of Alabama Politics” Facebook page or email [email protected].
